Stealing our bandwith

[maxman]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

Sometimes it's just hard to imagine that people do that!

Where's the whole thought of the community? There are loads of ways to get good music on your pc - why rape a bunch of people and the idea behind the community? Unbelievable!

TomTom: I'm behind you & admins to stop this nonsense!

[FeralCode]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

I don't want to be a badass here, but instead of kicking asses, there should be a solution for avoiding this. I'm not quite sure how this happened, since for downloads you need to post a few, as far as I understood. So I guess, the person who linked directly the file on mercuryserver knew exactly the file url, from someone else maybe?

Anyway, since we are sitting on a board, which is half of very good coders (the engine board), there must be a solution to hide real links to donwloadable files. Masking or anything, like an e-commerce solution. I guess it is hard to implement on phpboard, but my view is, it is better to place controls, and not (only) rely on ppl.

Anyways, just my two cents

[evangelion]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

...engage in some discussion and enjoy!

Discussion...so is that what they call the wanking we do around here nowadays??





:wink:

[NokturnaL]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

I agree with FeralCode. If, by chance, there is a way to hide links to downloadable files, I think it's a legitimate idea to pursue it.

[PUFFY]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

you don`t need to hide the links just restrict the access to them by adding a script that recognizes the ip`s that have access to the downlods a simple ex is my ip is 81.196.55.210 now i can`t access downloads because i didn`t get to the amount of posts to access the download page ,if i have the links i could download them no ? so u put a script to recognize ip`s and when it will c my ip he will know that i don`t have the access to download, it`s verry simple ,you`r in the database as an activ poster and such u can download if u aren`t bye bye .... if u do this what can they do with the links ?

[maxman]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

I don't want to be a badass here, but instead of kicking asses, there should be a solution for avoiding this. I'm not quite sure how this happened, since for downloads you need to post a few, as far as I understood. So I guess, the person who linked directly the file on mercuryserver knew exactly the file url, from someone else maybe?

Anyway, since we are sitting on a board, which is half of very good coders (the engine board), there must be a solution to hide real links to donwloadable files. Masking or anything, like an e-commerce solution. I guess it is hard to implement on phpboard, but my view is, it is better to place controls, and not (only) rely on ppl.

Anyways, just my two cents

Good point FeralCode. Of course it would be better if we could trust people, but life ain't like a fairytale...

[konighmail]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

sorry to hear that...
hope it wont happen again...
keep mercury for us!!!



undergound....thats the way it is.

[rms1k]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

That really sucks. If any bastard causes us to lose our downloads, I will personally hunt them down like an animal and beat the crap out of them and their computer.

I go with this idea myself!

[MJDub]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

you don`t need to hide the links just restrict the access to them by adding a script that recognizes the ip`s that have access to the downlods

Spoofity McSpoof Spoof Spooferson.

[BalkanBeat]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

hi

[MJDub]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

hi

hi

Greetings and welcome to the board, but we heard you the first time. Oh, and don't steal our bandwidth.

[beto]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

FeralCode, Puffy, it might sound easy to design a system that enables only mn registered users to get the downloads (a user/ip or ip table), but if you deal mostly with dynamic ip's and want to be able to resume downloads, it gets pretty complicated to maintain that system and also educate the users. Just imagine the amount of complaints and questions the mods would be dealing with if the current system is already a challenge for some users.

[PUFFY]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

i totaly agree ... but tell me a better way to get rid of this badwith stealing ... like someone can post how many posts r necesary to get acces to downloads and after he get`s the links bye bye ... u don`t c him again ...

[beto]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

I guess there is already a check on some server log for the referrer data for every file requested and that's how you find out about the links being posted elsewhere. Enforcing that referrer data is a good/easy thing to do, but it can get spoofed easily. You are tackling a good amount of stealers, cause most people won't know how to cheat the referrer data, but it's still not perfect.

If the guys haven't done something already and they're posting this, I'd think it's because they went through all the options and didn't find a way to stop it (yet) without creating more trouble.

[FeralCode]

Re: Stealing our bandwith

IP check is certainly the wrong way to handle this. It needs to be done with the cookies.

The hiding of direct link is not very complicated. Instead of posting your direct link, you post download.php?file=filename.mp3, then download.php can handle all the permissions (any restrictions, like login to forum and minimum posts, etc.)

Here is also a small article about hot linking: http://www.developerz.com/php_hotlinking.htm