Hotlinking is THEFT

Ok I do graphics and wallpapers for my enjoyment for others and my rules are simple
"You want one of my wallpapers you MUST link to my website and you MUST NOT hotlink..."

Some people just don't get or can't understand these 2 simple rules and continue to download my wallpapers and upload them to photo bucket or other websites or just plain steal from me and hotlink to my images.

Why is hotlinking theft?
Hotlinking to someone else's images is theft of that persons bandwidth. We pay for hosting and we pay for bandwidth and when you hotlink from myspace or somewhere else and anyone views your page the image is being pulled from my server using up my bandwidth which you arent paying for...
I am...

Downloading my images and posting it to photobucket or somewhere else and not giving me a link on your pageis just bad manners.

I appreciate that you like my images and my creativity so why not give me a link? It doesnt cost you anything and gives me much needed back links.

How to stop bandwidth theft in its tracks
To stop hotlinking of my images I had to get nasty, I wrote a simple .htaccess file to stop hotlinkers from unauthorized domains and write rules to allow those domains I want to allow to hotlink to my images.

Writing a htaccess file is fairly simple and almost all hosts support it.
heres an example htaccess file to stop (blacklist) and allow (white list) different domains

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?youtube.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?myspace.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://profile.myspace.com/.*$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.allowedsite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.allowedsite.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yourdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yourdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*.(jpg|jpeg|png|bmp)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/images/hotlink.gif [R,NC]

The lines are pretty self explanatory anything with the [NC,OR] is the black listed site or domain
anything with just the [NC] is allowed

The rewrite rule is the part that does the magic if the condition is true
all my wallpapers are jpgs so I left out gifs from the rule so I could display a nasty image on the page of any offending page (the hotlink.gif) you can create an image or even an ad or shtml page instead of a gif file.

Personally I believe once you see my nasty hotlink.gif you wont be hotlinking to my images anymore and it has the benefits of showing my nasty gif when my images are used for a page background via css (imagine their shock when they see what their hotlinking got them...

Get smart dont hotlink and dont steal images without giving the artist credit on your site link to them, ask them for permission (if you ask I will give you permission unless your page is about rascism, hate crimes, violence against women or pets and animals or adult oriented) Artist are catching on that it is easy to stop leechers and if you do hotlink you just might find that the cool image you were linking to has been replaced by a mod_rewrite rule and a htaccess file with something you really dont want to be showing to your friends..

What to do about those people who download then upload to their site or some other domain?
Most hosting companies that provide Cpanel access as part of their hosting can easily find and track down people grabbing your images. look to the logs section of your cpanel and click on the latest visitors this will show you where peole are hotlinking from and what images are popular
you can also google your image names and see if they are showing up on someone else domain like photobucket or my-backgrounds.

If you find this is happening simply email the hosting company in charge of the offending domain and let them know one of their users is violating yourt copyrighted material. Most hosts will take immediate action because once they know about it they will comply because if they don't they are now just as liable as the person doing the stealing.

If you are an artist and need further information on how to stop these idjits from stealing from you don't hesitate to contact me I will be more than glad to help you stop the thefts.

Why Kinetic?

Ok I get asked this alot by people all the time "Why is your screen name kineticartist?"
Merriam Websters Online Dictionary has this to say about the word Kinetic
Main Entry: ki·net·ic
Pronunciation: k&-'ne-tik also kI-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek kinEtikos, from kinEtos, from kinein
1 : of or relating to the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith
2 a : ACTIVE, LIVELY b : DYNAMIC, ENERGIZING kinetic performer>
3 : of or relating to kinetic art
- ki·net·i·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

and we all know what Artist means...
I put them together to make my screen name because my design philosphy is such that when I design web sites for people I try to give just enough "eye candy" to make the site visitor sit up and take notice to make the site stand out just enough from the crowd to make pople be interested in the content. I like my energy to be in the design exciting but not annoying intriguing but not so loaded with graphics it slows you down I like to see my design have movement and flow within them even if the image is static it should direct you to the message or content and besides its a cool screen name and makes people ask "Why Kinetic?