Since the original inception of the Monzilla Media site, I have been protecting site resources such as images and video clips from being hotlinked on external domains. As you may be aware, hotlinking refers to the act of using another site’s resources (images, or otherwise) without permission on your own site. Of course, the end result of this essentially involves stolen bandwidth, wasted system resources, and possible plagiarized content. Thus, it had been my intention for the past couple of years to stop this malicious practice by implementing some anti-hotlinking htaccess directives, designed to stop hotlinkers dead cold. I have found this method to most effective at protecting site resources from external abuse, however, this protection is not without a downside. By denying image access to external sites, you are limiting the ways in which search engines are able to index your content and thus refer visitors. Beyond search engines, people reading your site’s feed in various feed readers miss out on blocked content. Besides, I am convinced that the relatively esoteric portfolio graphics and other customer-specific content featured at this site are definitely not in danger of being hotlinked. On the other hand, if I ever produce a nude Britney Spears gallery, then I may decide to rethink this new, open-access hotlink policy..