“hot linking” is a problem that a site owner is facing specially if the hot link images is high views from those who copied the pics. it is also “bandwidth stealing” by others .
You may disallow hot linking by using .htaccess, It might redirect the pictures to otehr pictures in the net or just a simple broken image links.
Here are the direction on how to make it via Htaccess. You have to copy the following txt to your .htaccess. but be sure to change mydomain.com with your own
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|js|css)$ – [F]
The above code creates a failed request when hot linking of the specified file types occurs. In the case of images, a broken image is shown instead.
Serving alternate content when hot linking is detected
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ http://www.mydomain.com/whatever.gif [R,L]
But be sure to upload http://www.mydomain.com/whatever.gif to your server.
