Hotlinkers…

Unfortunately I’m now watermarking my images for copyright protection. My good friend Dave recently posted about protecting your images from hotlinking so it got me to thinking … “hmmm… I wonder if any of *my* images are being hotlinked??”

So I ventured on over to my deep stat analyzer, Webalizer, my host provides with hosting packages (which is quite robust now that I’ve finally taken the time to investigate it) and sure enough, I have quite a few images out there that are being hotlinked. Grr.

This is crummy on two accounts: not only are they using my copyrighted artwork without permission or compensation (yeah right) on their websites. they’re using MY bandwidth to do it. So they steal my artwork and make me pay for it. Bummer. The least they could do is give me a measly link back to my site as a credit, but no… I guess they think if it’s on the net, then it’s fair game.

So I’m now in the process of putting a watermark on all of my art because I’m sure that if there are this many people stealing my art this way, I’m sure there are others out there that use my work that I have no way of knowing about. This certainly won’t stop everyone but hopefully it’ll help weed out a good portion of these guys.

If you’re an illustrator or photographer with original images on your site, the chances are pretty good there are people out there using your work without your knowledge.