(ot)photobucket heads up

[R.G.]

The internet has a long history of things being made available free, then the owner/runner of the service trying to "turn the corner" to make it pay somehow, any way possible. It's not likely to change.

There really isn't any such thing as a free lunch. Somebody always pays for what you eat.

[davent]

Just read an article, published yesterday, on the best image hosting sites and it still stated Photobucket offered free image sharing services. Time for a revision.

dave

[pinkjimiphoton]

i DID ultimately get a valid download link and download my "bucket". good thing i did. i found countless designs i never posted and had forgotten about.

i will see about the FTC

as for photobucket... they have no less than 24 spyware things that load on every page. and every one pays them, as well.

11 million users x 400.$ a piece is how much? my calculator broke...

[amptramp]

I have about 600 photos on photobucket but every one of them is on my hard drive, so I don't have to try to retrieve them.  A lot of them are from car shows and the Canadian Heritage Warplane Museum and really don't need to be hosted.  I only need a few dozen pictures to reconstitute posts and avatars in various places.  They obviously realize that not many people are going to pay their price and this kind of pricing is what I used to see when we were invited to bid on a contract we didn't want.  I doubt their service will last a full year.

[davent]

Imgur.


I'm shopping around and from Imgur's Terms of Service -

http://imgur.com/tos

...Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it.

dave

I haven't had any trouble yet, but I'm also not putting a precious library of artwork up there. Like many TOSs, they probably reserve the right to enforce or not. They may be smarter than Photobucket, too.

Did more looking around today and found that TOS passage addressed at Imgur/community and you are fine.

https://community.imgur.com/t/what-do-the-tos-mean-by-dont-use-imgur-to-host-image-libraries-you-link-to-from-elsewhere/21348

dave

[PRR]

> FTC ...unfair/deceptive business practices.

These are FREE accounts. Not a business matter.

I'd say users got full value for money.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ahh, but paul, once you pay them, isn't that a business matter?
they literally offer no alternative if you want your images to be visible for people on forums and what not.

the deception i think came with the way they offered to host the images, because of the revenues they made in advertising. word of mouth made the guy a multi billionaire. good for him, huzzah and all that, but this is a little extreme and smells suspiciously like greed unchecked to a lot of us i guess.

[EBK]

I have never used Photobucket, so this really isn't my fight, and I'm not try to advocate strongly for any particular result.
But, Paul, this has ALWAYS been a business matter because Photobucket has always been a business, or in more regulatory language, they have been engaged in acts or practices in or affecting commerce. They have been bound by the consumer protection provisions of Section 5 of the FTC Act from the beginning, like all businesses, regardless of whether their users paid them money directly or not.  I'm going to stop throwing fuel on  Jimi's fire now, but I had to get that off my chest first. 

[davent]

I think it's all my wife's doing. She was fed up with me whining and complaining about what a wretched site Photobucket had devolved into so she broke the internet to get me to move on to something better.

Is there really any other reason people kept using it then to maintain the 3rd party links to hundred or thousands of pictures they've parked at photobucket in at least my case, going back 10 years.

They've done me the favour of cutting the apron strings, severing the links, pissed but they're useless to me now. An unneeded source of aggravation is gone. It's a new day!

Always had the free account and assumed the poor functioning and downhill trending was due to that, but in reading posts of people paying much money for greatly expanded storage their user experience was no different then that of us freeloaders. There was no incentive whatsoever to give them any money.

dave

PS. Nice new avatar Jimi!

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks dave,
i just linked it to my website. done.

@#$% botophucket. i DID download my entire bucket, sans maybe a couple gifs.

but they are getting slammed all over social media all over the world. this is most definitely not my fight,
and SHOULD concern everyone, and likely will begin to make more sense when you're searching for knowledge that is no longer there.

they eradicated 14 years of forum and blog posts. gone. all those graphics. gone. all the helpful info. gone. held for ransome. if ya care about the people whom have benefited thru this, you see what happened.

probably half the graphics on this forum are gone. poof. resources vanished literally overnite.

THEN come the spam emails after the action has been poot in motion.

@#$% photobucket. i hope that @$$hole loses everything he made.

cuz truth is, every single time someone looks at a graphic hosted on photobucket, photobucket is getting paid. they have 24 advertisers on EVERYSINGLE PAGE or MORE. my script/ad blockers disable most of 'em, but its still buggy as hell and intently designed to be as difficult to work with as possible to maximize "engagement time"... how long you keep people on your site. the longer you do, the more potential revenue for your advertisers.

@#$% these 1% assholes. they just screwed the whole world over.

destruction of net neutrality is another facet of it. the internet archive is now mostly closed off, no more can you surf most websites or find information that was once there.

thank god i have a 50 gig database of schematics and crap i've accumulated.

i am gonna talk to my webhost and update my website for the first time in 12 years or so, and hope to not only have pcbs for sale, projects to download, but stream some music as well.

i wish i could upload the whole gtr related folder.  but i don't own a lot of other people's work, so i don't feel its right to upload it. its a shame, cuz much will be gone forever.

[karbomusic]

If you lot are even half way indicative of the level of "customer satisfaction" they're seeing, I think they're going to be internet history in a very short time.

They may have been history anyway because... Playing Devil's advocate... If we are external linking, which precludes anyone visiting their site, who's actually a 'customer' here? Whos maintaining and paying for all that storage, server infrastructure and bandwidth? Sounds like the way they handled this problem is terrible but if any hope for their paying for the underlying is circumvented, money doesn't grow on trees. That wouldn't be much different than someone here saying "anyone in the world can put pics on my server, I'll take care of the rest, don't worry about it". Not.

Currrently I use Imgur. I don't need an account there, I can CTRL+V an image on my clipboard directly into the browser, copy the link and done. But I use that method with full knowledge the links I use for those may not be permanent. For permanent stuff, I actually use a paid service because then, they actually do owe me something in return.

[karbomusic]

Photobucket offers three paid plans to members, but only the most expensive plan supports third-party hosting of images. It is available for $39.99 per month, or at a discount when billed yearly for $399.99.

So ^that's silly, in that case one is a customer and 39 bucks should cover external linking! I thought it was all free accounts which does make external linking a valid concern.

[davent]

If you lot are even half way indicative of the level of "customer satisfaction" they're seeing, I think they're going to be internet history in a very short time.

... For permanent stuff, I actually use a paid service because then, they actually do owe me something in return.

Kary who are you using for your paid storage and i assume '3rd party hosting'?

Photobucket used 'free' 3rd party hosting as a selling point. Even an article i read that was published Friday, two days after the policy change, highlighted the fact Photobucket offered free 3rd party hosting.

dave

[pinkjimiphoton]

FURTHER bro, it comes down to you could SEE the image on forums like this... but to download it? you had to go to the page and wait for its 20 some odd scripts to  complete so you could do anything. mostly a barrage of popup add crap.

may they get what they deserve :poop:

[karbomusic]

Kary who are you using for your paid storage and i assume '3rd party hosting'?

It may not be a fair swap but I use SmugMug. The though is I used to do a bit of photography on the side and it allowed me enough options to sell prints to customers etc., has some good integration with Adobe Lightroom etc. so it's likely as expensive. Well no, not too horrible, basic account is about $50 USD a year. I have a business account though...

https://www.smugmug.com/plans/basic

I have been quite satisfied with them, used them for about 7 years now. A lot of my photog buddies also used Pbase.com but I've never used it. http://www.pbase.com/pricing.html They don't look as worried about external linking either.

[davent]

Kary who are you using for your paid storage and i assume '3rd party hosting'?

It may not be a fair swap but I use SmugMug. The though is I used to do a bit of photography on the side and it allowed me enough options to sell prints to customers etc., has some good integration with Adobe Lightroom etc. so it's likely as expensive. Well no, not too horrible, basic account is about $50 USD a year. I have a business account though...

https://www.smugmug.com/plans/basic

I have been quite satisfied with them, used them for about 7 years now. A lot of my photog buddies also used Pbase.com but I've never used it. http://www.pbase.com/pricing.html They don't look as worried about external linking either.

Thanks Kary!
dave

[bluebunny]

I see that this has even made the BBC news. Not only have they screwed hundreds of posts on this beloved forum of ours (which is, of course, very important indeed) but apparently it's screwed a whole pile of pictures on Amazon and eBay too.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i can see charging for commercial use... but on forums? dirtbag move. hope he learns something from this puerile and futile act.

[davent]

Photobucket also owns Tinypic.

Interesting wikipedia read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TinyPic

My Photobucket email spam yesterday was "Welcome to the family... come join us, 15 billion pictures and growing". If i had a new 3rd party host i'd do a screen grab and post it, quite funny, quite audacious, so out of touch!

dave

[pinkjimiphoton]

make sure you use tiny pic for extra BURRRRRN mojo point dave