Impressive turnaround!

Photobucket heard my concerns and those of countless others and have updated their terms with better language protecting the consumer.

Here's the new update:

March 07, 2006
Terms of Service

Photobucket members,

We recently updated the Terms of Service on our Website with the intent of adding more features that allow you to do more with your photos and content. Unfortunately, our new Terms of Service language was not clear, and did not accurately communicate our intent. We sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused. As a result, we’ve just updated our Terms of Service, correcting and clarifying our intent and the limits of the license you grant us in accordance with your use of the Photobucket service.

The initial reason for the change was to address a concern related to members of our site linking their content to other bulletin boards, web sites, and other third parties. When that linking occurs, the content linked is now part of the third party site even if it is still physically on the Photobucket service. The change was intended to protect your content on third party sites. We also needed to add some language to allow you to print your images through our third party fulfillment company Qoop (the MakeIt button). At Photobucket, our members are the heart and soul of what we do – your thoughts, behaviors, concerns and preferences drive our business, and we value your opinion. It is important to us to hear your concerns, and act swiftly and appropriately.

We have revised our Terms of Service to clearly reflect our original intentions. These updated terms are posted HERE . We want to make sure it’s clear that our privacy policy has not changed, and is linked at the bottom of our Terms of Service – Photobucket will not rent or sell your personal information for use by third parties. It is our sincere hope that these changes clarify the intent behind our revised Terms of Service. Please feel free to pass along this note to any other concerned users with whom you come into contact. As always, we appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,
Alex Welch
CEO, Photobucket

Of course, this is *after* I deleted a large chunk of my photos on there. Sigh.
That's okay - my account was probably due for a cleanup anyway.

If there are any missing photos on my blog that you want returned, shoot me an email and let me know. Putting them back up will be a bit of a challenge, and I will likely miss a few here & there.