Photobucket Finds Head, Removes From Ass

So I was pleasantly - and profoundly - surprised to discover all my broken photo links were restored both here on RBE and on my Obsidian Portal campaign wiki. Apparently last year's attempt to extort users for $400.00 in fees annually to link to photos from a third-party website cost the CEO his job. The charge dropped to a more modest thirty bucks a year for two gigs of storage, third-party linking, and no more intrusive, speed-sucking ads.

I have no idea if this strategy will keep Photobucket solvent - they claims tens of millions of users, but how many of those actively use their accounts? - in an online environment very different from the one in which the company, and the concept of photo-hosting, was created. I went ahead and signed up, for if nothing else, maybe it buys me enough time to migrate my images to a more stable platform.

In the meantime, I get to be not-as-embarrassed by the state of my meager sites, so that's something, I suppose.

Fuck Photobucket

So, you may notice RBE has a new look, courtesy of the soulless bloodsuckers at Photobucket, which changed its terms of service Wednesday regarding linking and third-party hosting of images stored in a Pb library. In order to host images elsewhere, I'm required to sign up for their highest level 'plan,' costing $400.00 a year, for the exact same service I've enjoyed as a member for over eight years.

Apparently viewing the increasing barrage of ads on their site didn't squeeze enough enough money out of my membership for Pb to continue storing and accepting links to the server-straining 71 MB of images in my library, images I used for both blogs as well as my Obsidian Portal wiki, which is now completely gutted - zero functionality. Oh, and since I'm on the subject, fuck Obsidian Portal as well - years of developer inattention and arbitrary changes busted links all over Le Ballet de l'Acier already, reducing the sites functionality to the point where I simply stopped adding new material and used a backup copy offline as my referee notes.

A smart company would've imposed its fee on new members while honoring its agreements with existing customers. Photobucket is not a smart company, however, and they obviously don't give a fuck about the impact their decisions have on their members beyond 'pay the monkey.'

I don't have the time to go back and fix everything that was ratfucked on RBE, sadly. It will remain a monument to corporate douchery. And the wreckage of Le Ballet de l'Acier is coming down for good.

Here's one last image Photobucket can't fuck with.