[cd34]

So, with that, we have:

RewriteEngine on
# optionally allow empty referrers, remove to disallow empty referrers
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*@)?([a-z0-9-]+\.)*yourdomain.com(:[0-9]+)?(/.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(asf|mpg|mpeg|wmv|avi|rm|gif|jpeg|jpg)$ - [NC,F,L]

That basic rule should work in 99% of the situations. I've regression tested it with all of the test-set that I created earlier. I'll run with this on some real world testing on some clients.

Thank you Raymor for helping us come up with a fairly well protected drop-in rule that we can perhaps slap in a faq somewhere for webmasters to somewhat protect themselves. I know the .wmv is somewhat useless, but, it will stop some of the siterippers that do send referrers.

Then maybe we can get the submission pages to link back to a FAQ page at greenguysboard.com and educate the freesite/tgp submitters a bit.