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Amazon and eBay Images Broken By Photobucket's 'Ransom Demand' (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Thousands of images promoting goods sold on Amazon and other shopping sites have been removed after a photo-sharing service changed its terms. Ebay and Etsy have also been affected, in addition to many forums and blogs. The problem has been caused by Photobucket introducing a charge for allowing images hosted on its platform to be embedded into third-party sites. The company caught many of its members unaware with the change, prompting some to accuse it of holding them to ransom. Denver-based Photobucket is now seeking a $399 annual fee from those who wish to continue using it for "third-party hosting" and is facing a social media backlash as a consequence.
Why the fuck would you use a third-party service to host your products/auctions images instead of using Amazon or eBay?
#DeleteFacebook
"Host your own data! Eschew 'The Cloud'!"
Be careful when choosing to host images via Someone Else's System. If you're not paying them, they've got some other business plan going on, and it may not be to every end user's advantage.
But $399 a year, someone will just develop a new technique.
However, Amazon should provide free cloud hosting for any image being hosted to one of it's sites.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Its hard to really blame Photobucket, if the images are embedded everywhere then they have no opportunity to show ads and fund servers. People using them for commercial purposes have no justification for complaints other than lack of notice.
Even imgur isn't this retarded with their changes.
Yeah the "no free lunch" argument. Unlike the popular meme there are actually many free lunches (really free) yesterday and today but don't expect it to last if overused. Even someone that genuinely want to provide a free service will get problems when the costs for providing it exceeds some limit.
Not that this is an example of the above - this is just another company that tries to get some money.
Its actually shocking that Amazon allows hosting images offsite.
...to think it's the only game in town. Huh.
Using an argument other than you believe so, why?
...That they didn't change all the images to a link to your competitor who did pay.
Bull, if you have an e-commerce site making even $1,000 a day, it's not worth the downtime to switch.
Now, you may wanna switch because you cannot afford the downtime if they raise prices again and you don't notice, but the $280/yr savings, while real, aren't worth fucking up a well-oiled machine.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
...oh wait, they didn't actually pay for the service they were using.
Should those other sales sites provide image storage and make that available to other sales sites not associated with them?
Should any of these sites provide image storage to all 3rd party sites for free?
"its on the interwebz, it should be FREE! cuz data WANTS to be FREE!"
However, Amazon should provide free cloud hosting for any image being hosted to one of it's sites.
And Google should provide better search engine visibility to sites hosted on the Google Cloud Platform.
While both seem to be sensible ideas at first, the side-effects will probably be undesirable. Not to mention the risk of anti-competition accusations and related fines.
Although if it's not promotion of S3 but a feature of the service (e.g. allow uploading pictures with product description in the Amazon shop itself), it would probably be fine.
Good to see the free market correcting itself. Photobucket is completely in the right here. Companies exist to make money, not give stuff away for free.
Here's hoping Trump can get rid of that Net Neutrality crap that has been hindering ISP progress lately too.
Think of it as basically, using other peoples services is a goatse image in waiting.
I don't have many issues with someone charging for what has effectively been free hosting. However, the last time I was there Photobucket looked like a giant clusterfuck. 'You need to enable javascript to view the image even though it's already been loaded in the background and we're just not showing it', etc.
If photobucket tries anything too extreme to make money, they're going to be dumped in favor of literally any other service that isn't completely awful.
Wow, dumb move. Bye bye photobucket. There are a billion sites ready to take your place for free.
You don't have any idea what "no free lunch" means, do you?
Somebody, somewhere always has to pay for that "free lunch". The person eating it may not have to pay (be it money, time, effort, whatever), but someone always has to.
What's to stop them from adding a logo or ad banner directly onto the image so that, for example, the bottom 1/4 of the embedded image contains "Hosted by Photobucket, and sponsored by..."
If Ebay or Etsy have an issue with that, they can easily prevent embedded images from Photobucket in posts on their site and force their users to utilize another service.
Every time I hear or see someone talk about 'The Cloud', I make certain to remind them (or explain to them) that 'The Cloud' is literally nothing more than someone else's computer.
By putting your stuff (whatever it is) on 'someone else's computer' you are trusting that, they will respect your privacy, not mess with or copy your data, and when they eventually lose interest in keeping your data for you (and they will, someday) that they give you the warning and opportunity to get your data back before they turn off their computer.
It was fun while you lasted. Too bad you now want money, but luckily, you have inspired many copycats.
NEXT!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For non-eBay stuff, I just used a spare Google Blogspot/Blogger account to host my images, and never had issues, but somehow I can't picture that working so well for sites like eBay.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Awe... it's so cute!
What? Tanstafl refers to the former custom in New York of the "free lunch" counters which lasted a surprisingly long time.
Because it costs Amazon virtually nothing and it is in their best interest to both make things easy for their vendors (more $ for Amazon) and stop those vendors from using outside hosting services (less $ for competitors to AWS). Win-win. Not everything is a zero-sum game.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
but but everything should be free!
servers are free!
programmers are free!
IT support is free!
BUT I DEMAND $15/HR TO FLIP BURGERS
I believe eBay now self-hosts the images that show in the image side, but allow linking to external images in the listing itself. (So you have to post an image on eBay's system in order for the listing to have an image where people expect it).
And hotlinking of other people's images isn't an uncommon thing. I've seen many websites relink their photos because some idiot on eBay hotlinks the images. So what they do is simply replace the hotlinked image with something else and relink the image in their text with it.
And I've seen images changed from the item to clearly broken versions of the item (with the auction claiming "works!" but the screen is cracked, for example), to missing pieces (for "complete!" items, but now the image is missing a charger or other accessory), to goat porno and worse.
Believe it or not, advertising existed (in fact, flourished) before there were "clicks". Billboards don't have eyeball counters and attempts to measure exposure to print, radio & TV ads via circulation/ratings are primitive at best.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Stop using photobucket. That's what they want anyway. It takes all of 2 mins to find somewhere else to host your images.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's sad that I can no longer tell the difference between sarcastic anti-Trump posts and sincere pro-Trump posts. We live in a post-sarcasm world.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I am not an "internet entrepreneur", but from the outside this appears like a suicidal business plan. Was this the plan from the beginning? Get everybody "hooked" with "free" hosting and then, when it was embedded everywhere, try to extort an arm and a leg? Or did they try it as it was, then finally panic as they started to run out of VC, and this is their reaction? Or are they doing this to cause a problem, wait for the obvious and inevitable backlash, then are going to come back in a week and say "we heard you, we are sorry, its $50 out of the goodness of our hearts"?
In any case, it's hard to believe that anyone at Photobucket thinks they are getting the $400; if so, they fundamentally misunderstand the market. The mere fact they asked for it is just going to piss everybody off and there are plenty of others willing to offer the same for far less.
People still use Photobucket? I would have though everyone would have switched to Imgur by now.
The free lunch counters (with steak, oysters and similarly luxurious items, no less) were more of a thing in SF during the gold rush years as a way to lure flush miners, etc. into bars to spend their money on inflated price drinks. Kimda like the "free" buffets at modern strip joints. Mark Twain writes about "free lunch men" who abused these arrangements by not buying any drinks, ultimately leading to their demise (and the saying).
You'll have to wait a bit. They're waiting for free time to use the electron microscope before they can start.
I don't begrudge photobucket the ability to make money, but their asking price is completely outrageous when e.g. Flickr only costs 25 bucks a year for unlimited storage. That they waited until users had become completely dependent on the free service, then suddenly priced it through the roof, is exactly the kind of predatory and anticompetitive behavior that /. hates about MS, but for some reason, it's OK in this case.
There is no cloud -- it's just someone else's computer
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Wild cows, buffalo, etc eat grass for free.
Wild wolves and lions eat them.
Nine of them are ever buying anything with currency.
If you want to redefine "not free" to include respiration, oxidation and the like, then no shit. You aren't adding anything to the discussion. If some one says they can use dollars anywhere, or their boat let's them sail anywhere, they aren't referring to the rings of Saturn. Pointing out it doesn't work on Saturn doesn't add anything to the discussion to anyone who isn't a i sane nitpicker.
If they think forcing people to pay when there's hundreds of other free services (and better paid services, especially for that price), they are very wrong.
At $400 per year, you could literally get a cheap, low capacity server(images don't take a lot of space after all), for much less, to host ALL yours images just fine. Not to mention, many low capacity web hosts offer the service, for free.
Now everything is "randomware" or "terrorism", if not "anti-trust" if someone doesn't read their agreements. Sounds again like Idiots and sour grapes, such as the STUPID article about DummyCraps and ATT arbitration clause, even though EVERY major company in the industry does the same thing. (T-Mobile is NOT a major player but a joke!)
Ironic post.
The difference between The Cloud and "someone Else's server" for those in the cloud business is that the cloud is made clear and obvious,by the signing of terms and exchanging of monies. Just like back in the days of hosting it was made clear by the same. If I host family and friend via "someone else server" aka ME, that doesn't make me The Cloud any more than giving family and friends a ride makes me a taxi service.
I'm very surprised that no one has yet mentioned a site like Imgur as an alternative.
... or a close equivalent. Nowadays, billboard operators identify the mobile phones that pass each billboard, and do correlations with mobile phones that are detected soon afterward in the advertiser's brick-and-mortar store: http://clearchanneloutdoor.com...
If you don't want the images you post somewhere to stop working, don't use photo bucket.
Why is that important?
"Kill yourself. Kill yourself now. This is not a joke"
Since when has photobucket *not sucked* as an image hoster? Weren't they the inspiration behind imgur?
Sure people should pay for their own bandwidth. They could have switched people over to a different service at the time of upload rather than pulling the plug midstream on many people.
Servers aren't free. Bandwidth isn't free. Energy isn't free.
If you don't want to pay an image hosting service, then roll your own server and pay for everything yourself. See how much you save.
If you have only static content, then GitHub is a really awesome solution.
I thought GitHub required that your static content be under a license for free cultural works. I know any GitHub user is allowed to fork your repository.
I agree. If your business is making even $250,000 a year profit, you probably don't care.
But I actually know some people who do amazon and make under $50k a year. Lotta small businesses out there.
Had a talk about cloud stuff today with a friend who works at HP and he said intel and hp have both done studies which showed using cloud is profitable to about 6 months- past 6 months, it is better to take it in house.
So just to be clear, i was talking about smaller businesses and start ups.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Therefore I run my own server. Then it's only my problem to keep it up and I don't have to depend on the availability of other services.
Of course I don't have redundant internet connections so there are some limits there. But I can live with that.
Well for amazon, it's a cost of doing business.
Past there, it's all a matter of bandwidth.
If an image is accessed twice a year- it is no big deal. If you serve it a million times per hour, bandwidth matters.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Ah, poor little multi billion dollar multinational companies can't afford $399/year... boo hoo hoo!
Dat makes me sooo saaaadddd... :'-(
Photobucket used to be so good, and now its going down the drain. Reminds me how imageshack died.
So, a real-life example of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
You've been using the Dunning-Kruger effect in a lot of posts recently. Did you just discover it and can't help but see it everywhere? Or are you simply a one-trick pony?
lucm, indeed.