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Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

blog.norphil.co.uk

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Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#41

Post by zeveb »

schitzapplebits wrote: post #4
DigitalSea wrote: post #3

I forgot that Photobucket even existed, with far more superior choices like Google Photos and Dropbox existing. This is insane, RIP Photobucket.

What about imgur?

I consider imgur a poor choice because it doesn't work with JavaScript disabled (dunno how Drive, Dropbox or Photobucket do, just that imgur breaks). It's in the business of serving JPEGs and HTML containing tags pointing to JPEGs; to break that HTML such that those JPEGs don't serve is failing to deliver on its core business.

Sure, use JavaScript to implement infinite scrolling or on-demand loading, but fall back to usable pure HTML.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#42

Post by icebraining »

gizmo wrote: post #24
tyingq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably consider it ransom because the terms were changed after the relationship was established. Unlimited linking probably doesn't include embedding. So, if they were on a lower end plan, something that used to be offered was taken away. After they invested time in uploading and embedding lots of images.

Terms are _always_ subject to change. We're talking about 1 dollar per day for image hosting here. These panicky reactions seem totally overblown to me. I don't think this is really about the price as an absolute number. This is more of an emotional reaction about the price changing, which some people feel is fundamentally unfair.

$1/day is not an insignificant amount for a lot of people, especially around the world. Hell, paying anything can be a difficult proposition when you don't have a CC.

Also, that's just for one image hoster. If it catches on, a person who used a few over the years would have to pay thousands per year to avoid losing links.

But you're right that's not just about the money.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#43

Post by pc86 »

tedmiston wrote: post #34
gizmo wrote: post #5

How is this ransom? You just have to pay money to use their service. $35 a month isn't a lot of money for anything remotely serious. Also, photobucket has a $10 a month plan for up to 100GB of image storage that supports "unlimited linking". Most forums won't need more than that. Nothing about this pricing page looks extortionate to me: http://photobucket.com/pricing Maybe I'm missing something important here, but to…

I think the ransom is that people have been using Photobucket to host images posted on forums for 10+ years, often hotlinked. Suddenly all of those historical hotlinks are going to break unless each user pays $400/year. Changing the terms is one thing, but I think OP is upset that old images aren't grandfathered. Also, I know one obvious solution is to just move all of one's images to a new host and edit the posts, b…

If the issue is that the traffic costs money, grandfathering old images doesn't solve the root problem.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#44

Post by endorphone »

gizmo wrote: post #24
tyingq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably consider it ransom because the terms were changed after the relationship was established. Unlimited linking probably doesn't include embedding. So, if they were on a lower end plan, something that used to be offered was taken away. After they invested time in uploading and embedding lots of images.

Terms are _always_ subject to change. We're talking about 1 dollar per day for image hosting here. These panicky reactions seem totally overblown to me. I don't think this is really about the price as an absolute number. This is more of an emotional reaction about the price changing, which some people feel is fundamentally unfair.

Terms are certainly subject to change, however users have a right to feel a bit abused given that this service effectively engaged in a bait and switch -- undercut competitors, get it heavily used and entrenched, apply or increase costs.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#45

Post by cerved »

zeveb wrote: post #41
schitzapplebits wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about imgur?

I consider imgur a poor choice because it doesn't work with JavaScript disabled (dunno how Drive, Dropbox or Photobucket do, just that imgur breaks). It's in the business of serving JPEGs and HTML containing tags pointing to JPEGs; to break that HTML such that those JPEGs don't serve is failing to deliver on its core business. Sure, use JavaScript to implement infinite scrolling or on-demand loading, but fall back to…

I'm confused. Which part doesn't work without js, the hosting or uploading?

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#46

Post by isoskeles »

endorphone wrote: post #44
gizmo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms are _always_ subject to change. We're talking about 1 dollar per day for image hosting here. These panicky reactions seem totally overblown to me. I don't think this is really about the price as an absolute number. This is more of an emotional reaction about the price changing, which some people feel is fundamentally unfair.

Terms are certainly subject to change, however users have a right to feel a bit abused given that this service effectively engaged in a bait and switch -- undercut competitors, get it heavily used and entrenched, apply or increase costs.

Ah, yes, the old ten year long-con bait and switch.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#47

Post by mason240 »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #39

Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts tend to go away after a few years. I would lay money that 90% of posts over 10 years old have broken images. The moral of the story is for forums to host images themselves, but nobody wants to do that because: a) uploading files is annoying to implement and exp…

e) you have to self-police against CP and terrorist groups using your servers to host their illegal content.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#48

Post by endorphone »

isoskeles wrote: post #46
endorphone wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms are certainly subject to change, however users have a right to feel a bit abused given that this service effectively engaged in a bait and switch -- undercut competitors, get it heavily used and entrenched, apply or increase costs.

Ah, yes, the old ten year long-con bait and switch.

I enjoy the sarcasm, but it most certainly is. We see it constantly with services that have no revenue plan and heavily promote entrenchment -- the duration before they start turning the screws will vary in their runway, investors, and how long other ventures can keep it afloat, but it absolutely is a form of bait and switch, and it's endemic in the startup industry.

PG notoriously has stated a number of times that you don't need to even think about revenue, much less income -- just get users. You can do the switch later, whether it's blanketing with ads (see imgur), subscription plans, etc.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#49

Post by tedmiston »

pc86 wrote: post #43
tedmiston wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ransom is that people have been using Photobucket to host images posted on forums for 10+ years, often hotlinked. Suddenly all of those historical hotlinks are going to break unless each user pays $400/year. Changing the terms is one thing, but I think OP is upset that old images aren't grandfathered. Also, I know one obvious solution is to just move all of one's images to a new host and edit the posts, b…

If the issue is that the traffic costs money, grandfathering old images doesn't solve the root problem.

You're right, it doesn't, and the bandwidth of image hosting at that scale clearly costs someone real dollars. It's hard to imagine a good solution to the hotlinked historical images problem.

Maybe a futureproof one is to maintain one's one domain with image urls that redirect to the user's current host. I think this is the best approach for book publishers. It's always frustrating to read references to blog posts etc from a book more than a few years old and then find the links are broken from a third party not maintaining the domain or changing it. Link rot is a real problem we don't talk about much.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#50

Post by jsjohnst »

gizmo wrote: post #20
mpeg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could pay amazon $35 a month for 100GB storage and about 70m hits per month, or 27req/s sustained for your images... At more usual numbers of a few million hits per month, cut that by 10x or so

And a 2nd hand 200GB hard drive from ebay costs 5 bucks. That's not comparable though, because Photobucket offers many image related services. Maybe forum operators aren't interested any of those services and they should be using a dumb storage provider instead.

It's not forum operators using Photobucket. It's the user of the forum.
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