Blocking Bandwidth Thieves Options

[MR. T]

Hi,

I am trying to block hotlinking of my images and files so it only allows me to hotlink on my main side and 2 subdomains. For example these are my 3 domains.

1. http://maindomain.com
2. http://forum.maindomain.com
3. http://media.maindomain.com

All my images and files are stored on my media subdomain and my other 2 sites 1. and 2. ask for the files. I have tried this script in a .htaccess file but it wont work.

CODE

  RewriteEngine On

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.|forum\.|media\.)?maindomain\.com [NC]

  RewriteRule \.(bmp|gif|jpe?g|png)$ /images/linking.jpg [R=302,L]
  RewriteRule \.(swf|mp3|wmv|zip)$ - [NC,L,F]

Any ideas why it wont work, Please?

[Brian Chandler]

In what way doesn't it "work"?

I don't know the htaccess syntax, but I guess that the problem is that many people disable the sending of the refer(there's another r here but this brain-dead forum software prevents me from writing in in the obvious way)er header, so unless you want to stop such (genuine) visitors from seeing your images, you have to accept "no refer-r-er", which of course lets bandwidth lifters in.