antihotlinking.com --- neat!!!
 

well, i don't use very much video.

so i don't care about "hotlinking" too much.

but i wanted to put a few links to vids in my members section that only my members could see, but not actually have those vids on my server.

i explained the situation to Max at http://www.antihotlinking.com/

and he just spent the last hour or so tweaking the AHL system to make it work.

and it surely does.


you can put your vids on any server anywhere in the world.

and you can link those vids from your protected member's areas and no one but your members can see them---any one else that tries to access them gets redirected to a page of your choice.

bravo Max, and thank you.

Sounds like a bit of .htaccess to me....

latinasojourn,

Thanks for the good words! We are always at your service.


xxxoutsourcing,

It's quite a bit more that just some .htaccess trick. :)

No it's way better then just .htaccess. Standard Apache Rewrite Module that you use to protect images cannot protect movies, since movie players do not pass referrers and you have to allow visitors without referrer information, thus leaving your movie files open for hotlinkers. Use of cookie based protection fails since there are plenty of visitors that turn off that feature in their browser settings. You also have to include a Java Script on all your pages to use this feature and it creates problems with people who turn off Java Scripts in their browsers as well. I ran into all of these problems until we went with AHL. What different about AHL is it's an intelligent program running on the server configured with Apache. It monitors all file requests and the ones that come directly for movies are blocked. If they follow the right pattern on coming into your site first, looking at a page then they can access the movies. This is the first program I have ever come across that takes care of hotlinking of free movies... it blocks emailed links, book marked links, cut and paste of links into browsers, etc. Very nice program!

haha, it not only blocks hotlinking requests, but redirects them to my sell page, better than buying 404 traffic!

i'll say it again.

bravo antihotlinking.com !


Current Status
Reporting time interval: 5 day(s) 2 hour(s) 23 minute(s) 34 second(s)

Page Requests: 12376
Normal Movie Requests: 72026
Hotlink Movie Requests: 10764

System time: Wed Jan 28 13:24:44 2004

nice, I will check them out. Looking for an antihotlinking program

great bandwith saver for mpgs :thumbsup

Here's a quick and dirty hack with

.htaccess + some simple hahahahahahahahahaha per html page:

http://www.webmastersguide.com/htacc...cess.htm#video

Zagi, the Java / cookies method added to your existing .htaccess hotlink protection does not work and I proved it. We removed it from our site and our sales shot up 40%. So what does that tell you? It's old out of date technology.. Too many people now a days are net savvy and are using programs that kill cookies and java. With the method you pointed out if there browser does not fully cooperate by first allowing java to run to set the cookie and for the computer to accept the cookie and send it back they will end up getting just a general error in media player. They will not know why and will think your site is at fault... there goes that sale! See how costly this can be?

exactly right.

i'm not here to plug antihotlinking. i just appreciated something that actually works.

i've tried all kinds of tricks to get movies to CONSISTANTLY play properly for ALL surfers. where the surfer doesn't have to input multiple passwords and shit like that.

fact is:

1. you have to use mpg1 to get maximum browser acceptance(wmv is great, but not all surfers can play them)

2. there are problems hosting vid files inside a member protected area---why? because many times your members will have glitches playing them---why can this be a problem?---because in this era of <1% chargeback rules you can't have any tech problems in your member area.

3. the best solution to host vid files is to take them out of member area, and forget password hassles. but you must protect them, and this is where AHL comes in.

i can talk about the side benefits of this modus operandi, but let's just say this, now you've got a scenario where multiple domains can SHARE video content, and if some asswipe tries to hotlink he's going to be redirected to a sales page.

and i won't even start about the benefits of hosting vids in a country that does not honor the bogus dmt "patent".

Yup. Its a cool script. Got fucked over by hotlink protector but froze his paypal!

Page Requests: 3826096
Normal Movie Requests: 4062662
Hotlink Movie Requests: 192326

I went from 25mbit to 15mbit a few minutes after I installed it . . pulled a bunch of joins from the redirects . . .

This is a MUST for anyone using video . . . Thumbs up!

:thumbsup

We used antihotlinking for quite a while and it was great but we had problems with it slowling the servers down and had to disable it.

I have used them for my servers for over a year. Best script for stopping hotlinkers :glugglug

See sig :thumbsup You can redirect the hotlinking traffic to sponsors