people using our bandwidth by linking to video

[inquisitive]

Hello
we have a video clip on our site, playing as a wmv file in wmplayer..... what has happened latley is our stats show that someones 'diary' site is showing our video...AND it is playing it on their site but downloaded from ours through some software link to our site.
This runs up our bandwidth limit and doesnt send the visitors to our site.

Is this a common practice?
Is this an acceptable/tolerated practice?
What may be ways to prevent this (we cannot stream from our host)

appreciate thoughts
stephenn

[Rainbow32]

Here's one person's way to deal with this.
http://www.tipz.net/Bandwidthrevenge.htm

[thelamberts]

hi there inquisitive

Yeah, that is a pain and tough to do anything about.

I would rename your wmv file and link for your own site use and that way the thiefs link will fail.

Great Tips site Rainbow32


Take care

Marty

[inquisitive]

Rainbow32 - those links are very interesting, thanks for the info

thelamberts - yep, to rename the file seems to be answer (i fancy popping a new wmv in the place of the old one - an opportunity to advertise my site - I feel!). I can use their websites as my 'bill board' until they realise and no doubt will find my new file name and re-link....... and so the cycle may continue!

stephenn

[Rainbow32]

Once you burn the banditos they ususally move on to plague someone else.

[Decay]

Well theres a scriptable way to avoid bandwidth stealing at all...
using a cgi like perl or php.

for example say you have this
<a href="movie.wmv">Cool movie</a>

And movie is really a cgi program....

Named: movie.wmv
Type: cgi program

than it would do something like this

if (referr == My_Website) {
print contentsOfMovie;
}
else {
}

its the exact same way websites like angelfire ect... block images from being hosted on thier site and used for forum sig's/posting...

You may ask why it works...
The idea behind it is when you click the link ... The server sends data of the cotents of the file *.wmv Now the clients browser doesn't really care if anything else was done to it before hand like checking referrer...

Normal
Client request .wmv file - > webserver
Web server read content of .wmv file and send -> client

Enchanced
Client request .wmv file - > webserver
CGI disguised as .wmv check referrer if good send content of .wmv -> client

easiest way to do it is make a single cgi file... something that takes arguments...

HTML
<a href="movie.wmv?FredGoneFishing">Cool movie</a>


if (referr == My_Website) {
if (arg == "FredGoneFishing") {
print contentsOfFred;
}
}
else {
}

I didn't check but there should be some premade scripts laying around premade some where for this...

But the whole idea is never to directly link the file and to even put it in a restricted area not accessable unless through a cgi

[degsy]

If you are using Apache then you should be using .htaccess to prevent leeching.

The problem is that these scripts use the http_referer setting. Some firewalls and browsers can block this so legitimate users would also be blocked.

[Decay]

well not really....

remember to remove referrers you need to do it specifically ...

firewalls - Hardware based firewalls block ports not editing the packets sent...

And browsers like IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, ect ect Visual imparied browsers ect ect... all use the default rfc standards which requires http_referrer

To see this in action vist a large art gallery website or vist Angelfire

http://help.lycos.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=30

Its standard practice in the IT world.

If someone went through all the trouble to modify thier own referrer to see the image why don't they vist the images webpage

Browser vars like http referrer are not reliable for security but to block an off site website from stealing your bandwidth it works perfect no matter what browser you use since its all server side.

[degsy]

remember to remove referrers you need to do it specifically ...
Alot of Internet Security programs are blocking referers by default these days. With some scripts an average user would not even know. They would just be redirected or show the wrong content and have no idea what was going on.

If the blocking referer method is used it should be redirected to an error page explaining what has happened and possible remedies.

[Sinister-wolf]

rename the file.. place another file under the original name..
the person showing the file will be removed from their provider as the new movie is porno...lol..

nah.. just use antileeching coding.

[Decay]

problem just renaming it is... all they have to do is go oops weblink changed time to update code in under 30secs....