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Photobucket to stop allowing direct linking unless you pay.


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It seems that PB are changing their t&cs and will no longer allow direct linking unless you pay for a Plus account.  Does anybody know anything more about this ?

 

im not sure if this is posted in the right place.  Perhaps a mod can move it if necessary 

 

Below is copied from their web site.

Types of Accounts, Pricing and Limits

  • Visiting : There is no cost to visit the Site or to register as a Member.
  • 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.
  • 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, 3rd 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 3rd 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 3rd 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 3rd party image hosting.



Read more: http://photobucket.com/terms#ixzz4lRSXtyvT

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Thanks for pointing me to the existing thread.  I agree with the above - it's little more than extortion, and I hope they put themselves out of business.

 

Perhaps this thread should be locked now ?  1 thread is enough.

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Hi there!

Just got the Email from them Myself,so I came on to ask if Anybody else had heard about this or it was a scam.

 

I joined PB to post images to Hyperscale as it was Their default/recognised photo host, and did pay a small upgrade fee once,but not been asked to renew.

 

Is it possible to post pics to Britmodeller via another host,and if so,can anyone recommend one? (Flickr mentioned above,not had any dealings with them.)

 

Wholeheartedly agree with the comments above,if They charged a 'sensible' amount (Say, $20 annualy) people would probably pay for the use of the service anyway.

 

Cheers,  Pete

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Yep same here. They want $399.99 from me :yikes: At first I thought the email was a scam but they're serious. Ridiculous!

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Same here. :thumbsdown:

So after I had troubles with PB before I will pull the plug and try another hoster. I will try to move my PB pics to Flicker and hope the links will remain. So now I know what I do on the weekend... Was just 150% full so far.

 

 

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It's the old story... get them addicted with a free hit, then start charging as they get addicted.  The price plans seem a little steep though, so this could spell the end of PB as a widely used resource, although it was heading that way anyway with one thing and another switching people off in droves.  When you think about it though, they've been providing a "free" service now for how many years?  Think of the cost of the server farm and storage that must be being used across the globe, which must be massive, as well as massively expensive.  I'm surprised they've managed to make ends meet as it is... maybe this is their grand plan to get into the black for once? :shrug:

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6 hours ago, stevehnz said:

Quite a lot of discussion about it on this thread. Nothing but extortion to my mind.

Steve.

 

Greedy grab for cash - nothing short of ransomware. Maybe they noticed all the money that recent ransomers weren't making and thought "Your beauty, we can do this too." :hypnotised:

 

 

6 hours ago, John Laidlaw said:

I am beginning to form the opinion they're trying to put themselves out of business, simply because no-one in their right mind would do this to make money.

 

I can foresee large numbers of former users beating a hasty retreat as fast as their little legs can carry them. Guaranteed money-loser. Perhaps the owners got bored and decided to go out with a bang.


Even more :hypnotised:

 

PB is going to be even less popular around here now, it already having been on the nose for some time.

 

Ouch.

 

Ah, I see lots of people have beaten me to the punch.

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48 minutes ago, morty_3333 said:

 

Wholeheartedly agree with the comments above,if They charged a 'sensible' amount (Say, $20 annualy) people would probably pay for the use of the service anyway.

 

Cheers,  Pete

Completely agree, it they had communicated prior to & come up with a reasonable charge, I'd have probably stayed with them, I've never really had any of the hassles others have reported here, but, as it is, stuff them.

16 minutes ago, Mike said:

It's the old story... get them addicted with a free hit, then start charging as they get addicted.  The price plans seem a little steep though, so this could spell the end of PB as a widely used resource, although it was heading that way anyway with one thing and another switching people off in droves.  When you think about it though, they've been providing a "free" service now for how many years?  Think of the cost of the server farm and storage that must be being used across the globe, which must be massive, as well as massively expensive.  I'm surprised they've managed to make ends meet as it is... maybe this is their grand plan to get into the black for once? :shrug:

I think they could have come up with a far more sensible "business model", as it is, this reeks of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs & I can but hope their new business model implodes on them. ( Spiteful, me, nah! :D )

Steve.

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24 minutes ago, Caerbannog said:

Same here. :thumbsdown:

So after I had troubles with PB before I will pull the plug and try another hoster. I will try to move my PB pics to Flicker and hope the links will remain. So now I know what I do on the weekend... Was just 150% full so far.

 

 

 

I might be wrong, but I think that you will have to change all your links once you have started copying things to, e.g., Flickr or wherever. I suspect that that is one of the things that BP (deliberate spoonerism) are banking on. If Flickr did that to me I would be off like a shot, despite 99 % of my snaps being on their servers.

 

A phrase from HHGTTG describing Sirius Cybernetics Corporation springs immediately to mind. 

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Only had my rude awakening just now. I've received an email from PB about their new TaC's but dismissed it as Phishing/Spam as I could not only not imagine that PB would do such a thing (from $0 to $400????) and the email also had spelling mistakes, common with the usual ransom/phishing/bogus emails I receive all the time.

But no, it's a reality!! I can't believe it - I've only used PB for posting images on forums, nothing else, that was the only reason and they've killed it!

 

I really haven't got the time to re-upload all my images to a different hosting service and then change all the links in all my past postings on three or four modelling forums for about 10 years, that's madness. So along with many many other posts, a lot of material is lost from the web - I bet a lot of valuable research material too....

 

So people are recommending Village Photo?

 

Jeffrey

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14 minutes ago, AlexN said:

 

A phrase from HHGTTG describing Sirius Cybernetics Corporation springs immediately to mind. 

Was it this one?

"A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." :D

Steve.

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51 minutes ago, JeffreyK said:

 

So people are recommending Village Photo?

 

Jeffrey

I tried Imgur and VP yesterday.Of the two I found VP easier to use once I'd got the hang of it.

 

Oddly enough I found both to be a little more chaotic than PB in terms of organising subfolders and linking the size of image into the post I'm making.I spent a good portion of yesterday reworking the photos in my Attacker build in the Made in Britain GB.

 

Link here but you don't have to look if you don't want to artificially raise the number of views.

I've left the images as I was able to post them as a point of reference for my use so that I can remember what I did for which result.

 

I can understand PB wanting to make a few quid but it's a bit of a sharp way of doing it.

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Well, if they're that determined to go out of business....

 I used to have a paid account that I ended because they wouldn't stop playing around with the features, which made things slow, unstable and never worked at all on my iPad. I know I was just one of many at the time, judging by the angry mob with pitchforks on their Facebook page.

 I have literally thousands of photos on there, but I guess I'm just going to have to download the lot of them and re-up somewhere else. Still, I'd rather do that than hand over another penny.

 

Cheers,

Mark.

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2 hours ago, Mike said:

It's the old story... get them addicted with a free hit, then start charging as they get addicted.  The price plans seem a little steep though, so this could spell the end of PB as a widely used resource, although it was heading that way anyway with one thing and another switching people off in droves.  When you think about it though, they've been providing a "free" service now for how many years?  Think of the cost of the server farm and storage that must be being used across the globe, which must be massive, as well as massively expensive.  I'm surprised they've managed to make ends meet as it is... maybe this is their grand plan to get into the black for once? :shrug:

 

you underestimate how much moneys in the ad revenue.....think your find they made plenty down the years 

 

anyway well done PB just made every WIP RFI and GB gallery thread dead 

Edited by PhantomBigStu
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3 hours ago, Mike said:

 

It's the old story... get them addicted with a free hit, then start charging as they get addicted. 

 

That's my concern about the other free hosting sites - what's their long term business plan? 

 

I remember when Microsoft seemed happy for multiple PC to be running the same copy of Windows. That worked out well for us didn't it.

Edited by Gorbygould
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3 hours ago, morty_3333 said:

Hi there!

Just got the Email from them Myself,so I came on to ask if Anybody else had heard about this or it was a scam.

 

I joined PB to post images to Hyperscale as it was Their default/recognised photo host, and did pay a small upgrade fee once,but not been asked to renew.

 

Is it possible to post pics to Britmodeller via another host,and if so,can anyone recommend one? (Flickr mentioned above,not had any dealings with them.)

 

Wholeheartedly agree with the comments above,if They charged a 'sensible' amount (Say, $20 annualy) people would probably pay for the use of the service anyway.

 

Cheers,  Pete

As with Pete,I paid I think about £18 a couple of years ago as my bandwidth was full as a one off and never had any other payment requests and 

my account has never gone to more than 10% full,this is a pain not somuch for old post's but current WIP'S,GB's etc,I have a Flikr account which I

set up a few months ago when PB was playing up but could I hell work out how to post picture's!

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Just looking over some of the posts across BM this has wiped out a load of folk's work no doubt mine will follow soon I wonder when it happen's

wether it's possible for the Mods to wipe a member's archive it seems pointless to have them without photo's and would free up a lot of space on

the server.

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26 minutes ago, stevej60 said:

wether it's possible for the Mods to wipe a member's archive it seems pointless to have them without photo's and would free up a lot of space on

the server.

 

I think there's going to be quite a few threads rendered useless by their rather stupid actions, and it's going to wee-wee a lot of folks off.  While we're loathed to just delete photo-threads will-nilly before people have had chance to edit them to replace the pics (some of you do like to keep your build photos online), we will have to think about whether these thread are now a burden on the site.  The space isn't a massive problem, as it's only the text between the words that gets put in the database, but if the threads are useless, maybe we'll have a cull in a few months time (providing they don't have a change of mind due to the backlash).  We shall see.  It might be that we ask folks to report threads that are "dead" sometime down the line.  We'll see.

 

In the meantime, make sure you let PB's support people know that they've really hacked you all off.  You might be able to get them to reverse their decision at least a little, and if you all shout loud enough, it might dawn on them that they're risking losing potential advertising or smaller fees for maintenance.  Who knows? :shrug:  Got to be worth a try :) Imagine you lot multiplied by millions of sites and other people around the world, all bitching at them! :lol:

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7 minutes ago, Mike said:

A quick test of my long dormant PB account that I used to create the old FAQs:

 

Front.jpg

Eh?  Why's it letting me do it now? :hmmm:

 Because they still do give you a pathetic amount of free bandwidth (apparently). Once it's viewed a few times it'll also go the same way.

Edited by Avgas
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Ah right... thanks for the clarification.  I haven't looked at the details due to my own lack of reliance on their service. :hmmm:  I wonder how long before that pic goes away?  What's the allowance BTW?

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