It's all about the money

[gbritnell]

I just got an email from Photobucket stating that some of my features have been disabled.
We see that you have been using Photobucket for third party photo hosting. You will no longer be able to use this feature unless you upgrade your plan. We have a very reasonable upgrade plan which will give you these additional features.
Well I'll be!!!!
I have been a member since Photobucket's inception and have purchased the upgrade periodically but now they cut out little bits of it to force you into buying it.
As with everything in this life it's "All about the Money!"
gbritnell

[Jasonb]

I've been paying abouy $20 for the last 3-4 years and worth every penny. I don't get all the adverts that slow things up and with the amount I use it over several forums it is cheap at a couple of dollars a month.

[b.lindsey]

The subject line says it all George...sadly (and its not just Photobucket) companies seem to be offering less and charging more, and often accompanied with a drop in quality as well.

Bill

[kvom]

I use pbase for my online photos.  Paid site, no ads, no hassles

[Jo]

The good news is that we still have space on our MEM server to host the photo's that go with your builds 

I must say I got frustrated with Photosuckit's porno adverts  and have complained a couple of times to them about it.

My photo's seem to still be working ok from there  but no doubt give them time... 


Edit: looks like unless you pay the $399 annual fee upfront you will not get third party linking anymore... that will break so many of our threads         

Jo

[Rivergypsy]

I had this notification too, and I'm less than impressed, especially as mine wanted $399 to upgrade 

[10KPete]

Well, they've got folks where they want them. Totally hooked/controlled. They've got all the pics. You either pay up or face a huge task of re-linking all your pics. Who knows what they could do to foul things up further!

Pete

[mklotz]

Virtually all my online photos are hosted with Photobucket.  $399/year is outrageous, bordering on blackmail.  I refuse to pay it.  Besides, if they've pulled something like this blackmail, what might they try after one pays?

I'm not going to do anything immediately.  Given the impact this is going to have, I'm guessing a law suit is inevitable.  A wait and see attitude is appropriate.

[Dave Otto]

Maybe someone got the decimal point in the wrong place; I think I'm paying about $30.00 a year.

[crueby]

I just went and looked at their new terms of service, which they just updated on June 28th. Here is an excerpt of the relevant part (more of my comments after it)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

• 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 3^rd 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.
• Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
• Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3^rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).

• Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:

  o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3^rd party image hosting.
 o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3^rd party image hosting.
 o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3^rd party image hosting.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

By my reading of it, sounds like unless you have gone for at LEAST their Plus-100 plan for $99/year now, they dont want any image linking, which they dont define but sounds like what we do to the forum. IF you are using over 100 gig, then they want the $399/year. This is a big change from the previous terms of service.

Up till now I have been mirroring my uploads on PostImage site, using it for links when PB was down. Guess now I'll use PostImage for it all, since for now they are both ad free AND fee-free. We'll see how long that lasts.

The other alternative is to post the images as attachments to this forum directly, but that has the drawback of not being able to put the photos inline with the text, which makes things SO much easier to follow. Other forums with what looks like this same software have been able to do it, if this forum could do the same it would solve a lot of this issue.

Chris

Edit: So far I have not gotten that letter from PB, wonder if it is because I have only uploaded the 700x500 versions of the photos for the forum, and my total usage is still very small. Maybe they are going after the users with more space used first to squeeze the most money for the least effort.

[Dave Otto]

This is news to me; I'm not sure that I'm up for paying $100.00 a year to link my pictures.

[Vixen]

Well, I am not going to be paying anyone $399 a year to link in my photos.

What happens to those photos uploaded before June 28th? The old rules should still apply, which I believe allowed 3rd party image, hosting even with a free account.

We will have to wait and see what happens.

Mike

[mklotz]

One of the guys over on HSM recommended use.com as a free hosting service he's used without problems for a long time.

As a test, I established an account and uploaded a test picture via a browse-and-select-function.  I made no attempt to adjust the size of the picture as I normally do before uploading .

Now, I'll resize and watermark another picture as I normally do and add it here...

Given my ten minute or so test efforts, use.com seems a reasonable alternative to photosuckit although I haven't tested whether I can easily reorganize stored images.

Of course, the same problem still exists.  If use.com suddenly decides to hold images for an outrageous ransom as photosuckit is doing, we'll be in the same boat.

[Les#053]

If you look at Don's thread for "Adding DRO's to Myford super 7" all his pictures on Photobucket have disappeared!

Les

[mklotz]

OK, I've created a "template" (use.com notation - what I would call a file) and put some pictures in it. [This corresponds to creating a file "ENGINES" and putting a picture of an engine in it.]  Then I had use.com generate the image url needed to display the picture, which I added to this post at the bottom.  If all goes well we should see a picture...

[crueby]

Marv - your pictures are coming through fine.

[Kim]

Marv,
I don't see the image, but I think that's because I'm looking at this from work, and it looks like they've blocked use.com.  So it might work if I checked from home.
Kim

[Kim]

I just checked some of my threads and all the pictures are gone.  Replaced by an "Upgrade your account" message from Photobucket...

Kim

[Kim]

Ideally, if we could find a way to locally host images on this site (not using the attachment) that would, IMHO be the best.  I know its been discussed several times, and there is some bad history for people with site-hosted images.  But I would much rather take my chances there than what just happened here with Photobucket.
Kim

[mklotz]

If you just have a few pictures to upload, there's no need to establish templates; it's not even necessary to register I'm told.

But, with many pictures spread over a variety of subjects, templates are essential.  I've found it a bit fiddly to construct templates and move pictures into them after uploading but, being a completely new and subject-naive user, it's probably me and not the software.  I'm sure that if I take my time it can all be boiled down into a cheat sheet.  If and when I do that, I'll make said sheets available here.

[Dave Otto]

I went through this when Web Shots stopped allowing linking of images. It was a huge task back then to update all my online images; at this stage I'm not sure I would have the time or energy to repeat that task. All my pictures seem to still be showing but I'm paid subscriber to PB, from reading Chris's post I'm not sure for how long. I have all my reduced size images stored on my PC and backed up so even if I dump PB I won't loose anything.

Dave

[Jo]

Ideally, if we could find a way to locally host images on this site (not using the attachment) that would, IMHO be the best.  I know its been discussed several times, and there is some bad history for people with site-hosted images.  But I would much rather take my chances there than what just happened here with Photobucket.
Kim

Hi Guys we experimented with this a couple of years ago, we know how to do it, I will have to talk again to my fellow admins about it. You will appreciate that this Forum is provided free of charge to the membership to enable us to share our passion in building model engines and we fully respect your personal copyright/ownership of everything you post  .  However if we set it up so that members are able to do third party linkage from pictures hosted on our server that could give us a nightmare copyright wise if you start linking onto commercial sites like HMEM or ME who claim copyright on postings displayed on their sites. 

May I suggest that you avoid the unique naming convention used by some of the hosting sites and make sure that you know which of your own photos are necessary to complete your own build logs - wherever you choose to host the logs/photos. There is nothing worse than loosing years of work due to the greed of others 

Jo

[Jasonb]

Any images that have gone and been replaced by the grey backed message can be viewed by right clicking and then selecting open in new tab, this will open it in PB so are not lost just a PITA to view

[kvom]

imgur.com may be a good free alternative

[crueby]

I just checked some of my threads and all the pictures are gone.  Replaced by an "Upgrade your account" message from Photobucket...

Kim

Mine too, and I never even got an email from them that it would happen!

For all future posts, I will use my PostImage.org account, which is free and allows linking, and no ads even!

Going back to redo all my posts it not feasible, I don't have a spare month to devote to that. Not worth it to me to spend hundreds a year for.

[crueby]

Any images that have gone and been replaced by the grey backed message can be viewed by right clicking and then selecting open in new tab, this will open it in PB so are not lost just a PITA to view

When I try that, at least in FireFox, all it shows is the same 'upgrade your account' photo in PB....

[mklotz]

Any images that have gone and been replaced by the grey backed message can be viewed by right clicking and then selecting open in new tab, this will open it in PB so are not lost just a PITA to view

When I try that, at least in FireFox, all it shows is the same 'upgrade your account' photo in PB....

Same for me.

[Kim]

Any images that have gone and been replaced by the grey backed message can be viewed by right clicking and then selecting open in new tab, this will open it in PB so are not lost just a PITA to view

When I try that, at least in FireFox, all it shows is the same 'upgrade your account' photo in PB....

Same for me.

It worked for me, in Chrome.  It didn't link me to the folder with the other images in it, just that one specific image.   Yes, very much a pain.  So low on the usability scale as to be nearly worthless.

But at least you could see the picture if you were motivated enough.
Kim

[Kim]

Ideally, if we could find a way to locally host images on this site (not using the attachment) that would, IMHO be the best.  I know its been discussed several times, and there is some bad history for people with site-hosted images.  But I would much rather take my chances there than what just happened here with Photobucket.
Kim

Hi Guys we experimented with this a couple of years ago, we know how to do it, I will have to talk again to my fellow admins about it. You will appreciate that this Forum is provided free of charge to the membership to enable us to share our passion in building model engines and we fully respect your personal copyright/ownership of everything you post  .  However if we set it up so that members are able to do third party linkage from pictures hosted on our server that could give us a nightmare copyright wise if you start linking onto commercial sites like HMEM or ME who claim copyright on postings displayed on their sites. 

May I suggest that you avoid the unique naming convention used by some of the hosting sites and make sure that you know which of your own photos are necessary to complete your own build logs - wherever you choose to host the logs/photos. There is nothing worse than loosing years of work due to the greed of others 

Jo

Thank you Jo, and all the admins.
I realize that this is not a simple solution.  It will require someone to invest time and money.

I would be willing to help out on the money side, as I'm sure a lot of members would.  I'd much rather donate directly to the site than pay PB a ton of money for essentially noting but disk space.  But even the act of accepting money from others requires some effort - figuring out how to do it and then someone has to be in charge of the money to start paying our bills.

I guess Ade does this for us now, right?  I'd rather that he not shoulder the whole cost.  Don't know how to help with the effort side of things.

Kim

[Tennessee Whiskey]

So, here's old Cletus' day:

1. Received notice in mail that my health insurance will no longer be available beginning January 1
2. The great state of Tennessee decided since gas prices were so low, they would raise the state tax seven cents a gallon.
3. The satellite receiver on Lou's TV went out
4. Septic system at business is acting up.
5. Just received call that youngest granddaughter's (18) blood test shows probability of bone or blood cancer.
6. And now my f'n pictures have been held for F'n ransome by someone that promised me something that suddenly they changed their minds on.

Folks, I could continue on a tirade, with language, that could make Maryak blush,  and he was a ships captain. However, due to number 5 above, I've got more serious shit to worry about. Marv, you and a couple of more professors here should know a Dean of some law school that could use this as a class project. I'm starting to babble and I need a really strong drink bout now. Sorry for the rant guys, bad day

Cletus

[Hugh Currin]

Ideally, if we could find a way to locally host images on this site (not using the attachment) that would, IMHO be the best.  I know its been discussed several times, and there is some bad history for people with site-hosted images.  But I would much rather take my chances there than what just happened here with Photobucket.
Kim

There are advantages and dis-advantages. The down side is that pictures take up a lot of storage, particularly on a visually oriented forum like this. I was on one forum, don't remember which, that closed because the storage grew enough to be outside the "free" hosting range. I don't know how MEM is hosted but this is a consideration. Also some don't like to "give away the rights" to their pictures. I figure once it's on the 'net, in any form, it's lost. Alternately, the advantage is the forum would be complete. When something like this Photbucket fiasco occurs the threads on MEM are protected and will remain complete. I suspect a lot of past threads have large holes in them today and it isn't reasonable for the authors to re-construct them.

I have a web site hosted at GoDaddy. Some time ago I started keeping forum pics there. Easy to upload and I have complete control (but I still keep local copies). The storage is small when I reduce images to web or forum size before uploading. I'd have it for my web page anyway so I consider it free. But the package costs about $115/year, 100Gb storage and I'm using very little of that. I consider it a good deal. One downside is having to keep pics and the directory structure stable, if I move stuff around I break the threads I've contributed to.

I suppose it all depends on how MEM is hosted.

Thanks.

Hugh

[Hugh Currin]

....But even the act of accepting money from others requires some effort - figuring out how to do it and then someone has to be in charge of the money to start paying our bills.

I guess Ade does this for us now, right?  I'd rather that he not shoulder the whole cost.  Don't know how to help with the effort side of things.

Kim

PayPal would work well for small donations. Just post an email to send $ to and suggest an amount, maybe $10 (or the equivalent in strange foreign currencies). I suspect that would solve any $ problems in a day or two. Just takes a little faith that the admins won't take the site commercial. :-)

(PayPal take a chunk, but here probably worth it for the convenience.)

Thanks.

Hugh

[Hugh Currin]

Cletus:

6. And now my f'n pictures have been held for F'n ransome by someone that promised me something that suddenly they changed their minds on.

That is not good. You're not alone, I've heard there is a Ranson Attack going around the Internet. Pay-up or your data will be deleted. I think originating in Ukraine. There should be some laws.

5. Just received call that youngest granddaughter's (18) blood test shows probability of bone or blood cancer.

But that is even worse news. I hope it's not so. Send her our best and we're all hoping for the best outcome. Keep us updated.

Thanks.

Hugh

[crueby]

The forum already allows attachment of pictures up to around 700 pixels on a side. If it could allow putting those pictures inline with the text of the post, rather than just at the end, it would serve the purpose of the forum. No need to allow linking them offsite to other places, and it would keep the storage need of the forum down.

[90LX_Notch]

Eric-

I am very sorry to hear about your granddaughter.  My prayers are with her, you and your family.

-Bob

[Kim]

One way around changing anything, yet still support inline posts with pictures hosted on MEM would be:

• Create a sub-forum for Picture Posts.
• People could upload pictures as attachment (no text expected)
• Then write your real post in whatever forum/thread is appropriate and use the links you get from the attachments.

I know this works because I tried it many years ago.  But I didn't use this method because you have to leave the original picture post on the site.  If you delete the post, the photos are deleted from the forum too.  So we'd have to agree on allowing the disembodied pictures threads to accumulate somewhere.  And that would be somewhat bizarre. But it would work.

Kim

[gerritv]

SMF has an addon module that supports inline attachments. Could one of the Mods look into adding this functionality?

https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=525705.0

Has lots of options to control placement etc.

Gerrit

[gerritv]

"if the product is free then your are the product" and at some point you will have to pay for being the product as they can only get so much money out of you by selling your viewing and posting habits.
For this reason I have my own web host, own email accounts etc. After the first time being held to ransom I decided to deal with it that way. Own domain name (so free to shop for best ISP), no reliance on Google/YouTube/PB etc for any thing. They all get greedy at some point, once you are properly addicted to their 'free' service.

Gerrit

[Flyboy Jim]

So far my photos are still showing up (for me) on my build threads...............but who knows for how long! I have the $2.49 per month ad free account.

I suspect this whole extortion program is going to backfire big time for Photo Bucket! Other hosting businesses are going to see this as an opportunity to get a bunch of new business. That said I hope there's a way to eliminate 3rd party hosting all together. I realize we have that now, but it's a little cumbersome as it's configured presently.

Sad times we live in where it's all about the money.

Jim

PS: Eric, my friend, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Kinda helps to keep all this hassle in perspective.

[Tennessee Whiskey]

Thanks for all the support guys. I guess it was a bad way to even mention it, but, this bit of PB news just put the icing on the cake. I don't mind paying or even a modest price increase, but, from virtually free to $400 is something only the drug companies try to do. It's also real crappy that they just didn't disable the linking feature and then leave our already posted pics alone. The same fussing is happening on the auto forum I'm on. One member there says he hosts his own domain for about $50 a year and has total control of everything. So, until I decide how to proceed, y'all will be stuck with just my eloquent narrative sans the brilliant photography

Cletus

[Walsheng]

Eric:  Sorry about the news about your granddaughter. It really makes everything else pretty trivial.  I hope everything turns out OK.  I was diagnosed a year before my granddaughter was born and it has hit me more than once that is was better me than her!

John

[RonGinger]

It costs money, sometimes a lot, to do anything on the web. I doubt that photo bucket is a charity. They are a business that wants to make a profit and pay their shareholders. It is not unreasonable to offer a 'free sample' of their product. Thats an old marketing trick- I even recall getting free sample candy bars as a kid.

The only way to control that is a web site of your own, which you pay for. Then its yours,  you can keep it up as long as you like, but you pay the fare. I have had my own site for over 20 years, first on a Free Servers domain, then one I pay for. Not long ago Free Servers changed their business and I lost my 8m.com domain, so all the links to my site for years disappeared. I wanted a free ride, but in the end I lost it.

Somehow the idea that the internet is a giant free place got established and now people feel abused when they realize its not free. All the news sites seem to be getting into subscription schemes.

I really dislike advertising, so I wish the idea of advertising support of sites had not built up. But as far as I can figure a site can either charge users directly or collect from advertisers.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch". I think this old quote pre-dates the internet.

[Jo]

New ploy Guys: I noted that when I go to Photosuckit I get lots of John Lewis adverts. Now John Lewis is a shop chain in the UK that has high standards and what Photosuckit has done is broken many valuable knowledge resources both Cultural and historical, which goes against the ethos of JL  So I have just sent john Lewis a message suggesting that they may wish to disassociate themselves with Photosuckit 

May I recommend that you look to hit Photosuckit where it hurts: complain to the advertisers about them supporting a site that resorts to ransom 

Jo

[Flyboy Jim]

It costs money, sometimes a lot, to do anything on the web. I doubt that photo bucket is a charity. They are a business that wants to make a profit and pay their shareholders. It is not unreasonable to offer a 'free sample' of their product. Thats an old marketing trick- I even recall getting free sample candy bars as a kid.

The only way to control that is a web site of your own, which you pay for. Then its yours,  you can keep it up as long as you like, but you pay the fare. I have had my own site for over 20 years, first on a Free Servers domain, then one I pay for. Not long ago Free Servers changed their business and I lost my 8m.com domain, so all the links to my site for years disappeared. I wanted a free ride, but in the end I lost it.

Somehow the idea that the internet is a giant free place got established and now people feel abused when they realize its not free. All the news sites seem to be getting into subscription schemes.

I really dislike advertising, so I wish the idea of advertising support of sites had not built up. But as far as I can figure a site can either charge users directly or collect from advertisers.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch". I think this old quote pre-dates the internet.

Ron, I don't think most folks are looking for a "free lunch". I was perfectly happy paying $30 per year to Photobucket to get rid of the ads and be able to link my photos to this website. I think that most of us are objecting to Photobucket now wanting $399 a year to be able to do the same thing.  That makes for an awfully expensive lunch.

Jim

[Dave Otto]

Jim I completely agree with you here. I don't have a problem paying for something that is a good value, and the $30.00 per year fee for hosting my pictures (with no adds) and being able to link them, to me was well worth it. I'm not looking for free, just a reasonable value for the money spent.

I fee the same way about my CAD/CAM software.

Dave

[Flyboy Jim]

New ploy Guys: I noted that when I go to Photosuckit I get lots of John Lewis adverts. Now John Lewis is a shop chain in the UK that has high standards and what Photosuckit has done is broken many valuable knowledge resources both Cultural and historical, which goes against the ethos of JL  So I have just sent john Lewis a message suggesting that they may wish to disassociate themselves with Photosuckit 

May I recommend that you look to hit Photosuckit where it hurts: complain to the advertisers about them supporting a site that resorts to ransom 

Jo

That's an interesting idea Jo. I'll be anxious to hear what they have to say.

Here's what I'm wondering about a company and their advertising. I've noticed that, if I've looked at some item on somebodies website, that an ad for that item shows up on various other websites I look at. Anyway....... I'm thinking that a company (like JL) may subscribe to an advertising service, much the same way we subscribe to something like Photobucket. Then that company tells the company that wants to advertise their product.........send us your ad and we'll plaster your ad on whatever website your potential customer looks at. Maybe someone that knows about such things can ad some input.

It that isn't how it works, maybe I can start a service like that and make millions, retire to an island in the South Pacific, set up my dream machine shop, and while away my days. Well except for when I'm laying in my hammock on the beach sipping mint juleps!   

Jim

[Bluechip]

New ploy Guys: I noted that when I go to Photosuckit I get lots of John Lewis adverts. Now John Lewis is a shop chain in the UK that has high standards and what Photosuckit has done is broken many valuable knowledge resources both Cultural and historical, which goes against the ethos of JL  So I have just sent john Lewis a message suggesting that they may wish to disassociate themselves with Photosuckit 

May I recommend that you look to hit Photosuckit where it hurts: complain to the advertisers about them supporting a site that resorts to ransom 

Jo

I use Firefox & uBlock and I get no adverts .... it does say it's blocked 21 when I log in to PB.

Perfectly good rant and I don't qualify. Feeling deprived ....     

Dave

Ooops ... 29

[crueby]

Spent some time this evening getting my Lombard build pages converted from referencing photos on PhotoSuckit to PostImage.org, which so far is still free and ad free, and allows linking. Made up a little program to search the image number on the other sites list, and convert the text - handy to be a programmer sometimes. Still some manual work, and it only is set up for my naming conventions, so not generally useful to others, unfortunately. But, have 10 of 35 pages done, another couple sessions and I will tell PB to go suck swarf.

I've noticed today that their site is getting bogged down worse than usual, and sometimes it would not even let me see my own images. Just saw the post from Ave about the hosting - that is great news!

[stevehuckss396]

I read the agreement. Cheapest plan with linking is 100 bucks a year. I'm afraid I'm going to have to delete my account. I would rather spend the hundred bucks on something for the shop or a nicer room when I visit my Ohio friends during the Zanesville show.

[Brian Rupnow]

I've been using Photobucket for 7 years now, and paying about $40 a year for my account. If they jack the price to $400 a year, about 8000 of my pictures are going to disappear of all of the forums.----Brian