You might have wondered why I have "© vanAnnies.com" stamped all over the images on this site. The reason is something called hotlinking, defined as the use of someone else's bandwidth without their permission (otherwise known as theft).

People steal bandwidth by linking directly to remote content, usually images. Sites like Myspace.com, BlogSplot.com, and LiveJournal.com are notorious for this. Putting a copyright on the images helps to discourage hotlinking because the copyright shows up on the leech's site. If the copyright notice doesn't shame them in to honesty, then it can at least work as an advertisement for the source of the stolen image.

For you techie types who are thinking to yourselves right now 'she could stop that by just filtering on HTTP_REFERER in .htaccess', well no, it doesn't work. HTTP_REFERER is optional and seems to be available less and less in these days of online privacy paranoia. It's a nice idea, but it's not good enough anymore.

My site CowCats.com has the same problem, except with a more bizarre twist. People on virtual pet breeding sites hotlink to the adoption images on CowCats.com and then go on to describe which pets they would breed together in their little fantasy worlds. Now that's just tacky. So, I spent part of today writing a script that will put a brand on every image uploaded to CowCats.com. Anyone who hotlinks won't be able to ignore the real reason those pictures are online.

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