Hot Links Stink

I’m being hotlinked. Argh. I knew it would happen eventually, and for still pictures I don’t care. But videos are another matter.

Hotlinking is when a Webmaster uses a picture or video from another site, by referring to its absolute address, rather than taking it by downloading and putting it on their own server. It’s bandwidth theft, and bandwidth used to be so precious that a hotlink to a lowly JPG was annoying. Nowadays, it’s video that’s a concern.

Some FLV files I posted have been hotlinked for streaming video. The owner of the site is using Dreamhost, the same service that hosts Mark Evanier’s sites, so it isn’t as if this guy is short on storage capacity or bandwidth.

Up to now I haven’t tried to block hotlinking, because I assumed people would download the files. That’s now changed. I’ve edited the .htaccess file for the site with some code that should greatly cut down on the potential hotlinking of FLV files. It won’t prevent it entirely, and I’m not about to say under what circumstances it doesn’t block. With a little more tweaking I should be able to tighten the screws some more.