I have used Photobucket to host many of the images that I have used in my posts on British Filipino. There are now many stories circulating on the interweb about Photobucket withdrawing the ability to link to or embed images in forums or other websites unless users subscribe to the $399 (£307) per year "Plus 500 package". My images seem to be working OK for the moment, but that may change soon. Looks like I need to check out a new image host, or change to self hosting. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photobucket-now-charges-399-for-third-party-hosted-images/ + http://www.hobomama.com/2017/06/photobucket-phail-or-how-to-ruin-hosting-site.html
What Dave is doing is probably the best mechanism when it comes to attaching pictures to the forum. Why? Well the most important one is that copying none-personal images is that they may be subject to copyright. If the author of an image allows the image ro be shareable he usually does this via the mechanism of embedding. If we embed images on the forum we are usually safe in the knowledge that the site allowing you to embed is effectively saying you can use this image/video/article. Embedding gives the author (Dave for example) the power to withdraw his images at any time. He has total control. We should all embed all external data if possible especially if it isn't your own content, for the sake of the forums existance. I have removed copyrighted images to save us from being compromised from legal action. If we are subject to cease and desist, we may actually lose the forum. The updated rules suggest using embedding.
You paste a picture into a post and it ends up on our server and uses our disk space plus it might be copyrighted and then we are liable because it is on our paid for space and paid for hardware. You paste a link to a picture into a post then the picture is on someone else's computer, not yours and not ours, it stays where you found it but appears here as a reference to another website. Picture -> Copy and Paste = Stealing (most of the time) Link -> Copy and Paste = Not Stealing (as long as you give attribution to the source) I'm not getting at you BigMac, just making it as simple as possible for folk to understand. The majority of pictures I post here are on my Flickr account, that is space that I pay for to allow me to host my pictures in the cloud, when I post here I post links, this web site takes that link and makes it appear like the picture is here but it isn't, Dave is using another very well known service to achieve the same result.
Yep as Jim says no blame here just a heads-up really. In the past I have pasted but good practice says embed is the best way. Disk space is also an important consideration. The server is then saving just 50 characters or so, much less than saving a pasted image.
Funny in a crazy kind of way. It potentially affects so many websites, personal blogs, and web forums.
Me I pay for my hosting services, indeed my next 2 year subscription is due in August, this time at 60 quid or more a lot more expensive than it used to be but still worth it.
Yeah some will be affected far more than others though, I don't think it will be a huge problem here but I've not scanned the database for Photobucket URL's yet.
If I were you, I would make sure I had a full offline backup of my account because when a company does something like this it does, as the BBC article says, imply that they might be in deeper trouble. After all servers and storage farms don't run on free electricity!
I don't use Photobucket for anything other than the occasional image in forum posts, fortunately. Web hosting, image hosting, or online storage?
Image hosting and effectively online storage. Flickr is limited in that you cannot store RAW files and it won't render them either (at least last time I checked). I keep my best shots in my paid Flickr account, the 60 quid one although it looks like it will be closer to 80 quid for 2 years this time (exchange rate changes) but most of my account is private these days, it acts as secondary storage. I keep my entire photographic history on 4 disks 2TB each (the disks are close to being mirrors) plus I have another online encrypted storage account that stores a full upload of 700GB worth of photography (RAW and JPEG copies) to online storage, HaloHalo introduced me to that service they are called SpiderOak. I also have all of my Philippine photography, mostly family shots over the years, stored in a second free Flickr account (again JPEG) and another free Flickr account in which I store yet another copy of most of my photography. They are not all up to date but the important stuff is on at least 2 disks in two locations and in SpiderOak. Oh I forgot there is another backup on a 2 TB disk in the Philippines.
