Yea, I guess professional web designers have no clue how to set up a filter when it comes to hotlinking. You know, allow sites to hotlink, while the rest gets denied?

Then again, I'm not a professional web designer, what do I know?

Can a professional webdesigner design a profesional webdesign, that's soooo professional, it'd make him realize it may be too professional of a webdesign and suddenly reflect that webdesigns are meant to not be so professional? Maybe that's how so many images remained free for hotlinking?

Guuuuys, this thread is for my agenda of making hotlinking a bannable offense. Let's talk about that. >=|

To be honest I don't see that much hotlinking (really, hardly any at all) that fails. Say, instead of the intended image you see "IMAGE ON TRIPOD LOL".

I get some of my images hotlinked alot but it creates endless fun when I swap out that image with something disgusting. Or put a watermark or logo in it's place. Free advertising. Though these would be reasons for not allowing it on the boards I guess.

Yes. Yiffy pokemon image time.

Really, I'd only put a ban in place for repeat tripod loool image offenders and when webhost owners come in complaining about hotlinkers. If the hotlinked image still works and noone is complaining then everything is Ecto Cooler.

I just install the firefox imageshack plugin. You can just right click on images and use "Upload to imageshack" which makes everything incredibly easy. It's probably the most useful tool I've downloaded next to gmail notifier.

Sometimes I notice there's nights here when "hotlinking for this domain has been disabled" is displaying in a few sigs. It's back to normal the next day, but it's almost as if IS blocks stuff temporarily. I dunno what's up with that.

Yeah, I don't know why it does that either. That's why I've been mostly uploading stuff to imagesocket these days.

My point was - most webmasters don't really care about hotlinking. If they do - they should just disable it. It's an easy procedure, really.

So no - don't ban people just because they hotlink.

Hell, spent some time banning people for trolling, that's something GFF needs.

I voted yes, but only contingent on the bans being temporary. I don't like the idea of a temp ban for something that isn't detrimental to the forum. Hotlinking isn't cool, because it amounts to bandwidth theft, but it really only affects the person hosting the image.

You want to punish posters because little girls with huge egos know how to check their traffic logs? What?

You're really giving the Aeris / Aerith fagdance a run for its money, here. This is not a good thing.

It would only be for a day at first and then more for repeat offenders. I probably should have mentioned that.

If it's a huge problem then maybe. I dunno. I guess they should just put filters on but I'd still listen to the request of removing hotlinked images if asked. In my opinion, you shouldn't be hotlinking to small personal sites unless they specifically state that they allow you to or they're already hosting their images on a free image host.

Oh come on I think I can do better than that. What's the next experience level on your e-fagdom scale? Let's go the distance.

Solution: Set up a GFF image host. However:

1) It would only allow GFF members to upload images and
2) The images would only load if the referer was Gamingforce.

Any thing in an [img] tag that isn't from this particular image site, or one of the other free ones like imagesocket or imageshack, would also not get displayed.

Too extreme? Of course. But if hotlinking ever really becomes a problem, it's what we should do. IMO.

That would chew through so much bandwidth like nobody's business.

I think this thread pretty much proves that since she's complaining about her image on the site. If she wasnt a one-timer, someone should ask her how much traffic that one image has consumed.

Are you asking a variant of the question "Is it possible for Jesus to make a burrito so hot that not even He could eat it?"

Because that's what I think you're asking.

Also, lols for dumb "professional web designers" who don't even know how to setup (incredibly simple) .htaccess filters to selectively allow hotlinking of files.

I hope it was clear that I intended to say that I don't like a permanent ban for something that isn't detrimental to the boards. A temp ban is fine, and although I felt the need to mention it, I had every confidence that you meant a temp ban. It just needed explicit clarification.

.htaccess? Don't these hosts come with CPanel or something that makes it a matter of seconds to set it up?

A little hard to do that when you don't have (access to) it.

Yeah, a permanant ban for that would be too much. It would be a 1 day ban and then for repeat offenders a 2-5 day ban. Something like that. I mean I hate hotlinkers and all but I'm not that much of a whiny pussy to up it to a week or a month or something. That's reserved for major forum infractions and Internet terrorists. http://content.imagesocket.com/images/emot_911d32.gif

You could still apply permanent bans. Just permanently ban the repetitive offenders. Hotlinking may not be 'detrimental' to the boards, but a repetitive annoyance is.

Well I think if they're that much of an asshole and don't get the picture they're more than likely to register a dupe account to ban evade and get permabanned anyway. But that just seems to be the latest trend these days so I dunno.

I admit I've hotlinked a few times, but now that I have a Firefox extension/Add-On to right-click and upload to Imageshack, there's no excuse for future hotlinking now :)

I would suggest:
1. A Warning reminding them of what they hotlinked and that it is against the rules, and any future hotlinking would result in a temp ban.
2. If they do it again, send a PM showing them the hotlinking in question, and letting them know that they are now temp-banned (Alternatively, it could be sent via email, or make a custom block-page with the explanation).
3. If it continued, deny them vbCode access & a week-long ban.
4. ????
5. Profit!

You can't ban people for hotlinking, that's just fucking petty. Who can ever be arsed to save an image to your own host just for the purpose of a quick joke?

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I couldn't agree more with Shin.

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