Referrer blocking images

[ciphergoth]

I'm finding that quite a few people are linking directly to images on http://www.ciphergoth.org/ and none of them have asked first. I'm tempted to institute referrer blocking, so that if an image is embedded in a page not my own, an alternate image is displayed: probably one containing a URL which links to a page explaining what I've done and why.

What do people think? Is referrer blocking a Bad Thing? Is there a better way to do it? I'd be happy to make exceptions for pretty much anyone who asks, but I don't like the way people don't ask first.

Update: I'll probably use the instructions from the LiveJournal FAQ instead of that module...

Comments

Re: confused...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about

"hey, there's a cool photo of me on the ciphergoth website:

http://www.ciphergoth.org/photos/whitby/2002.11/coolphoto.html

check it out!"

which is of course fine. I'm talking about

Isn't this a lovely photo of me?

<img src="http://www.ciphergoth.org/photos/whitby/2002.11/coolphoto.jpg>

where the image is embedded directly in the journal. That won't work any more. Does that make sense?

still confused...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Huh - livejournal still marks up my < and > even with "don't auto-format" ticked!

I'm still confused, sorry. I'm pretty sure you don't actually have any photos of me anyway, but I'm trying to understand this in principle because if you feel this way, I'm sure that other webmasters do too. The problem is that there are several differences between your first and second example, so I'm still not clear what you're actually objecting to...

Is the difference simply whether or not the image is embedded in the page? i.e. whether I (or whoever) uses <a href="imagename.jpg"> or <img src="imagename.jpg"> to link to the picture? Or is it more than that? meta said "what he names the files, is his business"... do you mean you don't want people linking to the individual pictures, only to the page that they are on? What if you haven't set up a page for each individual image - just an index page? Or do you always make a page for each image? And is it just a case of credit - if an image is embedded, viewers would have to go to the source to find out whose site it was actually on, whereas if a link is given, even a stupid person could see that it was on your site?

It's just that I don't see any difference between someone embedding pictures from my site in their journals (or wherever), with text saying "courtesy of baratron" (or equivalent for a site off LJ), and your first example above. So I'm trying to understand your distinction.

Re: still confused...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is the difference simply whether or not the image is embedded in the page?

It's embedding in the page without asking first I want to prevent, yes. I'd rather people were directed to ciphergoth.org so they can see the images in context. Credit is part of that.

In the "photos" section, I always make a page for each image.

In practice I'd be prepared to be very flexible for anyone who actually asks.