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Amazon and eBay Images Broken By Photobucket's 'Ransom Demand' (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the whoa dept.

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.

4 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Too much. $10 a month- folks would have paid by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:Too much. $10 a month- folks would have paid by Luthair · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its actually shocking that Amazon allows hosting images offsite.

  3. Re:Can't Blame Them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or perhaps images uploaded get increased by X/Y pixels which are filled with an ad. Really isn't that hard to accomplish.

  4. Re:Your daily reminder of the risks of 'Teh Cloud. by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    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.