Tubgirl’d

MySpace denizens have a long history of stealing pictures from other peoples’ websites.

The last time an image of mine was stolen, I was nice about it. Rusty wasn’t (if you’re reading this, Rusty, your screenshot is a 404 error).

Well, after the last time, I wrote an .htaccess file that stopped all hotlinking of images except for sites on this domain, as well as a few select others.

Here it is, excerpted:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?heliologue.com(/)?.*$     [NC]

[snip]

RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp|png)$ - [F,NC]

After looking through my logs recently, I found that most referrals from MySpace failed—most were still trying to hotlink HUH.gif. But there was one MySpace page that showed up under successful referrers. I visited the page, and sure enough, there was one of my images, unabashedly leeched.

So, Point 1 is: can anyone tell me why this particular MySpace page was able to leech the image (it was called via CSS, not by an <img> tag)?

Point 2 is: I was not feeling generous this time around, so I Tubgirled the idiot. He changed the background pretty quickly, but not before I snagged some screenshots.

One of the following images (“After”) contains a very graphic photograph that is Not Safe For Work, Not Suitable For Children, and as a matter of fact, not suitable for just about anyone. I’d advise any of you not already familiar with the internet phenomenon known as “Tubgirl” to simply take my word for it and not view the image. Viewing the image means that you forfeit the right to complain about it.

Before | After