If there’s one thing more dangerous than arguing with Xrlq, it’s arguing with Eugene Volokh. Nevertheless, I’m going to throw caution to the wind and suggest that contrary to his passionate defense of academic “freedom” (license), the concept is a rule designed by professors for professors. Eugene writes:

Who Benefits from Academic Freedom? Well, if you like this blog — or InstaPundit or ProfessorBainbridge or various other often-right-leaning academic blogs — then you do.

Yeah, right. And if you like my blog, or Patterico’s, Justene’s, Spoons’s or Beldar’s, then I guess you benefit from the obscene salaries that lawyers make. My job benefits are really just there for your benefit, honest!

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Trust me, you don’t want to. Bad things will happen if you do.

For the benefit of anyone who’d like to implement the same anti-theft device, here’s my advice. First, make sure all your image files, video files, etc. – all items worth stealing bandwidth over, basically – are in a separate folder from your main HTML or PHP files. It’s not strictly necessary to do this, but’s a lot easier and you’ll have to tweak the code a bit of you don’t. Then make a new folder, just under your top level, web-accessible directory (the one we all see if we go to www.yourdomain.com), which I’ll call Nasty. Upload the files you want bandwidth thiefs to see into your Nasty file. I recommend this one, this one and this one for starters. Then create a simple text file in your images directory (the one where all your pictures, videos, etc. are) called .htaccess (don’t forget initial period). If you create it under Windows, you’ll have to call it something else, then upload it as ASCII, then rename it after it’s up. In that file, include this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?yourdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*$ /Nasty/whosyourfroggy.gif [R,L]

Substitute the name of your actual domain for “yourdomain.com,” the name of your nasty directory for “Nasty” and the name of the file you’ve chosen to ding people with for “whosyourfroggy.com,” and voilà.

All this assumes, of course, that your web host supports .htaccess and mod_rewrite. Not all do.

UPDATE: Depending on your host, you may want to add another RewriteCond line to include the domain associated with your control panel. If you use ICDSoft, for example, you can access your control panel at www.yourdomain.com/cp but will be redirected to cp.serverXXX.com, where XXX represents a three-digit number of the specific server your account was assigned to. In that case, you’d want to add this condition before the RewriteRule:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(cp.)?serverXXX.com/.*$ [NC]

As far as I know, there is no limit on how many conditions you can add, so if you want to actually allow certain domains (yours, or those of friends) to “steal” bandwidth, you can add those domains as well.

UPDATE: Speaking of stealing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you where I got this from.

Today’s Joint Award goes to an individual with the initials WES and to British-American woman with the initials EJN. That neither of these individuals spell out their names in full is probably the only tiny semblance of an intellect either of them possesses. As regular readers are aware, I’ve spent the past week almost singlehandedly debunking the Daily Telegraph’s phony story about coerced prostitution that has polluted the left and right sides of the blogosphere over the past week. Both sides were champing at the bit to believe any crackpot story that came along to confirm their worst stereotypes about something. For the conservatives, anything that reflected poorly on Europe, especially a European country that double-crossed us on Iraq, simply must be true. For the liberals, any story about forced prostitution or any bad story about welfare or unemployment reform (or, in this case, a twofer) must be true. Neither side exercised the healthy skepticism we rightly expect of the MSM, and ought to be able to expect even more from its blogger critics. Simply put, the blogosphere dropped the ball.

One of the many bloggers to drop this particular ball was Christopher S. Johnson, the author of Midwest Conservative Journal. Like many others, he was quick to pounce on the phony story and regrettably slow to correct it (so far, he hasn’t). Perhaps he’s lost interest in the issue and sees no need to follow up on it; I don’t know. I do know that two of his commenters, after reading my rebuttal and those of others, insisted on perpetuating their unfounded story further. The first such example was EJN, who, after being advised by another commenter that the story was bunk, had this brilliant reply:

Well, if you love Germany so much, why don’t you marry it? I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I?

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