Coding Forum

**Marc Timberlake** · 10-26-2005, 05:50 PM

well it's definitly a tough one but I thought ther emight be someone here with the knowledge!

I keep an image on my server for using in my own ebay listings, but it seems there's a fair few other sellers hotlinking to that image... is there any way through .htaccess to only allow my own listings to use it (by item number maybe)? I'd like to have a 'no hotlinking' pic shown instead...

I've tried a fair few different ways, but don't get anywhere

Cheers for any help!

**Republikin** · 10-26-2005, 08:27 PM

Thats a tough one. I sell extensively on eBay and never even thought about people stealing my photos.

I don't think there is a way to programaticly(sp?) prevent it from anyone other than yourself but you could always report them to eBay. They do take the stealing of copyrighted material seriously as it is a serious liability for them if they don't.

Either way, I am very interested in hearing whether anyone else here knows of any solutions to this problem.

(by the way, whats your eBay ID? I use williamstownauctions for my personal crap and berkshire_01267 as my business one).

**Marc Timberlake** · 10-27-2005, 05:17 AM

For now I've changed the image that's being stolen to include a few lines of (big red) text...

"If this image is on a listing Not owned by saz-n-mac, please report the seller as they are STEALING MY BANDWIDTH"

I think what they've done is copy n pasted my entire listing contents... I'm not too botherered with them doing that as they are reselling the same item as me.

My ebay ID is saz-n-mac (you've probably guessed that from the quote above

)

One thing that is bothering me though.... I reckon some of the other sellers are giving out my download link to their buyers, but there's no way of tracing that. I'm working on password protecting the download, which should stop that.

**Cagedweb** · 10-27-2005, 10:30 AM

if the download file is on your own site you should be able to track when it has been downloaded and how many times.

I think soem may get confused and see the resale rights and think it includes your listing style.

**Christopher** · 10-27-2005, 10:35 AM

Can't you just use the typical hotlink htaccess but make the referrer exclusively your ebay listing?

Like..

Code:

 RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://cgi.ebay.com/<yoururl>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|css|mov|swf|dcr)$ - [F]

**Marc Timberlake** · 10-27-2005, 06:13 PM

I've tried doing that, but it's difficult as I'm normally have 5-10 listings running at once, plus there's so many different variations on the url to get the the listing. for one thing it appears on all ebay sites, and aparet from that sometimes the title appears in the url, and sometimes just the item number depending on how/where you click to get there....

argh

Is there any way to use wilcards etc to have the RewriteCond have a referer of anything that included the item number? Something like $12345678$?

**monkey** · 10-28-2005, 01:48 AM

ive all you really are concerned with is the bandwith why not host the images on a free image host like imageshack

**HaRRo** · 10-28-2005, 02:56 AM

Well ive thought of one or two ways around this

One being if they are finding and stealing your images from your actual ebay link or shop, you can add this to every product / shop html page that your products are on

Code:

<html>

<body>

<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

var message="Function Disabled!";

///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onMouseDown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onMouseDown=clickIE4;
}

document.onContextMenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")

// --> 


</body>

</html>

This will disable right click

Another would be to add watermarks :P using htaccess

http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=111019

Sorry for the post of another forum but it gives good answers to most of the problems installing this.

It would majorly stop all picture theives if you tagged your images with your email address or "Find it cheapest at domain.com"

Hope this helped

**universalsoft** · 10-28-2005, 08:15 AM

http://uisd.versalsoft.com

**ExpressoDan** · 10-28-2005, 11:41 AM

Why dont you just put your screen name or some sort of copyright notice on the picture. That way if someone does steal your picture, customers might try to find you and buy something from you! Well that an optimistic note... good luck