Just when I had gotten my writing heat and nice mood back.
Imageshack just changed their policy. I need to make a Premium account or I can only have 500 pictures there. Everything 500+ will be erased by March 1... You know, I don't blame them for doing it, but after the lousy customer service they have, when their blog and support community and e-mail support have been silent and deprived of any company individuals showing signs of life for a whole YEAR, I thought they would make a smooth transition.
Maybe users who already have 500+ pics could keep them and need a Premium account to host any more. They are basically forcing their users to pay up or get their over-500 pics and go. Meaning they have to store them elsewhere and if they use them in blog posts, like I do, go to every older post and change the urls.
That's unacceptable customer
There is one saving grace though. I just sent them an e-mail about how to download all my extra images and they told me they're working on a tool for bulk download. So, at least users who don't plan to make an account will be able to get all their pictures out without doing it one by one. According to the e-mail, and if I did understand correctly, the images will not be deleted before that. So, free users with over 500 pictures will have time to store them in their hard drive.
But I don't have the time, knowledge or energy to host them in my own server or something, neither do I have time to take 300+ pics (I have 900+) and try to put them elsewhere. And where? All sites have restrictions now. So, I'll pay and get a Premium Pro account, hoping that they will be a bit better on the customer service part this time. But hey, they answered my e-mail right away. I didn't get the same courtesy a few weeks, e-mails and forum posts back so I guess they're improving.
The internet is getting messed up, people. ACTA, SOPA and any other CRAPA they create are giving users less and less freedoms and scaring half the businesses into changing their policies or then give some of them (the big ones) the arrogance to abuse their users. I don't know if Imageshack did this in light of ACTA and SOPA, because they go after all these services, but the timing is certainly unnerving.
So, next time you want to say the internet is safe or that some of us are overreacting about these regulations, look around at what's happening online.
