Photobucket's crackdown on pornography.

[Skorpius]

Upload, email or otherwise transmit any User Content that is unlawful, obscene, harmful, threatening, defamatory or hateful or that contains objects or symbols of hate, invade the privacy of any third party, contain nudity or child erotica, or is otherwise objectionable. Photobucket.com does not control User Content of users' accounts and does not have any obligation to monitor such content for any purpose, however, Photobucket.com may chose to monitor such User Content any time in its sole discretion. You acknowledge that you are solely responsible for all content and material you provide to the Service;

Photobucket has a no porn rule, which isn't wrong at all. It's perfectly understandable. However, many users of the free service were using the site for pornographic galleries anyway, having albums full of images and distributing the links to others. Lately, Photobucket has started to crack down on this, removing pornographic images from normal albums, and deleting full porn albums. Good, they're showing that they are actively working on the site. But, wait, what's this? I go to my album and I find that 4 images have been removed I check the file names, and I remember exactly what they were.

The first three were somewhat understandable, since the album was my un-paid album. Not getting too detailed, the images were of an attractive woman posing for non-nude modeling pictures. Although these pictures could be considered risque, they were actually following the terms of service. The images were not pornographic or crude, but were professional photographs for a modeling agency. Anyway, this was not what caused me to post this topic.

The fourth image that was deleted was a sketch of mine. Yes, a drawing. What of? Of no-face human figures laying on the bed, on their stomachs, holding hands. Yes, something as innocent as a SKETCH was deleted from my album. No nudity, no sexual themes, just two sketchy figures. Way to go Team Photobucket! Luckily, my paid account hasn't been hit like that.

[Solstis]

Admins were probably cranky and bored by the time that they got around to your album.

[Kuea]

hope nothign of mine gets deleted http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

I have no porn ( took me 7 tries to spell porn >_>; kept coming out pron DX ) but I do have alot of pictures of cute type girls

[Sord]

the sucky thing is you can't do a damn thing about it, they are the one's providing the service so by law they have every right to take down whatever is on their site. Heack, even stores can refuse customers so long as it's not out of discrimination, not that many stores would refuse customers XD But at least you don't have to serve a drunk guy another drink.

[Skorpius]

Actually, there IS something I can do about it. If they remove content off of my paid album, they are breaking their own agreement to give me image hosting. I'm paying for their service, and they can be held accountable for removing images that are not breaking their Terms of Service.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Skorpius on 2006-05-23 16:24 ]</font>

[Charmander02]

...They better not take out that picture of Jessica Alba i have.

[Sord]

On 2006-05-23 16:23, Skorpius wrote:
Actually, there IS something I can do about it. If they remove content off of my paid album, they are breaking their own agreement to give me image hosting. I'm paying for their service, and they can be held accountable for removing images that are not breaking their Terms of Service.


well, if you have a contract with them (digital or otherwise) then that would change things entirely. Though if they have some loop hole in their TOS then they can exploit that without being sued (and losing):/

But yeah, a paid for service should definitly allow you to host porn if it's not mentioned in the TOS at the time the subscriptioned was signed. I was speaking along the lines of free image hosting before. Like you said though, your paid one hasn't been hit, so it probably won't be. I would have to read through their TOS to make any solid conclusion.

[Sord]

well, I was bored, so I actually read through their TOS, and it saddens me to say: Your screwed and have no control over the matter even in a court of Law.


Photobucket.com may modify or terminate the Services from time to time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate with or without notice, without liability to you, any other user or any third party, provided that when Photobucket.com does so, it will update these Terms of Service. You are advised to periodically check the website for changes in the Terms of Service.
This allows them to alter your acount and the rules that it follows whenever they want so long as they list the new rules in the TOS. This gets them around the idea of "that's not what I signed up for!" complaint.


By using the Services you agree that Photobucket.com shall not be liable to you for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Services or the loss of any User Content.
According to this, even if you lose your acount or pictures, regardless to whose fault it is (including theirs), they can't be held responsible, so you can't sue them for it



Can Not:

"Upload, email or otherwise transmit any User Content that is unlawful, obscene, harmful, threatening, defamatory or hateful or that contains objects or symbols of hate, invade the privacy of any third party, contain nudity or child erotica, or is otherwise objectionable. Photobucket.com does not control User Content of users' accounts and does not have any obligation to monitor such content for any purpose, however, Photobucket.com may chose to monitor such User Content any time in its sole discretion. You acknowledge that you are solely responsible for all content and material you provide to the Service;"
the fact that "objectional" is a vague term allows them a great degree of manueverability to what they can remove. Some people see rique pictures as objectionable, knowing that they can take such pictures off your hosting list at any time.


Photobucket.com reserves the right at all times to terminate your account, and delete any and all User Content at, in whole or in part, for any reason including, but not limited to, violations of these Terms of Service.
yep, they just made you their bitch.

This Terms of Service for Photobucket (http://photobucket.com/terms.php) are most likely for free acounts. If the paid acount TOS is any diffrent then the one given here, then I will need a link or something to look through it.

[REJ-]

You can make almost any picture fit any of those categories.


Can Not:

"Upload, email or otherwise transmit any User Content that is unlawful, obscene, harmful, threatening, defamatory or hateful or that contains objects or symbols of hate, invade the privacy of any third party, contain nudity or child erotica, or is otherwise objectionable. Photobucket.com does not control User Content of users' accounts and does not have any obligation to monitor such content for any purpose, however, Photobucket.com may chose to monitor such User Content any time in its sole discretion. You acknowledge that you are solely responsible for all content and material you provide to the Service;"


...Looks like we can't post swatstikas anymore... http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_disapprove.gif http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[Skorpius]

Swastikas are not symbols of hate, though. >_>;

[Solstis]

On 2006-05-24 18:34, Skorpius wrote:
Swastikas are not symbols of hate, though. >_>;



Depends on the context. If you had an image of a flag with a Swastika that was sticking out of a pile of burning corpses, it just might fall under that category.

You could make the claim that the poor Swastika has been misused by history. man, and time, but that's not my business.

[REJ-]

There was also a Wacko next to the swatstika comment...

But are there actually any real "symbols of hate" that they'd remove?

[Firocket1690]

I wonder. If I host an image os
http://www.geocities.com/swastika_webring/pokeswas.jpg
Would anythig happen?
I dunno. That just came to mind when you guys brought up swastika. I had that card too, gone with the second time my pokemon card binder was stolen. >_>;

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the swasitka a holy symbol in judiasm and buddhism? Not sure about Hinduism, or ... Indians (?) Possible.
If I recall correctly, it's only considered a symbol of hate because .. Germans? adapted as as symbol of nazism. Meh, my cultutes are probably mixed up, but that's why I vaguely recall. Then again, I thought the holy one had dots, as well.
Meh, I don't konw where I'm going.

'nywho. I can kinda see photobucket's stance on this. If they're hosting your child porn, they can get shut down by us government. They're just covering their asses.

[Nixia]

Hinduism and Buddhism. But, yeah, unless you know the origins of it, people jump to conclusions and go "ZOMG NAZIS!!" It's quite sad, actually.

And, not all Germans were nazis.

As for the child porn, they could, but they shouldn't. They're only providing the service and have set the terms for said service. They shouldn't be accountable for however people misuse it.

[Skorpius]

They are responsable for what content is on their servers.

However, my sketch was no where near being intolerable and it was removed.

It might have been a mistake, I still hold that possability, because humans make errors.

[Balthor]

Go find another host?

[roygbiv]

The swastika in the trainer pic is a backwards swastika used in buddhism/hinduism... you might notice the nazi swastika is going in the other direction... so... only an idiot would delete it for saying it was a hate symbol...

[Kuea]

isn't the symob opposite of teh Swastika called the Manji? >_>

Swastika has Clockwise arms and the manji goes counter clockwise http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_eek.gif

[Maridia]

Wow, go photobucket. Oh well, not much we can do. I'd hate to have something happen to all my stuff though. Especially when sharing an account. D:

Stupid terms of service.

[Charmander02]

On 2006-05-25 15:31, Firocket1690 wrote:

They're just covering their asses.

[hollowtip]

On 2006-05-26 16:15, Nixia wrote:
Hinduism and Buddhism. But, yeah, unless you know the origins of it, people jump to conclusions and go "ZOMG NAZIS!!" It's quite sad, actually.

And, not all Germans were nazis.

As for the child porn, they could, but they shouldn't. They're only providing the service and have set the terms for said service. They shouldn't be accountable for however people misuse it.


Well he was actually correct on both terms...

Native Americans also adopted the symbol independantly.

Swastikas can also be found in ancient east indian temples.

[WraithVerge]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

just makes things easier.

At any rate, I have no* pr0n in my bucket, but some of it gets pretty damn close, like this 3d image K-Tani did of a character of mine a while back:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/WraithVerge/catgirl.jpg

Not exactly, but close.




...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: WraithVerge on 2006-06-01 23:40 ]</font>

[Outrider]

Have you brought up a complaint to Photobucket, or did I just miss that part in the thread?

It might not be a bad idea.

[K-Morfos]

Use image shack instead.

[Marter]

Host you own website.