Photobucket just broke billions of images across the web

[Cruizin]

Not to say I told ya so....
 
But, Since 2003, the popular photo hosting service Photobucket has been letting users upload and host images for free on their servers. They have over 10 billion images stored by 100 million registered users. But now they’re going to start charging, and that means billions of images around the Web are now broken.
 
Hotlinking (AKA inline linking) is when someone takes an image file hosted on a server and embeds it on a different webpage elsewhere. Since the new webpage continuously requests the file from the original source server, it saps the server owner’s bandwidth (and storage space).
 
Photobucket allowed hotlinking photos uploaded to and stored on its servers for a long time. This was their business model, and they made money from ads on their own site, which users would be exposed to when they went to upload content.
 
Now, Photobucket is charging $399 per year for those who want to hotlink images from photobucket to elsewhere, like to forums.
 
I saw this coming last year, and started warning people that 1. Photobucket is not secure and 2. please stop using their pics here and we created the "add image to post" button and connected with a company who allows us to upload photos and hotlink them here.
 
Now, the company we use could at any time go ahead and do the same as photobucket did, and if so we would lose out pics. But I dont see that happening anytime soon.
 
So, when you see this pic, it isn't us. It's photobucket blocking the hotlink.

 
Alot of forum admins dont know what in the hell to do. I got real lucky and found a solution for us months ago.

[DavidS]

I wouldn't call it lucky, and Thanks for watching out for us!

[3banger]

I'm supprised companies like photo bucket haven't found a way to have a small add added to some portion of the linked image. It could even have moto specific content. As much as I hate internet adds they have gotten much better with user relevant content, I have found items I'm really interested in via directed adds on face book and such. Much better then 5 or 10 years ago when it all just seems to be adds for your penis...