I’m not a huge fan of US Copyright law as it currently stands (IMHO things should eventually be in the Public Domain after the creator of a work has a reasonable amount of time to make some money). That being said, I’m not a big fan of bandwidth borrowing. This appears to have been happening last month with a couple of images in my Final Fantasy Tactics Gallery.
I’m sure it was done without any malice, simply popping in a <img src="http://www.sonic.net/jdf/images/fftm/sorceror.jpg" alt="" /> tag into a perfectly harmless web log, but it caught my attention when going through my referrer stats anyway.
So I’ve re-implemented my passive-aggressive “image-theft” prevention mechanism. For the curious, it involves inserting the following humble code into my .htaccess file.
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "sonic.net/" local_ref=1
<FilesMatch ".(gif|jpg)">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from env=local_ref
</FilesMatch>
Gracias to apache-server.com and the Apache Project for the express instructions and the underlying mechanism for this trick, respectively.
The reason I would put such a rule in place is not out of petty spite, but rather due to the bandwidth usage policies of my web server. I, you see, am responsible for the hundreds of folks that access anything I own on this web server, and have to pay for any excessive use out of my own pocket. Please feel free to use images in my galleries or elsewhere on this site, I don’t mind at all. Just kindly download your own copy (from this site if you like) and then put it into your own webspace.
I see your problem. What a huge pain. OI don’t blame you for putting up that little barrier, and it is a pain. I’m not an expert on all that net linkage stuff, but does it tottaly hammer your bandwidth if people just put the link on their LJ or whatever?
Maybe it’s me or my computer or somthing but I can’t see not a one of the images in your FFT gallery. I was going to Dload them to my computer for my own personal Image-Dictionary (im an artist) usage but I can’t for obvious reasons. I was wondering if there was some way i could get them.
Well, when the little tiny thumbnail image of about 2.5k becomes troublesome if the person using it places it on web boards that are accessed by 200-1000 people per day. Each of those people will download the 2.5k file at least once, and sometimes a multitude of times, and this adds up.
I happen to have a rather nice bandwidth quota on my web server, but I also share that quota with my sister’s baby site, and I certainly don’t want to start paying over-use charges because some guy didn’t have the presence of mind to get his own web directory somewhere.