Photobucket have silently changed their T&Cs so that you can only use them to host pictures for forums such as this if you pay them $39.99 a month. Any pictures from a person found to be doing what they call "3rd party hosting" will be replaced with a placeholder picture until they pay the ransom.
There seems to be no rhyme or reasons - all Chris Hall's pictures have now been hidden but not ones from Stephen White.
Now would appear to be a very good time to capture all those detailed reference pictures from the mega build threads which we enjoy so much
Over the next few days apparently everything will be blocked so do grab those images right now before Photobucket works their way through everything. I'm going through my Photobucket gallery now and downloading any images that I've not got on file on my PC. Then I'll be deleteing everything from Photobucket and closing my account.
It's a hot topic everywhere today and the general consensus is that Photobucket will go under within the year.
Question: What's the difference between Photobucket and Ransomware?
if i am not mistaken, when you use photobucket they own the rights to your pictures, part of the terms and conditions you don't know you sign up for, regards simon manning.
What is causing the uproar is that no warning was given. They just started doing it overnight. Now if they had of given say 30 days warning it would be different. They may technically own the images but they can still be deleted by the original posters which is going to happen enmass.
I've rarely seen so much anger directed at one company on the internet before. Dumb, dumb move by Photobucket which is going to cost them dearly.
I wonder how long it will be before someone writes an app which will trawl through your phpBB account and replace every instance of 'photobucket' with another hosting address. Then all you would have to do is replicate your Photobucket folder tree somewhere else.
I can see that it has never been a charity, and that they need enough paying customers to generate the necessary revenue to cover operating costs and make it financially viable, but doing it by means of an overnight ransom is suicidal.
Not seen or heard anything from PB but I have a plus plan which I have always had looking at the plans it seems they have changed what they offer with only the top plan offering unlimited linking and 3rd party hosting, not sure how they will deal with people with existing contracts. I have all my pictures stored on portable drives so would not loose anything if I shut it down.
How sad is that ? Even my avatar has disappeared ! Following other people's builds, and learning from their ideas and experience, is one of the great parts of this forum. This unwarranted action by PB is effectively censorship, along with demanding money with menaces .
In the mean time, if anyone wants any of my pictures, just send me a PM with your email address.
Has anyone found a more user-friendly picture-sharing site ?
A saddened,
Chris
Mark IV (Liesel, Abteilung 14, France 1918)
M3 Lee (25 Dragoons, Burma 1944)
Universal Carrier (2/Wiltshires, Italy 1944)
Panther (Deserter, 145 RAC, Italy 1944)
Centurion Mk 3 (8KRIH, Korea 1950/51)
Morris Quad, 25-pdr & limber (45RA, Korea 1951)
No, but pretty much every picture in your update threads has been hosted on PB.
So if 3rd party hosting can only done by the top tier package, either you pay them the full fee to keep the links active, or change hosting site and edit every one of your posts which contains an image on PB.
That's the pain they are leveraging, to quote an Americanism.
As there is likely to be a flurry of message editing going on, would it be possible for one of the forum admins to alter the current phpBB option for the "last edited" message so that it isn't quite as obvious, possibly by removing the current blue background as below ?
Adrian.
Last edited by Adrian Harris on Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
the photo bucket situation is about cash and revenue, ownership of right's and resale of images, collecting for no payment and having a legal position to sue, enforce legalities, no difference from the document scanning scam for free from museums then downloading to the net and a charge applied, how many photo's do you see with getty images on, all at a cost, regards simon.
Adrian Harris wrote:> so would not loose anything if I shut it down.
No, but pretty much every picture in your update threads has been hosted on PB.
So if 3rd party hosting can only done by the top tier package, either you pay them the full fee to keep the links active, or change hosting site and edit every one of your posts which contains an image on PB.
That's the pain they are leveraging, to quote an Americanism.
Adrian.
Agreed Adrian but although it will take time I can use my One drive accounts etc and set up albums that can be shared for those wanting older pics. The damage will be to the forums that are suddenly devoid of what makes them so useful.
I have paid for the privilege of using PB since 2004 so this is a real kick in the teeth to long standing customers.
We have seen a similar trend in some of the online games that think that if you are not making enough drive the prices up to fill the shortfall, you don't need to be a genius to understand that just reduces your customer base...............
For a number of years Photobucket has been a pain to use and I have been thinking of dumping them now they have made up my mind, is there any way of getting to your pictures tonight I have tried to open my albums with no luck.
.
