We found a website hotlinking to our video files ...

We host an adult video site, we host videos (derr LoL), recently we found our bandwidth was higher than normal - upon inspection we found a larger porn site directly linking to our videos (not our embed) but video file....

What do we do and what we're doing ?

We're trying to contact him and give him a warning of legal action

and we're even changing these video files to ghey porn in an attempt to humiliate his site LoL - nothing against ghey ppl - but when he is claiming the video as a hot young teen doing the deed with a pretty picture ... well you get the drift.

What else can we do ?

Thanks
Jason

 

Why don't you just filter out any requests for videos that originate from his site? Maybe by blocking his sites IP or something, but there has to be a way for that?

 

Yeah that's possible, I think it would be anyway - how do we find his I.P address though (my techies are looking now) ?

 

You can find it using DNSstuff.com or domaintools.com

 

Switching the videos is a great idea! I had a guy hotlinking some of my graphics. I change the images to read "The owner of this site is stealing images and bandwidth from someone else" and closed the with URL of another compeating site of theirs.

Needless to say the redeisgned their site in a matter of hours.

You may want to make a video message of yourself letting the other site's visitors know the site they are currently on is stealing video that is not theirs and invite them to your site with your URL!

 

Hey,

Good idea LoL, steal his traffic, a little while ago we had this same issue and we made a clickable banner that'd be displayed in the videos of choice.

The only bad thing is if innocent members have also embedded the videos into their sites, then they will get the same message on the videos, so pointing out the fact that the webmaster is stealing/hot linking may effect others (as much as we would like to do this).

My techies found the I.P through awstats (that's how we found the site in the first place) and placed a ban there - how effective that is we're not sure.

 

lol, make a video message saying something like your computers IP is currently being tracked down and details of your browsing history will be posted to your Wife/GFriend/Mother. These details will be posted at the home addess the computer is at. Thanks for taking part.

 

http://www.techiecorner.com/95/block-ip-from-accessing-website-using-htaccess/ you might want to look at this

 

Haha I like that idea.

Thanks Max Pain, I will pass that on to the techies.

 

Make a video telling the visitors to close this window now or get infected. Or that this web site is under investigation for child porn. Or a text with "visit xxx now for free videos"

 

i like this idea better, there is a chance the offender could get complaints and have there site taken down.

porn will do it every time...

 

Hahaha if I was guaranteed that only this site was showing the videos I would love to put a bizarre message up, but as many other ppl may have embedded the videos legally I wouldn't want to get them in the sh1t or ruin their pages.

But then again we did replace the videos with short ghey videos and this may have a funny side to it, even for those who embedded them legally.

If we find more we are bringing out the bizarre and fat lady videos.

 

Check with your host to see if they have leech protect settings. This will not only prevent this guy, but all others in the future. These settings automatically disallow direct linking to videos and/or images.

 

But would that effect the guys who embed our videos legally ? cos the embed contains a similar video file.

 

If you can use a .htaccess file you can filter only the stealing site.

 

Yep, thats what I referred to in this POST .
Its better to save bandwidth than play pranks.

 

Seriously though, the best thing if it can be done is to try and get the viewer to your site and keep them there. Turn a negative into a positive, look at it as free advertising. Cut the video into a tiny size or something for bandwidth purposes with a clickable redirect if poss or an invitation to your site thats soooooooo tempting.

 

Thanks guys, we had a good look through the guys site and he had over 25 Videos hotlinked, was pretty hard to leech traffic from his site because he was linking straight to video file and wasn't using our player with embed on it - hence we couldn't use our clickable watermark to leech the traffic.

Also we could have replaced the videos files with an video ad' of some kind but we don't know how many legitimate members we'd effect.

Instead we installed the anti leech to stop this guys site and any others in the future - we hope.

 

i dont think its actually illegal to hotlink, since there not actually hosting the file just embedding it or whatever. there are ways to stop it though since it steals your bandwith.