Blocking Leeching using .htaccess

I recently found that someone one eBay was directly linking to my pictures AND stole the entire text from my article. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5795175084
»http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?id=168

Needless to say, I sent eBay a message about it and I'm waiting to hear the resolution. Moving forward, I want to find out how to use .htaccess to block images coming from certain sites (like ebay or others). It won't stop stealing text, but at least they can't steal images.

In your .htaccess file, enter the following (replace the obvious "yoursite.com" etc. with your configuration):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

If you have additional domains pointing to your main site you can insert them below the primary domain and above the "RewriteRule" line:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite2.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite2.com [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

When you have completed your .htaccess file, upload it in ASCII mode via FTP to your /htdocs directory.

To use anti-leeching for sites on subdomains (http://subdomain.yoursite.com), create an .htaccess file for each subdomain like the following:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://subdomain.yoursite.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

To protect your main site and subdomains, add the main site to the subdomain code as follows:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://subdomain.yoursite.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

When you have completed your .htaccess file, upload it in ASCII mode via FTP to your /htdocs directory.

If you wish to return a "hey, stop leeching my images and bandwidth!" graphic in place of the leeched images, change this line:

RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

to these lines:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/restricted_image.jpg
RewriteRule +.(gif|jpg)$ http://www.yoursite.com/stopleeching.jpg

(of course you want to make that "stop leeching" image as small a file as possible, or you're defeating the purpose of saving bandwidth by blocking image use.)

credit:taken from powweb.com knowledge base after I also had problems with bandwidth leeching.

That is for specific allows. I want to specifically disallow. I send pics to other sites when posting news. I just want to prevent sites like ebay.com and others from stealing it specifically.

(Edit: spelling)

Well, that is a little impossible I think.

You want to prevent users from stealing your images that you uploaded to some other site(ebay)?
You don't control the ebay servers and I don't think it is possible to block images from being stolen that are on another site.

You could always <a href="http://www.watermarkfactory.com/?from=google">watermark</a> your images.

No. I just don't want them linked from the domain x.com.

The .htaccess you gave will allow from domains. I just need them to deny from specific domains and allow all others.

I do watermark the images, just not the thumbnails.