No, with blocking I just meant a general hotlinking block (the same that everybody else is using).
Most of the people redirect to a HTML page, which will result in a broken image if it's hotlinked from another HTML page.
But if it's coming from Google it usually redirects to the HTML page (depending on if the image is on a HTML page or not). Example:
http://images.google.com/images?q=po...ff&sa=N&tab=wi pic #2, #4, #5
Some redirect to another image with an URL on it (that's what I did).
The more I think about, the more I think both ways are bad. Both serve different content than what the spider found.
They might not mind or taken care of it right now. But further down the road I think we might face the same consequences as if we redirected a HTML page (banned).
Probably the only one that
might be ok, is if the hotlink protection sends a "Forbidden". They know as well as we do that hotlinking is a problem.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gui...s.html#quality
"Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects."