Photobucket holds pics for ransom

[Hyper]

Wow, didn't see that coming. Not.

After using this free service for a dozen years across several forums, Photobucket suddenly wants $400 per year subscription.
Fail.
Reminds me of that drug company CEO up pricing a patented drug by 4000%.
Note carefully, this type of ransom/extortion could happen at any cloud or hosting service, whether it's pics or business data, so beware.

This action is retroactive to any pic I've posted during the last 12 years, probably 2000 pics total, and there are plenty on BF.
Well, it's past time for me to set up my own hosting server, but it will take time to repair all the links that are held hostage.
Yeah, right. Top of my list of things to do.
Unfortunately, there is one forum I post to that doesn't allow for (pic link) edits beyond 30 days. Oh, well.

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[Wuffer]

Was able to download all my PhotoBucket hosted pics today with no issues. Now to find another hosting site...

[shogun]

Imageshack did the move already some years ago, I lost a lot of pics then, first I still could see the pics on my account there, but after some time they were also not visible, because I did not subscribe.
Just got the following email from photobucket (excerpt):
some features on your account will be disabled
WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING*
PLEASE UPGRADE TO A PLUS 500 PLAN
*What is 3rd Party Hosting?
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting.
Are my pictures still safe?
Yes! All your photos are still available by logging into your Photobucket Account. Photobucket has only restricted the ability to view your photos on 3rd party sites.

Can I download my Photos?
Absolutely, at any time. It is an easy four step process:
Step 1. Login to your Photobucket Account
Step 2. Navigate to your library page
Step 3. View a photo and click the download button
Step 4. The picture will be saved to your computer
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For the DIY section we have the biggest problem, many DIY write ups are now w/o working pics.

[Black88GTA]

For the time being at least, Imgur (www.imgur.com) appears to still be a decent free image host. I've been using them for years without incident.

[cartoonz]

Riddle me this.... are you able to see from inside your Photobucket account exactly where the image requests for each particular photo is coming from?

The problem here, as Shogun has already rightly pointed out, is that resources written years ago that were dependent on the free, unrestricted photo hosting from Photobucket... those are now rendered all but useless.
Can you imagine the millions (yes, millions) of "How To..." write ups are permanently crippled now due to this? Not to mention the other types of pages.

While I can understand the reluctance to continue to promote hot linking, that was the established and permitted protocol when those pages/write-ups were created. Photobucket could just as easily banned hot linking to any/all photos uploaded AFTER the time they chose to change the TOS and left all previous links alone... but it seems they have no qualms against literally crippling a rather large section of information created on the internet for over a decade. The backlash for this is definitely going to hurt...

For the time being at least, Imgur (www.imgur.com) appears to still be a decent free image host. I've been using them for years without incident.

that's what we all said about Photobucket for over a decade...
...until it wasn't.
caveat emptor

[Hyper]

First, the title of my thread is metaphorical.
Photobucket is not withholding access to your images, rather its just not serving up the image links unless you are subscribed for that service.
You can, in theory, download back to your computer the pics you uploaded over 15 years to Photobucket.
However, that is not important because I'm no fool, have everything in original form in a safe place, locally.
****
Second, I don't hold anything against Photobucket. Serving image links is an operating cost with no associated revenue.
For that reason I would assume that any alternative free hosting business would also eventually and suddenly start charging or go out of business.
The $400 per year charged by PB is a photo/video album product that is bundled with embedded link serving.
****
Note that link serving, in general, does not necessarily require an album product layered on top.
For link serving, the minimum requirement is content parked on a server that is addressable via a URL.
****
Since my door handle repair biz depends on active image links on BF, I can make the case (to the IRS) that paying for image hosting is a business expense.
It just comes down to How Much.
As promised, I set up my own content server under my control for which I will pay $60 this year and $120 thereafter, to be charged against revenue.
The server product is produced and managed by Gandi.net, an organization that I have been steady with for 20 years or so.
The physical server is located in Paris.
****
Fyi: Hyper is derived from Hyperworld, a California corporation I booked back in the mid 1990's.
There is an associated dot-com domain name that I created at the same time and have held for a quarter century. The domain is actually older than my car.
That domain now goes to work in the URL text of the image links.
The domain should be portable between hosting services, meaning I can move my domain to another hosting organization and, as long as I maintain the same directory path, the links should not break.
Fyi: I could also have tapped the domain 8pivotalMoments.com for image serving duty. In fact I could have both domains access the same content, and whimsically write my URL's with one or the other.
****
Now to repair my forum work over 15 years, and it will take a while.
A BF search indicates I started 34 threads. Worst case is the Koni insert thread with about 80 image links, and I'll get to that first.
Beyond the OP threads, I may have inserted images into other conversation.
PM if there is something important that is left dangling.
*******
I first load my content onto the server, then on the BF page(s) replace the image link with one fronted by my domain plus the server directory path that ID's the content.
Repaired link example: DIY: Door latch repair, Broken torsion spring
Pics therein are now served using my "hyperworld" as the domain portion of the image URL, rather than using a Photobucket related domain.

[toomanyparts]

If it was something reasonable like $40 a year, fine. $400 a year is insanity.

[bdiefAZ]

As Cartoonz stated, so many creative and descriptive "how to's" are potentially lost. That is the biggest impact of this change. So many of the original write ups are written by people not active on the forums anymore and are now lost forever.

[tangcla]

Use Amazon AWS. I host my website images with them and literally costs me cents per month.

[shogun]

got the following info from TinyPic when on their site:

TinyPic is shutting down in 2019

TinyPic is shutting down its image hosting service because we can no longer support a free service that derives 100% of its revenue from ever declining on-site ad revenues. While you may continue to host images from our site until further notice, we encourage you to consider selecting one of the premium plans offered by our sister site, Photobucket. Thanks for using TinyPic for your hosting needs over the years. We apologize that we can no longer continue providing this service, but Photobucket is a great option going forward.