[cd34]

well, here's one problem -- if they turn off the referrer, the galleries still come up even when blocking 'fusker' urls.

Short of protecting the files through a more sophisticated method, blocking by referrer isn't going to do much except annoy those that don't know how to turn off the referrer.

If you block empty referrers, people surfing with privacy software won't see the images. I looked through, and it is apparant that they are posting sites that are indeed blocking referrers of some of my clients (and those clients have had anti-hotlinking in there for ages), but, the only reason they would be of any value is if they were expecting people that weren't passing the referrer.

Note: this is evidenced by all of the img.photobucket.com posts. They block anything that sends the fusker referer, yet, are quite prevalent in the listings.