loosing old members

Eric&Lisa wrote:


As for the OP's comment on photo hosting...

Consider hosting it yourself. That way YOU maintain control over YOUR content. I did a road trip last summer and I chronicled the journey on a classic car forum. Lots of pictures, every one of them hosted on an Amazon S3 bucket. Definitely a little more technical to set up compared to a photo hosting site, but it is pretty cheap. I think I was charged $.18 last month. Plus I am in control of my pictures. Sure, someone could download and copy them, but I have not formally surrendered my rights to the pictures.

Here is a copy of text from RV.Net's terms of service: By uploading User Content to any Public Forum or submitting any materials to us, you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) CWGS and its Service Providers a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, nonexclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, display, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials into any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed throughout the universe.

If RV.Net only has the link to my picture, and not the picture itself, then I have not given them any rights to the picture. Once again, if the product is free, then you are the product!

Just some food for thought...
-Eric

I really dislike the self-hosting option. It isn't conducive to long-term thread integrity. Thousands of forum posts became nearly useless when Photobucket stopped allowing external links to photos. Most people don't have the time or energy to maintain a self-hosted site for years. A forum needs to provide sufficient services to compete, and one expectation these days is that the forum itself will host photos of a reasonable size.

I'm saying this as an individual that has hosted websites, mailing lists, forums, etc., and self-hosted my own content on my own servers for over 30 years...