Jun | 27 | 2007

A few reminders on third-party Image Hosting

Posted by Jeff as Blogging Tools, Design Features, Images, Tips

If you have a blog that’s hosted in WordPress.com, or Blogspot, or any other free* service, or if you have unlimited resources, that is, truckloads of money to pay for all that uncapped web space, you may be least likely concerned about the gigabytes that images can easily consume from what you have arranged with your webhost of choice. The rest of us common men with an inkling of what saving both gigabytes of allocation and the bandwidth needed to pump out all those images may consider hosting these on a separate service, or outsourcing to a third-party image hosting service.

There are all sorts of complications in this, which are more often than not clarified (if not in the most intimidating legalese) in these services’ respective TOS’s, or Terms of Service. One thing to keep in mind, and something most bloggers may likely be concerned about is what is commonly worded as “…perpetual, non-exclusive, transferrable, fully-paid, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate…” **. The “non-exclusive” (or its equal) portion pre-empts possible user recoils on the ground that users who avail of these services relinquish ALL rights to material uploaded and thereafter shuttled to the consumers of the image content. Not much to worry about; it’s a lawyer thing to be six steps ahead and write off 99% of claims to privacy when, say, users suddenly find their beach body picture all over the web on a Flickr advertisement.

Also, keep in mind is how the service you choose to employ the phrase “legal use”. Case in point: both ImageShack and Yahoo! Flickr provides hotlinks (direct URLs to the images used in embedding t hem onto web pages where they are served), but their usage clauses are not as parallel. Flickr in each of the uploaded photos’ pages – where you can choose sizes that range from thumbnail, to small, medium, and full size – that directly linking to the individual files is a breach of the services’ Terms and Conditions, while ImageShack gets by with a simple reminder that using the thumbnail codes that include the words “Free image hosting by www.ImageShack.us” to allow them to show ads keep the basic services free. Multiply, while not exactly an image-only site but has served as one for a lot of bloggers taking advantage of the free* bandwidth, does allow hot-linking, and inserts a watermark with the Multiply logo on a corner of the image.

Remember, a little step you take to conform to the self-imposed rules on a web of free* services goes a long way in avoiding issues that may rise later on when you find yourself right at the center of buzz and traffic, which mostly translates to revenue, considering you’ve followed the other great tips and tricks from the writers of Blog Tutorials!

* – free may mean ad-supported
** – taken from Facebook Terms of Service

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Comments (5)

5 Responses

Jason
27|Jun|2007

Try http://www.onedump.com thats much better image host than imageshack!
Jordan
27|Jun|2007

You forgot bayimg.com/, run by the people who do Pirate Bay. No license, copyright BS. Max 100mb per file, but unlimited beyond that.
Jeff Villafranca
28|Jun|2007

Jason: thank you for tipping us in! I have not come across onedump.com before I’ll check it out soon!

Jordan: guess what, when I started writing this post, I intended it to be a feature on bayimg.com, since it’s a new service, and their very interesting “no censorship” premise. For some reason I ended up writing about TOS’s and the rest of the legalese you see up there! Quite funny, actually. I’ll certainly go back and write that bayimg.com feature very soon, do watch out for that one
AD
10|Jul|2007

I have been using http://www.yourhostedimages.com, they offer some amzing servcies for FREE, listing a few:
-5 Uploads at a time for the free accounts.
-360 degree spins for auction ads
-You can create a gallery and add images to it but also customize your gallery page before sharing the link with your friends.
-Your pictures do not get displayed in a public gallery on the homepage of the site and are only shared if you want them to be.
Josh
20|Nov|2007

Free image hosting will not work for everyone. I prefer to use content delivery network to serve my images and they do it fast. http://www.valuecdn.com/

Of course free image hosts are fine for smaller web sites, but when your traffic and hits grow, you definitely need to move to paid option. Free is not 100% reliable.

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