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Photobucket

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Chris_R
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Photobucket

Post by Chris_R »

Last week, Photobucket quietly updated their terms and conditions and introduced subscription rates for 3rd party web hosting and image linking.
Many DLOC forum members have used Photobucket to store an image and then place in their DLOC forum posting a link to the image on Photobucket.
This is defined by Photobucket as 3rd party hosting and this now infringes the new terms and conditions announced by Photobucket on 28th June unless you, the Photobucket member, pay a subscription fee of $399 per year to allow your image to be displayed on a 3rd party website i.e. a forum.
The current forum allows images to be uploaded directly to the forum. Forum members should only use this feature and should not link to Photobucket images in forum posts.
The old forum made extensive use of inserting a <img> tag to link to images on Photobucket. Accessing any of these images via the old forum will infringe the new terms and conditions for the Photobucket member and Photobucket will attempt to charge the member the fee that permits 3rd party web hosting. If any Photobucket member has paid for ad-free membership then Photobucket will have your payment details on file and will charge $399 to those details. If the member declines to pay, the member will have infringed the terms and conditions and their Photobucket membership will be terminated.

Can the forum administrator look into copying any images linked from the old forum to a DLOC server and then updating the links in the forum postings so that the images are preserved.

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Re: Photobucket

Post by Vortex O'Plinth »

This change has hit a great many forums and in the eyes of some effectively amounts to ransomware on the part of Photobucket. Many illustrative posts are now rendered meaningless with the disappearance of the images. Interestingly in any posts where the URL of the Photobucket image has been used rather than the IMG link, the image is still accessible.

As Chris points out, this forum allows direct uploading of pictures, although this facility is limited I believe to five pictures per post? Since the pictures in this case are hosted directly on the forum server they obviously consume more space than an IMG link, where the image itself is hosted by Photobucket. There are still picture hosting websites that allow free third party hosting - flickr being one example - although how long it will be before they follow Photoshop's example is anyone's guess. Using these can still be useful if you want to add more than five images to a post and it avoids clogging up the forum server with large picture files.
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Re: Photobucket

Post by John-B »

That's very interesting information. If you remember, there were a lot of discussions about importing data from the old forum into the new forum before direct access to the old forum was restored.

Neither John Hitchings or myself can import data from the old forum except by laboriously taking screen images.

Since the photobucket photos are just a link to photobucket's site, transferring posts from there to the new forum will just transfer the link and no advantage would be gained. Opening each photobucket link and copying the image would take ages and uploading photos directly to the old forum isn't possible. One solution is for the member posting photobucket photos on the old forum to upload a post again here with his photos directly uploaded, so each member would have to decide which old posts were important and repeat them here. Quite a long job.

I'll draw the attention of bakerp to this issue as he has overall control of both forums.

I'm not quite sure whether you mean that the photobucket links on the old forum would incur a charge if accessed by a viewer or if it only applies to a new photobucket link. Are you saying that to avoid a charge all photobucket links on the old forum should be deleted? (Or perhaps only those where a member has disclosed his bank details to photobucket.) Deleting links can probably be done as a whole by bakerp. There must be millions of photobucket links on websites worldwide. Perhaps photobucket will delete them automatically.

Edit: I didn't see Nick's post. This link
http://archive.dloc.co.uk/forum/topic.a ... C_ID=19182
on the old forum has a photobucket IMG link for Hellenic Motor Museum and is still visible there and in IMG tags here
Image

Vortex O'Plinth
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Re: Photobucket

Post by Vortex O'Plinth »

John-B wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 11:38 am I'm not quite sure whether you mean that the photobucket links on the old forum would incur a charge if accessed by a viewer or if it only applies to a new photobucket link. Are you saying that to avoid a charge all photobucket links on the old forum should be deleted? (Or perhaps only those where a member has disclosed his bank details to photobucket.) Deleting links can probably be done as a whole by bakerp. There must be millions of photobucket links on websites worldwide. Perhaps photobucket will delete them automatically.
If you try to view any existing Photobucket IMG link in a forum, this is what you see...
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (22.85 KiB) Viewed 2076 times
...and clicking on it will reveal nothing. To restore the image the original Photobucket subscriber who posted it will have to 'upgrade' his Photobucket account by paying the $399 - every year! There is no liability on the forum hosting the IMG link to remove them or to pay any charge - the image can only be 'freed' by the original poster. It will be impossible to post future IMG links without paying the account upgrade fee. In the absence of everyone who's ever posted a Photobucket IMG link regularly coughing up the $399, the image above is likely to remain in most posts for a very long time.

At the moment not all user accounts have been addressed by Photobucket, so some IMG images are still visible - expect these to disappear over the coming weeks.
Nick

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Re: Photobucket

Post by Chris_R »

John, I wrote at the time of the migration to the new forum and informed you all of a service that would have imported all the data from the old forum to the new one at a cost of a few hundred dollars. Sadly either that was not communicated to the board or the board declined to act on that. You don't need to open each image, it is possible to make a script to do it. Another forum I subscribe to had already by 1st July copied all the images (more than 10 years worth) from Photobucket to their server. It only took a few hours to get a script to pick out all the image data and copy the images and a new script will update all forum posts to point at the new image location. It can all be done, quite easily, with the right technical knowledge.

Where a forum posting has a <img> link to Photobucket, these no longer work. I thought I made it explicitly clear that the charge is levied on the Photobucket member who registered with Photobucket and uploaded the image to their library. It is an annual fee for the right to have their image displayed on another website i.e. forum. There is no charge on the viewer and no charge on the website where the image is displayed.

I have no idea how Photobucket are dealing with this but I imagine that viewing a forum post which has a link to a Photobucket image potentially exposes the DLOC member that uploaded that image to Photobucket to a $399 charge since as of 28th June that Photobucket member will be infringing the new terms and conditions by allowing their image to be hosted by a 3rd party website. For example, I have made many forum postings and on the old forum I used Photobucket quite often. The way I read it is that if any DLOC forum user browses one of my posts with a link to a Photobucket image that Photobucket will want to charge me $399 (good luck with that!) because my image is being displayed on a 3rd party website and I have not subscribed for that service, therefore my membership of Photobucket now infringes their terms and conditions of use.

This change has disrupted many thousands of forums worldwide, there are many 10s if not 100s of millions of links on websites around the world. Photobucket will not delete the images, when you upload an image to Photobucket ownership of that image is given in perpetuity to Photobucket to use, copy sell or otherwise manipulate as they see fit. Only by the Photobucket member specifically deleting the image from the Photobucket servers will the image be deleted.

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Re: Photobucket

Post by John-B »

Chris_R wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:20 pm John, I wrote at the time of the migration to the new forum and informed you all of a service that would have imported all the data from the old forum to the new one at a cost of a few hundred dollars. Sadly either that was not communicated to the board or the board declined to act on that. You don't need to open each image, it is possible to make a script to do it. Another forum I subscribe to had already by 1st July copied all the images (more than 10 years worth) from Photobucket to their server. It only took a few hours to get a script to pick out all the image data and copy the images and a new script will update all forum posts to point at the new image location. It can all be done, quite easily, with the right technical knowledge.
When the old forum access was restored, all thoughts of importing data were forgotten (and the board didn't want to spend any money.)

You say that a script can open all photobucket links and copy them, but you also say that it's too late!

It looks as if we are back to the original scenario of each member identifying his important posts on the archive and recreating them here with images directly uploaded. It is true that the forum has a limit of four images per post to stop a single post having hundreds of images. However, I have noticed that after Lightbox was installed, you can show more than four, but I think it depends on the way you do it. Directly uploaded images seem to be unlimited, but those in IMG links from external sources are still limited (I think).

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Re: Photobucket

Post by Chris_R »

John-B wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:35 pm
You say that a script can open all photobucket links and copy them, but you also say that it's too late!
No, what I meant was that you as a person don't have to open each image and do it manually, you can get a script to gather the information needed for each image and to do the required work. Exactly how that would do it I don't know, from the evidence on the other forum it can be done. The images are still on Photobucket and can be browsed directly by any user. Whether it is too late or not now I don't know. What I have read is that forums around the world are busy reworking to overcome the problem. If the DLOC does nothing (like it did with migrating the old forum) then no doubt it will become too late.
Or Photobucket will perform an ignominious climb down, I also read that Photobucket have had no new subscribers since they announced the new policy!
Last edited by Chris_R on Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Vortex O'Plinth
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Re: Photobucket

Post by Vortex O'Plinth »

John-B wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:35 pm It is true that the forum has a limit of four images per post to stop a single post having hundreds of images. However, I have noticed that after Lightbox was installed, you can show more than four, but I think it depends on the way you do it. Directly uploaded images seem to be unlimited, but those in IMG links from external sources are still limited (I think).
It seems to be the other way round for me John. I can still only load four pictures direct to any post, but the number of web hosted IMG links it will accept seems unlimited.
Last edited by Vortex O'Plinth on Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Photobucket

Post by John-B »

I uploaded six here
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2258 using the Attachments and Add menu

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Re: Photobucket

Post by John-B »

Chris_R wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:56 pm
John-B wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:35 pm
You say that a script can open all photobucket links and copy them, but you also say that it's too late!
No, what I meant was that you as a person don't have to open each image and do it manually, you can get a script to gather the information needed for each image and to do the required work. Exactly how that would do it I don't know, from the evidence on the other forum it can be done. The images are still on Photobucket and can be browsed directly by any user. Whether it is too late or not now I don't know. What I have read is that forums around the world are busy reworking to overcome the problem. If the DLOC does nothing (like it did with migrating the old forum) then no doubt it will become too late.
Or Photobucket will perform an ignominious climb down, I also read that Photobucket have had no new subscribers since they announced the new policy!
Oh, I get it now. Access photobucket directly via a browser and you can still see the image, but via a 3rd party link you can't, so you script on direct links.
I've emailed peterb, as John Hitchings and I can't do anything anyway.
What photobucket should do is to allow all previous links to work and just charge for the future - and $399pa seems far too much. Are sure it's not a wind-up as it seems very unfair?

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