Great. Just great.

[serai]

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Photobucket has decided, out of the blue, to hold all their users' photos for ransom. They're now demanding $400 a year for third-party hosting rights, i.e., the ability to post a link to a photo on their site and have the picture itself show up, not just a link. This for literally billions of photos. With no warning whatsoever. What is it with companies just shitting on users' heads like this out of nowhere?

So now I have to go through my accounts and make sure I have copies of everything so I can host the pics elsewhere. Christ, what a pain in the ass. I wonder if this is going to be business as usual from now on - offer a free service, get everyone hooked on it for years, then hit them with exorbitant fees without warning, in hopes they'll bite. Nice.

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Comments

[yeuxdebleu]

I've had a paid Photobucket account for over ten years at an annual cost of $30.something...don't recall the exact figure. My account has to be renewed every July. So far I've heard nothing as to the price so I'm wondering if the HUGE price applies only to people who have had free accounts. If I have to pay $400 when I renew, I'll cancel my account and just use the LJ scrapbook feature. LJ is the only place I ever post photos anyway.

[serai]

I'm not sure when or how they're going to implement the actual change. I'm finding that pics do still show up here and on LJ, but it's spotty - sometimes they don't. And the links seem to work okay on Disqus, so I'm not sure how this is rolling out. I'm still backing up my pics, though, as it'll happen across the board eventually. Also, I'm not gonna keep my pics on a site that rips people off like that, even for "backup".