TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re:copyright and the web From:Bill Hartzer <BHartzer -at- cha-systems -dot- com> To:"'Techwr-l'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 16 May 2000 12:38:41 -0500
The standard way to avoid this issue, which is trivially easy to implement
in standard HTML, is to get the browser to open an entirely new browser
window when it follows the link. That way, your own site's window stays open
in the background (so readers can return to it quickly), but the linked site
opens in its own window.
====== snip ====
The _best_ way to stop this type of insane "hotlinking", or stealing
of your bandwidth is to use .htaccess on your website. You can easily
configure your website to only allow links from your own site or sites that
you
approve ahead of time. If this is too restrictive, it's possible to block
any hits
from the website that is stealing your bandwidth. I can go into more detail
about this if you let me know.
The preferred method is to rename the page(s) that the offending site is
linking
to and replace them with a standard page that says "illegal hotlinker" or
"bandwidth thief" or the like. You could also rename the appropriate files
and
replace them with a page that will automatically redirect the web surfer to
the main page of your site, along with a tag that will break the user out of
the
frames that they're in. The offending website is actually doing you a favor
by
sending hits to your site. Do anything you can to take advantage of the
traffic!
Believe me, with as many websites that I have on the internet today, I have
to deal with
these scumbags almost daily. They're _always_ hotlinking or "framing" my
content.
The only REAL way to deal with this is to watch your log files on a regular
basis, and
deal with each offending site individually. In fact, a simple lookup of the
page's host
via www.betterwhois.com and an email to their hosting company will take care
of the problem
immediately, without having to deal with money-hungry lawyers.
