Bail out of Photobucket

[DerVVulfman]

I'm sure many in the community is aware of this by now.  And if you're not, you may wish to take action fairly soon.  Because as it stands, Photobucket is no longer a file-sharing site one can use for hot-linking images within the internet community, but merely a file storage and commercial sales site.

For our readers of the What's on your Mind topic, Bounty Hunter Lani found her existing Photobucket account locked because she hot-linked a fair number of images within other sites.  Until now, hot-linking was fully permitted by Photobucket, and was even encouraged as they had provided urls for direct links, emails and other embeds.  That has now changed.

New terms have come into play and Photobucket now 'encourages' its users to pay an unseemly $399 annual fee to allow one to use their hot-linking service.  Thousands of accounts are now affected and all of their links are broken.  While their accounts still retain their files, they can do nothing but see an image telling its customers that they used them too much for 3rd party hosting.  Even those using Amazon, eBay and Etsy have been affected, finding their product's images now replaced with a gray and white Photobucket warning.

Many have found this sudden $400 fee unacceptable, seeing it as a ransom.  

Don't believe me?  Check out the reviews at :

Needless to say, users of Photobucket may be looking to find other sites to use for their image filesharing services.