Has anyone else noticed that Photobucket is ruining our forums? And nearly every other forum on the Web?
Photobucket is the largest image hosting site in the world. They host billions and billions of images for millions and millions of customers. Most for free with an ad-supported model.
Just last week Photobucket decided to change their policy on "third party hosting". For example, uploading an image to be viewed on a third-party website - like ths one. Suddenly that's not allowed. And countless images on the web have disappeared only to be replaced by:
Look familiar?
I noticed this the other day when browsing Allen Henderson's great thread "Reference: Tool Rolls & Contents". The thread is missing many great images and we're all poorer for it. Take a look at page 1.
http://www.early911sregistry.org/for...s-amp-Contents
The good news is that Photobucket didn't delete these images. Oh no. You see, if they did that they'd lose this wonderful opportunity for extortion. All you have to do is pay them the low, low price of $399 per year and they'll show your images once again. Please note my sarcasm here. Photobucket is trying to charge their users $399 per year for an annual service that likely costs them pennies per average account. And, no, I'm not exaggerating.
http://photobucket.com/p500/
In the meantime. I implore each of you who has used Photobucket images on the ESR to help save the valuable content we've all grown to rely on. Yes, it's a pita, but it's better than paying extortionists. Just login to your Photobucklet account, download your images, go back to your old posts here on the ESR, and edit your posts by uploading your images here. If you're dead set on using a 3rd party service, there are others out there including imgur but remember, if they make the same move in the future you'll need to start all over again.
As a temporary workaround, when you see the BS Photobucket image above but you really need to see the original image, Chrome users can right click and select "open image in new tab". It's tedious, and slow, and frustrating, but at least you can see the image on the Photobucket site (for now).
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