Photobucket P500

Almost a month ago, while reading through some online forums I noticed that all the pictures I posted there through Photobucket had been replaced with an image stating:

"3rd party Hosting has been temporarily disabled + to unlock your account visit: Photobucket.com/P500"

First thought was that one of my two accounts had exceeded its bandwidth again, so the pictures would reappear in a few days time. But they didn't. And both accounts were down. So after visiting their site and some searching on the internet I found out that they had changed their Terms of Service. As a result of which linking a picture from my Photobucket account to my weblog or a forum is not permitted anymore. Or in their words:

"Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, auction listing, blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting"

But if I would be so kind as to pay an annual fee of $ 399,- for each account, I could continue with their services. Still wondering what business case PB was dreaming of when they came up with this change ...

But their services have been going downhill very rapidly over the years. With their site being very slow, and with ever more annoying and irrelevant pop up adverts. As a result of which linking pictures to my Blogger account had become quite an ordeal. I have been toying with the idea of changing to another photo host a few times in the past. But the fact that all pictures posted on various forums and on my weblog would be lost, kept me from doing this.

But now PB has been so kind to make that decision for me. As all pictures posted on forums are not visible anymore there's no way back.
Remains the time consuming task of restoring my Blogger account using Google Photos. Currently working back from the last post, and at the time of typing these words my weblog has been restored back till September 2012 and one of my two PB accounts has been cancelled. Added bonus of using Google is that linking pictures to my Blogger account is much easier and quicker. As is their site!

Edit: both my Photobucket accounts are now cancelled.