Posting Photos from Off-Site Sources...

Pet Talkers, we may have a problem posting photos "stored" on off-site photo album sites...

Our months old WebShots album suddenly has no photos available for viewing :(. This MAY be due to a sudden problem which might have developed on the WebShots site; but I fear it may be a more serious problem...

Some of us have used "other" web Photo Storage and Viewing sites besides WebShots. Many of those "other" site stopped allowing "their" photos to be "used or displayed" on sites such as our Pet Talk site.

Here's a section from the WebShots "Terms of Service" page - the agreement you/we agreed to when we first stored photos on their site...

"6. What Can I Do With Materials Provided By Webshots?
All of the material on the Webshots Site is protected by the copyright laws of the U. S. and other countries. You are only allowed to use these materials as indicated on the Webshots site; other uses are prohibited by copyright laws.
All of the material contained in the Webshots Gallery, the Webshots Daily Photos, and the Webshots Desktop software program may be viewed only on the Webshots Site. You may not copy, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer any copyrighted material in any format, electronic or otherwise."

I fear that WebShots may be doing what a lot of the "other" photo album sites have done - Refusing to allow their site content (photos) to be DISPLAYED on BBS sites, like we all do. When we post an IMAGE for direct and instant display, we're also possibly breaking the rule to "...not copy, retransmit or reproduce..." And photos displayed on Pet Talk are certainly not "...viewed on the WebShots Site...".

If we just post a LINK, so the reader has to "click" on a link and then actually GO TO the WebShots site to SEE the photo; that's probaly OK with WebShots because that's what they want folks to have to do - VISIT THEIR site to see the paid ads and offers.

This problem apperars to be one of both US Copyright Law, AND web site revenue. I'm NOT a Copyright expert - do we have a lawyer in the group that could comment?
As for the revenue issue - the Photo Album Folks probably have a right to get *krankee* about this issue. After all, we post and store our stuff on THEIR expensive storage systems; then just USE them to provide us with a picture when ever and where ever we want to display it. Maybe it's not right for us to be expecting this kind of service for "free"?

That said; does anybody know of a Photo Archive and Posting site that DOES SPECIFICALLY ALLOW their photos to be posted and instantly displayed on a BBS? Note from the above comments - there is a BIG difference between LINKING, where the viewer must visit the hosting photo site to view the picture, and "URL / DISPLAYING" the photo, where the viewer can instantly SEE the photo without the viewer having to visit the hosting site.

I hope I'm wrong with all of this, but please post whatever you know or have learned about the subject.

I've tried to post a pic from my own website(!) and it wouldn't let me. Temporarily banned me from my site too. :rolleyes:

Maybe, I should actually read the agreement terms for once...

The absolute safest way to be sure is, if you don't have your own (as in you own the domain name) website, you could email the photos to Paul, and he will email you the URL to link to them. That way they'd be on our server, and no one could complain one way or another.

OMG! Poor Paul! What a daunting task to ponder. :eek: Posting ALL of our pictures! :D

    This is not a copyright problem it is a financial problem. Compared to text images take an enormous amount of bandwidth. Ordinarily, Internet servers allow sharing from anywhere to anywhere. Eventually, I imagine all of the photo sharing sites will write their own special software to prohibit sharing outside their website.

    You may send photos to me and I will place them on our server. Eventually, I would like to have our own software so that Pet Talk members could automatically upload their images.

I have a Webshots album, but most of my photos are on www.PhotoPoint.com, You do have to pay for a membership. I think the current rate is something like $20 per year for which you are allowed to store 250 photos. They also have very nice photo editing software so some of those very large photos with the extraneous backgrounds can be cropped to just the way you want them. There is no problem in posting on bulletin boards. Awhile back PP did make a lot of changes and things were very chaotic for awhile, but now they are essentially under the management of the people who started the business and things are running much, much smoother. I honestly would not have recommended this sight six months ago, but I feel very comfortable doing so now. I do think the photo quality comes out a little better than it does on Webshots as well. They have a 30 day free trial period now, but during that period you can't post your photos on Bulletin Boards such as this one. You have to wait to become a paying member. But it does give you an opportunity to try out the site with no obligation. If you want to check out how you can arrange pictures into albums and what they look like, feel free to access mine. You go to the home page and just put my email address in the spot where it says Visit Albums, on the upper right hand side of the home page. I suggested to PP that they have a "favorite user" feature (like Webshots does) and I think they are going to try to impement that.