How do we protect hotlinking of movies?
 

Is it possible to hot link movies with .htaccess? Should I install a hot linking script? My hosting co said I should use this http://www.webpimps.com/scripts/htaccess/

Those are nice htaccess scripts, but they won't help you for your average movie file. Movie players don't normially send a referrer, so every person that views your movie will have a "-" as a referal, if they typed in the movie URL directly, come from one of your sites, or came from a hotlinker site. Try not to keep movies in public areas, and change the names and paths every couple of weeks. I will let other ppl hit on the instances where a referal is sent. In my opinion 99% of the time, keep your movies behind pasword protection.
ZoiNk

Yeah trying to stop hot linking of movies is a real pain in the arse..

Yes, this is confirmed, protecting movies from being hotlinked is a big pain in the ass. The cookie method is the best around, but *VERY* easily defeated.

Great question. Keep this thread alive. If anybody has a better method of protecting movies please please please post.

nice to know about the referrer check. i knew something was wrong when i was trying to get that going for someone's movie site (i use it for images on my own sites..)

you could do something where it loads a php script, and the php script could check the referer, and if it's ok the php script will either pass through the file, or redirect to the actual file (but that will make it so people can discover the right url.. which defeats the purpose.)

the php script could also do cookie/session checking as well. i guess it depends on the exact site architecture and how you link to your movies and shit.

Thanks for all the suggestions... I don't understand half the shit. I'll bring up some points with my host:thumbsup