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Failures

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Feb 20th 2002 4:19pm





PhotoPoint Pictures Available For A Price

from the hold-'em-hostage dept

A lot of people were pissed off when Photopoint shut down without warning anyone. Many people had stored a huge number of digital photos with the service, and suddenly they were all gone. I'm not positive, but I was under the impression they were paying for the service. Anyway, now PhotoPoint is taking a poll to see how (if) they'll give the pictures back. The leading choice is for people to pay $25 to get all their picutres on a CD-ROM. I'm not sure what sort of agreements people had agreed to when they signed up for PhotoPoint, and maybe this falls under the agreement, but it certainly sounds like PhotoPoint is holding the images hostage from their owners.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    More like bankrupcy than ransom

    identicon
    Timaaay!, Feb 20th, 2002 @ 5:48pm

    The company that bought Photopoint, Pantellic is insolvent. There is an interview with the CEO here. Long story short, they considered it a sharing service, not a permenant storage facility. Why anyone uses anything but Yahoo! Photos is frankly beyond me, but even with Yahoo!, I wouldn't count on them keeping the only copy of my treasured photos... It's called the clue train -- be on it!

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    sb, Feb 21st, 2002 @ 8:53am

    interesting legal issue here.

    when you send a video to america's funniest home videos, it becoems their property. this sounds similar. i think theyre got a legit "hostage"

    NICE!!!

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    icon
    Mike (profile), Feb 21st, 2002 @ 9:03am

    Actually, I would highly doubt it's the same thing. Storing pictures online to show your family and friends isn't the same as sending in a video for a contest that might be broadcast on TV. I would be amazed if the service didn't say somewhere that the pictures remain the property of whoever took them. Otherwise, I would be amazed tha anyone used the service.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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