Hotlinking Scum
 

Just got slammed for bandwidth by these creeps: http://www.woot.be/

And what can be done to block them?

If pictures are hot linked, you can block them accessing your pictures with .htaccess like below.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R,NC]

It works with my unix box but you always test before you go to production.

In movies case, you need a software. I don't remember the software name but you google it or someone here may help you.

I use htaccess for pics and
http://www.antihotlinking.com/ for movies.

Thanks - I'd love to get with other content owners and start a class action - next time I'm in Europe, I'll sit down with my ex-brother-in-law and see what can be done.