Protecting graphics

[JonUrban]

Is there anyway to prevent anyone from linking a graphic from your site to another site?

I have an animated gif file that was customized for my board. However, some people that liked it have linked it into their signature at other boards around the web, but instead of just copying the image to their own server, they have just linked it to it's location on my server.

When I look at my webstats, at the "last 300 visitors", most of these "visits" are calls to the graphic from these other forums. Since the poster that is using the graphic posts a lot and at a lot of different forums, I am getting hundreds of hits per hour as people in those forums view his posts.

I am afraid that I already know that answer (no), but I figured I'd ask you folks if there was any way to keep that graphic "in the local board only".

Thanks

:-jon