Programming Forums - Major IE6 issue + CSS

Instead of setting list-style-type images I'm instead using this following CSS which I came up with:

div#rightcolumn .affiliate-links li a {

        margin-left:0px;

        background: url('images/famfamfam-mini/icon_favourites.gif') no-repeat;

        background-position: 0% 50%;

        padding-left:20px;

}

Now this code in IE6 repeatedly loads the icon, and the worst is that I use this CSS throughout loads of the list types as I have different icons for each one. I've used it without the "a" on the end and the same issue occurs. It actually causes my server to crash because it's continually loading the icons over and over again.

Any ideas on how to fix it?