Hotlinking shrinks your manhood!
(**Note: The basis of this article now has it’s own SGE Blog page, tracking hotlinking offenders as I find them in my server logs.)
Wikipedia describes hotlinking thus: “Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs and bandwidth theft) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.”
In the greater scheme of the internet, this is what being online is all about, the sharing of information via a spider’s web of links and chains coming together is a mass orgy of information overload.
That’s all well and good though when you aren’t paying for the storage of the data used.
Hotlinking generates a greater bandwidth usage than would normally be used by such a simple website as my own, and with that bandwidth could come greater costs. My website for the small price I pay, only has a limited amount of data that can be uploaded to my viewers each month (approx 10gb. granted I never get close, but you never know, one day i might write something so special that I’m going to need the extra bandwidth to go with a larger readership. I could happen!), and once that bandwidth is used, all further requests to view my website get denied, or I can pay a bit extra to keep the site up till the next accounting period.
I too am guilty of hotlinking. Just look at the YouTube videos I post. I’m not paying for that bandwidth, google is, but that is how YouTube works. They allow their users to do that. It is who they are, AND they can afford it. Beside, they have good stuff that deserves to be shared that helps them generate advertising revenue!! I don’t have that luxury.
So, to prevent cheeky bastards from leeching stuff from my site, I have implemented serverside http referring, that can recognise when a request for an image is coming from off-site, and serve up a different image to the one they were expecting.
Now, I don’t really understand what it is about this particular image that is a favourite of hotlinkers, but it seems to be linked to at least once a month.
Favourite of hotlinkers
But, instead of getting this wonderful image of Bart Simpson about to get booted up the arse by the Australian Prime Minister (Simpson’s episode “Bart vs Australia”), they get this…
The returned Hotlink image
Look, I know it is petty, but I just love it when some one gets burned on a public forum, when they think they’re presenting a humourous image that represents the discussion at hand.
A great example that prompted me to write this entry, is the latest hotlink episode that has so far generated 6,985 views for a commentor on a forum, declaring he has a small penis. His response was in regards to a post on the Gawker Network’s DeadSpin website, about Tim Orchard flashing his bits on live television during an interview in the locker room.
I can’t but help laugh at the irony of my hotlink image appearing on that story. I think it just makes it!
Websites and articles that have come under the wrath of penis shrinkage:
Deadspin.com: Australian Rules Football Finds Its Visanthe Shiancoe
Newcastle-online.org: Southampton Relegated
TheTownEnd.com : Jonathan Ross
MDB.Scout.com: Gilbert Brown and his Boot (comment has been edit to remove the image, but the other comments that followed it are great!)
Fark.com: Some poll about politics.
ConservativePunk.net: No idea, it’s all in Polish (This one, for a change, was linked to a picture I took of some advertising at Liverpool St station, where Iggy Pop was floggin Time Insurance policies).
Tags: bart and boot, hotlinking, simpsons
