Greeblie has all the action today. Lately, Dave's had trouble with a certain someone hotlinking his images.

(brief lesson on hotlinking)
Hotlinking is when someone links to an image on your server, so that it shows up on their web site. Since the image resides on your server, every time someone views their site, it is costing you bandwidth. Now, anyone who has ever hosted a website knows that bandwidth isn't free, nor is online storage space for that matter. So, effectively, not only are the 'leeching' your images, but they are actively stealing your bandwidth and storage space.

The neat thing about hotlinking, is that since the image is hosted on your server, all you need to do is change the image or rename it. But even with the images gone, if the hotlink remains, they are still eating up some of your bandwidth by merely hitting your site looking for the image.

The most effective way to get them to remove the link is to change the image to something really nasty. (like this) That way, viewers see your nasty image instead of the original image the author intended them to see.

When I discovered a hot linker about a week ago, this particularly nasty little baby, had them removing their hotlink within a matter of hours.

(Kudos to Michele for reminding me that as the hoster of the image, I had the power)