Photobucket problems

[PRWIN]

Hi guys

Photobucket has suspended all sharing from there site , so all links will not be working anymore

[Flutterby]

So what is its purpose then?

[Mel]

I notices missing pix from photobucket already yesterday, but thought it was a temporary glitch.

[Mel]

This is not just a temporary glitch. It seems that Photobucket aims to blackmail customers paying a crazy fee of 399 USD annually,
so that they are able to view their photos again. And that even happens with customers who previously had pay accounts (that
allowed for more storage, e.g.), but it certainly hits all those making use of the free picture hosting.

A change in the terms of condition allowed them to cut off all picture hosting on 3rd party sides like this forum.

When I tried to log on via the normal route, nothing much happened apart from a white page with some gobble being written at
the top. I then tried to enter via the payment route, pretending I wanted to sign up for the new annual fee. I got in and was also
able to see my user name there, but Photobucket claims, I don't have any albums or photos there. At the a same time there
is an Infobox telling me that I used up 1.42 GB of the 2 free GB. Totally daft!

[Flutterby]

[PRWIN]

Check this out

Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.

Read more: http://photobucket.com/terms#ixzz4lSbkivoj

[nan]

it was the same for tinypic, some years ago... and it seems it still working

[Mel]

Yeah, PR, but most of the photos are still there anyway

[Lisbeth]

I just managed to log in. It took some time and took me to three different places for the log in and then it is very slow, but my pics are there

[Flutterby]

Since 2003, the popular photo hosting service Photobucket has been letting users upload and host images for free on their servers. They have over 10 billion images stored by 100 million registered users. But now they’re going to start charging, and that means billions of images around the Web are now broken.

Hotlinking (AKA inline linking) is when someone takes an image file hosted on a server and embeds it on a different webpage elsewhere. Since the new webpage continuously requests the file from the original source server, it saps the server owner’s bandwidth (and storage space).

Photobucket allowed hotlinking photos uploaded to and stored on its servers for a long time. This was their business model, and they made money from ads on their own site, which users would be exposed to when they went to upload content.

Unfortunately for Photobucket users, things are about to change in a big way as of June 26th. Now the service is rolling out a $399 per year subscription fee for those who want to hotlink images from Photobucket’s servers to display elsewhere. That means that billions of images across the Web now display an error message instead of the image in question.

The move has sparked fury from users, who have relied on the service for years and now feel “blackmailed” into paying the subscription fee.

It’s not a huge surprise to see a decision like this. Advertising revenues are declining for publishers, and the costs of servers to host 10 billion images are surely incredibly high (especially when requests are made for them from all over the Web). While other free services remain, it seems fairly likely that others will follow suit and start charging for hosting files too.

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photob ... edded-web/