It seems that it is always the few that have to ruin it for all of the others. So you may have noticed that as of this morning, none of the audio links work on this site anymore. This is a direct response to an email that I received from my hosting company that said that I was about to exceed my 400GB bandwidth quota for the month. Naturally, I was quite surprised, because I rarely ever approach 60GB transfer a month for the entire site, so I went to see what was going on.
Apparently, some people in another country, specifically the sites listed at the bottom of this post, think that it’s okay to just steal bandwidth. Well, unfortunately, since they have been stealing from me, and specifically from the mp3s that I used to do the 5SF, you guys are going to suffer; I am not going to offer audio anymore until I figure out a way to do it without leaving the back door open for these motherfuckers.
I didn’t know it, but the application that I use(d) for embedding audio gives you the URL of the file if you do a view source, a fact that I was unaware of until today. I don’t know how I missed that before, but apparently, I did. I don’t know a everything about permissions, but in order to use the plug in, you need to enable execute; which allows you to just steal the bandwidth if you know the file’s URL (which again, the plug in stupidly provides). Blocking the access to the folder is not enough it seems, and as such, drastic action had to be taken.
So what does this all mean for you? I’m extremely pissed off, and very sad to say that it potentially means the end of the 5SF. If I can’t find a way to block the use of my files elsewhere, while still making them available here, I won’t be able to post audio anymore; and what’s the point of doing a post about music if I can’t make it available for you to listen to? I don’t see youtube as a viable option, especially since I stopped using it early on in the 5SF because of the stupid rules about embedding certain videos and not others.
I really don’t want to stop doing the 5SF, so please, if you have ANY way that I can post the audio without having assholes steal my bandwidth, step up to the mic; the fate of the 5SF seemingly rests with you. The plug in that I was using was the pixelout audio player plug in, and as of writing this post, I haven’t been able to spot a way that I could hide the URL of the file; which would obviously be necessary to continue using it in the future. Again, any and all help would be most appreciated.
Here are the sites that were stealing my bandwidth: Fuck you, assholes!
http://blog.rayli.com.cn
http://img.kaixin001.com.cn
http://blog.qooza.hk/keng029
http://220.181.38.82/
That sucks! Unfortunately, this is outside my area of expertise.
Depending on how much control you have over your server, you can block ips/hosts from accessing your site. What likely happened is someone simply hotlinked your music files. You can stop that with a simple htaccess file, if your server is running linux.
Based on my check of his source code, Perez Hilton seems to be able to hide the URL of his embedded audio through some sort of a flash player. Check out here: http://perezhilton.com/2009-11-12-epic-new-gaga. I’m not sure what he’s using exactly, but it’s probably available as a plugin somewhere.
If that doesn’t work, you could try to set up some download rule that allows only readers/users from certain countries. It’s a standard thing on YouTube and MTV and other media sites where rights for broadcast don’t exist for, say, Europe or Canada. Again, that must be an available plugin.
And finally, another option is to have the files live only for one week. Once you do another 5SF, the previous 5SF’s files go dead. That would prevent a lot of stealing, since the sites would have to keep up.
Who’s your host? I use BlueHost, and their tech support is really great. I’m 99.9% sure they would help me with this problem (if I had it)
Duane – here’s some more info on .htaccess files. You basically need to create one and drop it into the same folder as the MP3s. However, since Flash doesn’t send a referrer, you’ll have to allow a blank referrer, which may not work for your purposes.
http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html
When I found out people were hotlinking my photos I contacted my ISP and found out they provided hotlink protection meaning files would only show if they were incased in an HTML file that contained my domain. See what kind of protection your ISP offers.
Look for “Apache referrer protection” on Google. It’s a very common thing that almost everyone uses. You just have to add a few lines to your .htaccess file.
I actually noticed this happening a few weeks ago, I was searching for an MP3 on Google and it redirected me to a third party website and when it downloaded I saw it was actually coming from your website.
*points at what Justin M said*
It’s a very common and easy to implement practice.
Your server is running Apache, Duane, so the htaccess suggestion will definitely work for you.
It would make the mp3s only downloadable the way you want them to be. The url in the viewsource would give them an error. There would be no need to change any of your site code, just adjust the htaccess file which is likely already present.
@Ted: I am fairly certain Perez is using the same plug in, because I was able to find the URL of the file the same way I found the link to my audio files. I bet he doesn’t care/notice because of his massive bandwidth though. Great idea about contacting BlueHost too!! They are my provider as well!
@The Justins: I am looking into it, but I didn’t have good success with figuring that out years ago. I might need some help! Stay tuned!
Oh, well, I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough! Now I will when I want to steal one of his songs.
BlueHost tech support is awesome. Call them, don’t email. They’re better on the phone.
make a grooveshark account. Stream the songs they have and upload the ones they don’t.
How exactly were they stealing “bandwidth”, and what were they doing with it? IOW…Were they just playing the music over and over? Or were they somehow using your site (bandwidth) for something else?
I’m afraid I’m no help with the computer stuff, but when I’ve linked songs in the past, I’ve used imeem (imeem.com). It has a wide range of songs available, and you can upload anything they don’t already have, then it’s on their servers to host and available to link in your post.
what joey said…
Grooveshark.com holds and streams the music.. and they make a cute little player that doesn’t show the music source..