Image Access Limitation

Limiting Bandwidth Theft

I've noticed several sites are ending up using one of my images in their websites. Now I really have no problem with people copying them and hosting them on their own systems (since that is basically what I do) however I am not interested in paying freight for other people's websites to look pretty.

So I have protected my img directory with a .htaccess file containing this:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://xdroop.com/" local_ref=1
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://wiki.xdroop.com/" local_ref=1
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://wordpress.xdroop.com/" local_ref=1
<FilesMatch ".(gif|jpg|JPG|png)">
  Order Allow,Deny
  Allow from env=local_ref
</FilesMatch>

It means that I will need to put "public" pictures, as in pictures I use when commenting on other sites, in a different directory so that they can be seen, but it should stop the rampant use of the Impreza and donkey images that I swiped from elsewhere.

The better solution is the Rewrite condition, but the error_log on my hosted service says Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden. Bummer.