Kids ...
My image blog hugoesk.de (meanwhile deactivated again) seems to be enjoying great popularity lately - various images have appeared as background graphics on myspace.com and xanga.com sites. It's kind of strange to owe several GB of transfer volume (about ten times the traffic my main blog has) to some kids... (and I haven't even written anything about Tokio Hotel).
Well, so educational measures have been activated again (and no, the image used is neither obscene nor offensive - just a polite request):
# Deeplinking von http://www.xanga.com/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ^.*\.jpg$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://www\.xanga\.com/.*$
RewriteRule .* /wp-images/bilderklau.jpeg [L]
# Deeplinking von http://www.myspace.com/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ^.*\.jpg$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*\.myspace\.com/.*$
RewriteRule .* /wp-images/bilderklau.jpeg [L]
Of course, my images are all under a CC license, so they can take them if they want. But that doesn't mean my traffic and my computer resources are also under a CC license - and especially with full-size JPGs, that's quite a bit of volume and computer resources. One should at least follow the forms (e.g. ask first if you can't handle the traffic yourself).
A single image in January with 3500 and this month already with 1500 hits has easily consumed several GB of volume - and these are only two sites that link to it. They seem to have a really big (and online-active) circle of friends, those two girls.
And backlinks (which would have been the minimum according to the CC license I use) they naturally haven't set either...