Protect links

[Martin Schneider]

Hi!

I want to maintain a large file link list (to legal files, by the way
:-)). The links should be protected from "grabbing", though.

Is it possible to make the browser download a link without making the
link itself public? Passing through the data is not an option due to
legal issues in Germany, not mentioning the traffic.

Thanks for your ideas and best regards,
Martin

[Martin Schneider]

Chris Morris schrieb:

Of course not: the browser has to be given a URL to download from, and
it may (probably will) provide a way for the user to get that
information.

I have been encountering downloads where I was unable to detect the
file's URL. The download window opened without any trace of the URL given.

Maybe it would be possible as well to detect the URL through a network
sniffer or something, all right...

Then I just have to do a captcha or something to prevent mass stealing
of the links.

Best regards,
Martin

[Harlan Messinger]

Martin Schneider wrote:

Hi!

I want to maintain a large file link list (to legal files, by the way
:-)). The links should be protected from "grabbing", though.

I don't understand what you mean by "grabbing".

>
Is it possible to make the browser download a link without making the
link itself public?

What do you mean by "download a link"?

If a link is on a page, then obviously it's visible to everybody who has
access to the page.

Passing through the data is not an option due to
legal issues in Germany, not mentioning the traffic.

What do you mean by "passing through"? If you don't want people to
download something from your website, don't provide a link to it, and
don't keep it on your website.

I'm sorry, but you seem to be working awfully hard at not explaining
what it is you're trying to accomplish!

[Martin Schneider]

Harlan Messinger schrieb:

Martin Schneider wrote:

>Hi!

I want to maintain a large file link list (to legal files, by the way
:-)). The links should be protected from "grabbing", though.

I don't understand what you mean by "grabbing".

Collecting all the links is a lot of work. I don't want other sites to
copy the idea *and* all the links I collected in hours of work.

I'm sorry, but you seem to be working awfully hard at not explaining
what it is you're trying to accomplish!

I want to provide links to, for example, rare drivers. I cannot host
them myself as I don't have the copyright holder's permission (yet). So
I want to link to them.

Later, if the project is accepted by the community, I may sell banners
or something.

Best regards,
Martin

[Martin Schneider]

Chris Morris schrieb:

>I have been encountering downloads where I was unable to detect the
file's URL. The download window opened without any trace of the URL
given.

Do you have any public examples of this behaviour?

Rapidshare links. You cannot download the files by directly accessing
the links displayed, so I assume they're fake and just triggering the
download mechanism from somewhere else.

so if you're worried about people going to the
extent of finding URLs via packet sniffing and similar it's not a
solution.

I see. So if there's no other way I'll just stick to the captcha
solution. This will not prevent people from stealing single links but
will make it impossible to steal them all automatically.

Best regards,
Martin

[Chris Morris]

Martin Schneider <ma************ **@illusion-factory.dewrite s:

Chris Morris schrieb:

I have been encountering downloads where I was unable to detect the
file's URL. The download window opened without any trace of the URL
given.

Do you have any public examples of this behaviour?

Rapidshare links. You cannot download the files by directly accessing
the links displayed, so I assume they're fake and just triggering the
download mechanism from somewhere else.

No idea, though I don't have any rapidshare links to hand to test
with. I suspect with Live HTTP Headers or similar you'd be able to
find out what was going on fairly easily.

so if you're worried about people going to the
extent of finding URLs via packet sniffing and similar it's not a
solution.

I see. So if there's no other way I'll just stick to the captcha
solution. This will not prevent people from stealing single links but
will make it impossible to steal them all automatically.

On the other hand, it gives them much more motivation to steal
them. If they're in an open list then people may link to the list as a
good place to find X, Y, Z, rather than copying the list (after all,
if the list is already freely available, what gain is there in copying
it). If the list is difficult to access - and any captcha that
couldn't be easily broken by a computer is going to fool real people a
fair amount of the time - then the motivation for people to set up a
competing and likely more successful open list is higher (whether this
open list is set up by directly copying from yours or not probably
doesn't matter, except perhaps for any copyright claim you might
pursue in the courts).

--
Chris

[Martin Schneider]

Chris Morris schrieb:

except perhaps for any copyright claim you might
pursue in the courts).

I neither have time nor money for litigation. That's why I am trying to
prevent stealing in the first place :-)

Best regards,
Martin

[GArlington]

On Jan 18, 1:57 pm, Martin Schneider <martin.schnei. ..@illusion-
factory.dewrote :

Chris Morris schrieb:

except perhaps for any copyright claim you might
pursue in the courts).

I neither have time nor money for litigation. That's why I am trying to
prevent stealing in the first place :-)

Best regards,
Martin

I am trying to understand what you are trying to do here...
You want to show links on your site linking to downloadable files on
some other site(s)?
If so, then I think you can set server side re-directs...

[Martin Schneider]

GArlington schrieb:

On Jan 18, 1:57 pm, Martin Schneider <martin.schnei. ..@illusion-
factory.dewrote :

>Chris Morris schrieb:

>>except perhaps for any copyright claim you might
pursue in the courts).

I neither have time nor money for litigation. That's why I am trying to
prevent stealing in the first place :-)

Best regards,
Martin

I am trying to understand what you are trying to do here...
You want to show links on your site linking to downloadable files on
some other site(s)?

Exactly.

If so, then I think you can set server side re-directs...

I'll look that up. Thanks for the idea.

Best regards,
Martin

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Martin Schneider:

Collecting all the links is a lot of work. I don't want other sites to
copy the idea *and* all the links I collected in hours of work.

You have now wasted a total of several hours of people's time spent in
reading this thread and trying to understand what you are trying to do
and even helping you there.

In a word, the idea is absurd. Make your living some other way.

Surely you cannot expect HTML markup to be of any help here, so you
posted to a wrong group, to begin with.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/