Storing photos online

[jul]

I have a question about storing photos on line. If you up load photos to a a site like shutterfly or even flickr to have them some where else besides your hard drive, can they become property of shutterfly etc. and be used by them? I initially thought this would be a good "back up" option but now I'm not so sure.

Yep, they are ruthless and heartless that way.

[freybear3]

yeah, if you upload it to their sites, you are giving them rights to your photos. When you get a few extra minutes, read their terms of service, you will see how ruthless they really are


I always put them on my external hard drive and also a disk. Just in case one fails i always have a backup.

[mipo]

Hi,
If you are looking for an external storage site.
The Pictures sharing sites are usually not where you are going to send the pictures to for backups.
Some will not take Raw files, some will downsize the picture to fit their standards etc.....

For file repositary on Internet they are Online data backups, Online Vault...
Where you can transfer/copy all the files required to be backed up in their original size & format. And the cie must have a strick and extensive data protection policy.
Depending on the cie. the costs are varying. Usually base space is free for a few gb.'s. Then it is per gb used/year.

One thing fore sure, there must be an agreeement that whatever happens all the data backup can be entirely retreived.

[Nicole]

It's not a good "only backup" option. It's ok for some things and can be ok for a kind of "worst case scenario" backup where all of your backups have been toasted.

Using your examples, neither Shutterfly nor Flickr gains ownership over your photos. With Shutterfly, they explicitly state that you retain ownership, but that you grant them a worldwide perpetual irrevocable license to use the photos in connection with the service.

The same sort of thing goes for Flickr, but I prefer Flickr's ToS. Flickr states that you grant them a license to use / display / etc the photos "solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available" and the license is revoked when you delete the content.

So no, these two don't own your photos. But I'd make sure to carefully read the terms of service for any site that you want to upload your photos to. And remember that any website can shut down with little or no notice and if that was your only backup you'd be left without one.

[candleman]

as Nicole said.. they dont take ownership.

however,
Photobucket does, and even go so far as to sell thumbnails of your pictures to mobile phones.

something to be aware of, (which i've been pondering)

I have also been thinking about using flickr as a secondary back-up to my external hard drive,
my only question is "how much, if at all, does flickr compress your images"
so, if you do have a failure, and need to download all your pictures again, will you end up with lower quality images...
food for thought

i'd be interested to hear an answer to this.
if the amswer is "NO, they never compress anything" then a flickr Pro account is a very cheap and relaible back-up.

[PhotoBuffs]

This is on the terms of Fotki site:

" Fotki and FOTKI, INC. claim no ownership rights in the content you place on your Fotki albums. We will not use Member's images for marketing purposes or any other purposes without obtaining the Member's express permission."

Whether that REALLY means anything or not.

[jul]

Thanks for the input guys. Lesson learned...although most of my images are family photos that I would want for sentimental purposes. I've taken most of what I had off of the site and for now just have CD backups of everything. Until I get an external drive that'll have to be it.
Thanks again!!