Warez sites and scene release blogs have a lot of images in their posts. Movies need screen shots, and almost everything released has some box art of some kind. Unless you have your own dedicated server and arn't worried about bandwidth, you need a place to host your images. Even if you have enough bandwidth, having all the images from your releases stored on your site may cause your site to load slower.
Something that doesn't look very professional is when you are browsing through releases and then one says Image Not found, or worse, the url to the image host has been reused so you see a picture of some elderly woman in place of the box art for your post.
So here's a roundup of the best image hosting services. Keep in mind that some of these sites are smaller and just getting started, so you might want to wait until they become more established before storing your images on them. Here's my list of image hosting services, in no particular order:
Image Hosting Services:
Imageshack.us - One of the most popular image hosting services since tiny pic. Recently, they have changed and now users who wish to remote upload their pics, must register first. In our experiences our images are removed, but sometimes it takes a while.
Postimage.org - Haven't used this website, but we noticed in the
TOS agreement "What cannot be uploaded to PostImage.org servers:
- Copyrighted images if you don't own copyright for it
- Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
- Any other images that might be considered illegal in USA or EU countries"
Doesn't sound too good if you want to use this for hosting images for your warez site. Also there is an option for checking "ADULT content" or "Family Safe".
uploadpixxx.com - Avoid this image host, I've never used the site personally, but I found this in the Terms of Service Agreement:
"The immediate termination of user's ability to use UploadPixxx or any of its provided services.
• The deletion of any images that user has uploaded to UploadPixxx.
• Possible prosecution."
rapidimg.com - This site looks a little bit better than the one mentioned above. 2 Mb per image max file size, upload from your computer or remote. Here is a part of their privacy policy. Edit: i think this site is dead
"User privacy is something we take very seriously at RapidIMG.com. We do not, and have never, sold or disseminated (except in cases where required to by law by law enforcement agencies) the personal information of our users to any parties outside of RapidIMG.com."
lulzimg.com - This is one of our top picks for image hosting, as they have no terms of service, no dmca, and really nothing outside of their pages for upload. The remote upload is nice and allows you to upload up to 25 images at once. Generous 10 Mb max file size for images.
imgur.com - We hear a lot of people who claim to use this image hosting, but after checking on their site, we must strongly disagree. Here is the opening paragraph in their lengthy TOS agreement: (The rest of the terms of service can be viewed here)
"Don't upload copyrighted material, harassment, spam, gore, pornography, or anything that looks like pornography. If you do, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it. "
nattawat.org - This is one of our favorite image hosts in the list. Their TOS is standard, but they just seem to be more private image hosting. The terms of service also says no infringing content, ect, but the title of the site is "Nattawat.org - Warez Image Hosting". Their uploader is decent too.[/spoiler]
