Meaning that doing so, they won’t have to host those images, and they’re stealing bandwidths from you. But you have a choice to control from being hot linked by others just to save some of your bandwidths. Or you’re simply pissed off as those original images that you’ve created by your own have simply been copied and pasted over. And they’ve even stolen the originality of your content.

To prevent from hot linking, you’ll just need to add some codes to your .htaccess, such as the following codes which I wanna prevent the four domains to hot link to my images.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?blogspot\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?wordpress\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?livejournal\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|gif|bmp|png|jpeg)$ /images/sorrynothotlinking.php [L]

The users will get redirected to my PHP page /images/sorrynothotlinking.php which I build using PHP function imagecreatefromjpeg() to output an image that shows the “No Hot Linking” messages. You’ll probably could make it to point to another image file with either a .gif or .jpg extension. But I’ve found somehow the redirection will keep looping as it seems to have confused the webserver. So, I’ve then made a PHP script to do so.

By the way, in the occasion you wanna block all others from hot linking to your images except with few domains that you wanna allow, (lets say mysite1.com and mysite2.com as follows), you can add the following codes to your .htaccess

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite1\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite2\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|gif|bmp|png|jpeg)$ /images/sorrynothotlinking.php [L]

Please note that if you only allow a few domains to be able to hot link to your images and block all the rest, will prevent those images to show up on email clients as well. As you’ll have lots of readers to subscribe your blog feed via FeedBlitz which delivers blog feed via emails. When they open up the feeds on the email clients they’ll see the “No Hot Link” images on each post and this is ugly.

The best way is to use method 1, just to block those sites or blogs or those you dislike which you’ve discovered that they hot link to you.

The x here could be 2,3,4 … and even 7, 8, 9. Imagine, if Liewcf is making more than $5,000 USD a month, it’ll be about more than RM15K a month, which is much more than an average guy working in the IT industry in Malaysia.

A programmer works in the IT company could get the salary from RM1,500 to RM7,000 or more, depending on which state you’re in. Those who work in the Kuala Lumpur MSC zone will most probably get in the range of RM3K to RM8K if you’re just a programmer.

If you’re unfortunate, happened to get attached to a China-man styled company, you’re getting worse and less wages. Due to the poor salary scales in Malaysia, and the weakness of the Malaysian government law, to protect intellectual property, many and more IT savvy guys or techies have switched from being an IT technical guy (such as a programmer, software developer) to a pro blogger. Liewcf is one of them. And the other that I know is hongkiat.

If I’m not mistaken Liewcf used to be a programmer and he quit in 2005 Sept 09 to become a fulltime pro blogger. The reasons behind are he wants more free time, which he dedicates more times to sleep, watching TV, reading newspaper and gaining weight.

Quiting a daytime job and becoming a pro-blogger might be the dream of many IT-savvy guys. This is due to the IT world might NOT be paying that well. Some more, you will always have to see the face of the boss while working as a white collar in the office. Perhaps, there are many reasons that will put you off, feeling non-spiritual working at today’s IT office in Malaysia.

In many smaller towns, programmers might be only used by business men to develop some software and they’re getting little pay, and eventually the business men own all the software as their own property and sell it to make more money. This definitely demotivates many IT savvy guys from continuously contributing to the IT world. And many hope to quit their day time job and cling on blogging. This really sounds very unhealthy to the IT industry in Malaysia. As, eventually the country will lose out many innovative and tech savvy guys, and we’ll fail to develop innovative and competitive products to show the world, to achieve the Mission 2020.

To opt blogging and quit your daytime job is definitely not an overnight dream or change. It takes many years to build up your blog as popular as Liewcf’s. I’m also a guy in the IT, and I’m also making money from blogging, which I make $X,000 a month from my other blog (Not this one, this is not meant for making money yet). But my x shall be much less than the x earned by Mr Liew.

But I’m not a fulltime blogger. I’m still in the IT world, leading a group of programmers and involved in some cool web applications development. Perhaps, if I become a fulltime, I’ll be able to make more x dollars from blogging. But for the time being, I only consider blogging is my side income or as a hobby of learning more from the techie world. I enjoy blogging but I love my job too. Maybe, I’m the lucky one, since I’m also the business owner and a director of the company, I get more flexible time. And I can manage my time well at night by posting 3-5 posts a day.

Frankly, it seems pretty hard to get good programmers or software developers these days. It’s most probably most of them have become fulltime bloggers or they’ve opened up their own business.

Update: Perhaps, the IT industry shall look into giving a much more secure and cozy environment for the programmers and techies to work. It’s best to be an environment secure in the sense of financial and time. And giving less stress to those techies. It’ll be best they can continuously contribute to the IT industry as well as making some bucks out of blogging as long as they can manage their own time. Increase your TQ (Time Quotient) is a must to get richer these days.

The World Information Access Project at the University of Washington released a report that identified 64 bloggers, unaffiliated with news organizations, who had been arrested for the contents of their blogs between 2003 and 2008.
The growing number of such blogger arrests underscores the political importance of blogging around the world. WIA concludes:

After surveying our data, we predict that the number of blogger arrests will rise in 2008. The popularity of online blogs continues to grow and inspire more media coverage of arrest incidents. Countries are enforcing greater Internet regulation, which will only increase with the elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the United States this year.

via [malaywomen]