Looks like imgur banned wickedfire from hotlinking...

[rish3]

I'd guess more likely they disabled hotlinking and whitelisted google

Nope.

$ curl -i --referer blackhatworld.com http://i.imgur.com/eWZXS.jpg 2>>/dev/null | head -1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

I'd guess more likely they disabled hotlinking and whitelisted google

Free image host disable hotlinking?

Isn't that like a bakery disabling baking?

 

[kingfish]

They're built on the back of reddit and reddit generally links to the page with ads on it so that's what they like to see.

 

[ayzo]

Yep they did ban wickedfire and a bunch of other sites that post NSFW content too but based on what other sites are saying you can request a review to remove the ban. They don't mind NSFW images, they just don't want sites that are mostly porn using up their bandwidth. A simple email to sarah@imgur.com is all it takes.

 

[JCash]

So who provides the next best thing? Or perhaps one of the WF coder's would like to take on a new business?

Edit: Perhaps imgur hasn't received enough email lately

More like imgHURR amirite?

The astute have probably noticed I serve my images from a media server I wrote which was originally designed to handle high volume PPV traffic with memory-based templates, hosted on Google's infrastructure. This image hosting shit is so sensitive I've been asked by the product leads not to make the source or service publicly available. I've been considering making a similar service publicly available hosted on servers based in data haven countries, what you guys are complaining about is why such is needed.

 

[harrymouni]

that imgur guy must be losing a ton of money, don't know why he runs the site.

i always wondered why google don't have a free and quick image host (like imgur, not picasa). i'm sure they can afford the bandwidth and all those images hosted on random sites with referers would give them more data

 

[JCash]

that imgur guy must be losing a ton of money, don't know why he runs the site.

It makes enough to keep the owner and a developer/admin employed. It's profitable mainly due to the goodwill of people not direct linking, there's probably low-six-figures net profit from the CPM ads.

 

[rish3]

Temporary solution, if anyone cares. I created a Google Appengine proxy that will only proxy requests to i.imgur.com (keeps it from being overrun as an open proxy ).

It's at wfimgur.appspot.com

You should be able to use it to hotlink, by pasting existing imgur urls like so:

[IMG]http://wfimgur.appspot.com/i.imgur.com/0NAfQ.jpg[/IMG]