Image hosting errors??

[MrFeetZ]

So, within the last month or two, ive noticed more amd more image load error messages on various forums, including here on CG. Is this a "my" problem or a problem from whoever posted the Image? The error message I get, instead of an actual photo looks like:



How to/is it possible correct?? I don't have a photobucket account so I'm thinking this is a posting issue.

I'm afraid I'm missing some really good gun porn.

[Librarian]

Photobucket has changed its terms of service, and requires payment to allow 3rd party access. It's the account owner who gets billed.

The solution folks seem to be reaching is imgur

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Photobucket f'ed up. Boards look like crap now with all the blocking banners. When I new what was going on, I went back to Imgur and looked for an upgrade account JUST so I can show appreciation for their service.

The 'bucket can suck it.

[sealocan]

I used TinyPic just the other day.
it worked fine and it's easier and works better on my android phone than imgur.

What should concern everyone is unless a lot of people don't move their Photobucket accounts and they pay up the money,
then every single one of those type of websites will start charging $$$.

[ocabj]

Photobucket f'ed up. Boards look like crap now with all the blocking banners. When I new what was going on, I went back to Imgur and looked for an upgrade account JUST so I can show appreciation for their service.

The 'bucket can suck it.

No, Photobucket just recovered costs because all of those boards and third party sites that hotlinked images from Photobucket paid nothing for that hotlinking.

Even I have htaccess and redirect rules to prevent people from hotlinking images hosted on my own websites. I'll allow Calguns hotlinking since I post here, but I see a bunch of random forums trying to hotlink my photos. Sure, I have 1TB a month outbound on my VPS, but it doesn't mean I'm giving that bandwidth away to third-party sites I have no affiliation with.

If people didn't want historical threads in forums to look like crap after the Photobucket hotlinking change, that forum should have allowed photo uploads. Of course that puts more overhead on the forum infrastructure. But then that is the whole point isn't it? Hosting photos doesn't come with a cost. And with third party embed/hotlinking, there is no real way to recover the costs. It's not like you can overlay a clickable add on a hotlinked image.

I can only imagine that eventually, Imgur, Flickr, and other sites will follow suit.

The solution folks seem to be reaching is imgur

The huge difference between photobucket and imgur is that photobucket was specifically meant to be a photo storage and presentation service where you do not give any license for use to photobucket. Imgur was meant to be a photo sharing service for 'viral' images and you are forced to provide a royalty free, transferable license to Imgur. Of course, most people don't care about this, but it is a significant issue and why I rarely use Imgur.

Along the lines of a photo storage / archive and presentation service, I also use Zenfolio (paid) and Flickr (free option), both of which do not require me to grant those respective services a license to my image(s).

[the86d]

I just use postimg.org, hell... do it in a private window too!

[MrFeetZ]

Thanks for the answers... ok thought it was something on my end because those errors popped up rather suddenly.

Photobucket f'ed up. Boards look like crap now with all the blocking banners.

I agree! I lost access to awesome pics on various forums I was using as references.

[creativeartist]

Yep, I have that problem too with my blog. Now I have to fix each image and move them to another host.