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April 24th, 2006

Technical question, particularly for Mac users

Dull and technical post.

A user of my website is geting the “Sorry, you don’t have a license to use this image on your website” message when they try to look at some of the cartoons.

This message normally occurs when a third party website tries to ‘hotlink’ a cartoon, ie use an image hosted on my site on their website. I have enabled something called ‘hotlink protection’, which makes this message appear. However, this message is being seen on my site, which is really not what should be happening. I was wondering whether anyone else is getting this problem, particularly those using Mac OS X version 10.4.6 and the Safari browser. This is a sample of a cartoon where the problem is occurring.

Any feedback would be welcomed, especially from Mac users.

16 Comments »



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This is a single post on the Cartoon Blog by Dave posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 9:42 am. Click here to read all of the latest posts. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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16 Responses to “Technical question, particularly for Mac users”


  1. Liz says:

    Hi, I’m using Mac OS X 10.4.6 and Safari and haven’t had any problems at all, so I don’t think it’s an apple problem. Wouldn’t have any idea what else tho…

    April 24th, 2006 at 9:58 am
  2. Mark Berry says:

    No problem for me if I use Safari

    April 24th, 2006 at 10:05 am
  3. Dave says:

    Liz and Mark – thank you. It is looking like it is nothing to do with the operating system or browser. I didn’t really see how it could be.

    Hmmm.

    April 24th, 2006 at 10:15 am
  4. Nigel says:

    I have no problem on my Mac with OS X 10.4.6 and Safari. I enjoyed that cartoon, printed it out and blu tacked it up in our church kitchen.

    Is the problem related to people accessing the page via proxy servers?

    April 24th, 2006 at 10:18 am
  5. Tim says:

    no problem for me

    April 24th, 2006 at 10:23 am
  6. Liz says:

    Tee hee….look at all the Mac geeks coming out of the wood work!

    April 24th, 2006 at 10:53 am
  7. Richard Hall says:

    No problem for me either. I suggest that the answer is one of the following:

    1. The planets are not correctly aligned

    2. There’s a beam off on t’treadle

    3. Blowing in the wind

    April 24th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
  8. Dave says:

    Thankyou Richard! Thankyou everyone.

    My stats tell me that 9% of visitors to this site are using a Mac. What a lovely 9% you are.

    (72% are using a Windows, 18% have no idea what they are using and the other 1% are using a piece of string tied onto a very tall pole.)

    April 24th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
  9. Mark says:

    I don’t know how relevant this is, but I’ve had a few problems with the browser Opera and images. I have some RewriteRules that prevent hotlinking, and they seem to dislike Opera for some reason.

    It could still be an OS/browser thing, both pieces of information are sent to the server when requesting a webpage. Ask your hosts if they know anything about this, it could be a bug in the server software.

    April 24th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
  10. augustusmeriwether says:

    I am NOT a Mac geek. I have no preference with operating systems. I will NOT be pigeonholed. I resent this and pretty much everything. I am NOT having a problem viewing anything anywhere anytime thankyou. I have been forced to use a Mac and I am struggling to maintain a vague sense of identity let alone independent thought.

    You thought the spammers had issues…

    April 24th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
  11. Dave says:

    I’m using Mac 10.4.6 and Browser is Firefox… no problems here!

    Keep up the good work!

    April 24th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
  12. Sean O'Brien says:

    No problem on my Mac either. I’m off back into the woodwork where its nice and cosy and smells of apple.

    April 24th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
  13. Ruth says:

    mac user here….. no problem for me

    April 24th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
  14. John Davies says:

    Geek is not a four-letter word.
    (All’s fine on my magnificent Mac machine thanks)

    April 24th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
  15. Ben Hyde says:

    Love the spammer post.

    I’ve never heard it called “hotlink protection” before; but I presume your doing something like this:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourdomain.com [NC]
    RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L]

    if you doing something else then mention it.

    If that’s what your doing it maybe that those who have a problem are using a proxy that is laboring extra double hard to protect their privacy by removing the HTTP referer header.

    We all love computers. Feel free to send me email to ask additional questions.

    April 25th, 2006 at 3:27 am
  16. Pete C says:

    This may be because their browser is not submitting the Refer URL, or they go through an “intelligent” proxy which strips the Refer URL. Opera, and some addons to browsers have this option for reasons. of privicy. If this was so, it would produce a consistant problem however, not just for a few cartoon images.

    April 25th, 2006 at 7:22 pm