Image Hosting - for direct linking

[DELTAprime]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned in this thread the price Photobucket wants for their "service". $400USD PER YEAR

People are calling it the "Photobucket Ransom". It's screwing over lots of people.

[DarkHyren]

lol, it could only be a ransom if there weren't other image hosts out there, people are over reacting about this big time.
It could be a lot worse, when imageshack pulled the same sort of thing they made their whole service pay to play and removed the ability for free users to even access/download their photos.
At least for now it seems photobucket users can still link to their pictures and download them even if they cant embed them on other sites, though that will probably go next.
I dont really disagree with them charging ebay sellers and online stores for image embedding since it is using their server bandwidth and all and when the service was for personal use not business, but I dont agree with the way they're handling the matter.
Then again I never liked photobucket anyway, that's why when imageshack changed into a pay site I picked imgur

[Thurmus]

Just deleted my Photobucket account as I only use it to post photos here. Will start looking around but any suggestions greatly received.

[MV75]

After 11 years as a member, not anymore, finally deleted the account. They can suck it. I really hope their planned flip of the site to a big corp fails as people leave instead of pay them.

[UltraMarginal]

I've been using photobucket less and less over the last 2 years as the mobile and not-mobile sites get slower and more flash and advertisement filled. to the point now where I haven't shared photos on here in several months.

Imgur you say. I might have to give it a go.

[Tober]

I'm using flickr now that Photobucket is dead to me.

[1AZRAEL1]

I wasn't even aware of the Photobucket scandal until I saw it mentioned in the acquisitions thread. Time to login, take my photos back down and delete my account. I'll admit, it's been a very long time since I've even uploaded anything to them.

I have Imgur on my phone, which is what I've used most recently. I'll use that unless it turns to crap too

[Borgeman]

lol, it could only be a ransom if there weren't other image hosts out there, people are over reacting about this big time.

Its being called ransom because while you can still downloads pics, any of your pics that were actively in use/embedded elsewhere were also being blocked in your photobucket library, with the idea that you HAD to pay to get those back. That was the case with the 2 pics that used to be in my sig below.

However once i stopped using them here, I checked a couple of days later and they became visible again in my photobucket library and I downloaded them.

[Megatran]

What does this mean for the First Sightings for Australia thread? Pics or it didn't happen.

[DarkHyren]

Its being called ransom because while you can still downloads pics, any of your pics that were actively in use/embedded elsewhere were also being blocked in your photobucket library, with the idea that you HAD to pay to get those back

Did not know that as I dont have a PB account, but at least people can get their pictures back after stopping sharing. To this day I still cant get any of my imageshack pictures back which is part of the reason I always keep backups now.
But I still think that most people are over reacting, and that the majority that are tossing a tanty over it in the news are ebay sellers trying to make profit off PBs bandwidth for no cost.
As I said, I understand why they are doing this I just dont agree with the way that they have handled it.

As for other free hosts I know people that used to swear by http://tinypic.com/ so if anyone wants to look into them it's another option, other then that I dont know much about the other image hosts out there.

Perhaps another option could be hosting your pictures on your facebook pages (or we could make a page for otca pictures?) and link to those, not sure of FBs terms in regards to hotlinking pictures hosted on their site but if those pictures are only shared here it might be an option as it's not for profit and would fall under personal use