Subject:
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Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Jun 1999 13:55:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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602 times
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Todd Lehman wrote:
>
> The robust, long-term solution is to serve the JPEG images selectively to
> on-site pages and reject them to off-site pages, using an Apache webserver
> module called "mod_rewrite" and looking at the HTTP referrer field on-the-
> fly; or invoking a CGI script whenever an image is requested, and optionally
> doing more advanced filtering.
>
> The less-robust, short-term solution is simply to rename the image
> directories, thus breaking all of the bad links. This would certainly stop
> the problem, but doing that is like mowing over a weed rather than digging
> it up by the roots -- the problem will come right back to full intensity in
> a couple weeks.
Todd -
Instead of frustrating both the image pirates and their prospective
customers, why not turn this situation to your advantage? Suppose that
each time an HTTP request is made for an unauthorized image, you serve
up a substitute image containing an advertisement in place of the
original. The substitute image could be mostly text in a limited number
of colors (does this reduce the size of a JPEG image much, or does it
only work for GIFs?), but with the same dimensions as the original (in
case the embedded image link includes HEIGHT and WIDTH paramaters).
The text would be an advertisement for Lugnet, perhaps with instructions
to prospective bidders on how they can locate Lugnet images in an
authorized manner. (You could also include a statement chastising the
image thief, of course, but why bother if you end up benefiting from it?
For that matter, you could even sell this advertising space to others --
Mega Blocks and Amazon.com auctions come to mind -- perhaps for a
premium, since it's relatively well targeted.)
- David
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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| (...) I believe the technology to do this exists. Xoom serves up just such an image if you try to link directly to an image you've placed there, or did. I'm not sure I'm keen on seeing adverts for MegaBlocks, but SC, Amazon, and TLG all come to (...) (25 years ago, 4-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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| (...) That's an intriguing idea. I've seen similar sorts of things where a static (maybe 2KB) image is plopped up in place of the real image, and it typically gets scaled by modern browsers and looks all chunky and like that. But you're talking (...) (25 years ago, 4-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Cracking down on unauthorized image links
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| (...) OK, this evening I just wrote a little CGI script to do this for images in the sets-DB. So, the dynamically generated HTML pages, i.e. (URL) link to this CGI script -- which acts as a buffer -- rather than to the raw JPEG image file. Thus, the (...) (25 years ago, 3-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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