I also want to open up the floor for suggestions and ideas regarding other services to try.

Bear in mind that this is not meant to be a definitive guide to these services or this industry as a whole. It is just a brief overview of the five services that I have used most in recent months and my thoughts on them.

What I Like

Lots of storage, lots of bandwidth and very fast downloads, all for free. Boxstr accepts all kinds of media including images, audio, video and documents. The service has been rock solid and Boxstr offers a great application for uploading your files to the service. Pro accounts are available to greatly increase bandwidth and storage at a reasonable cost.

What I Hate

The interface is kludgy and inefficient. Simple tasks, such as moving files, obtaining link codes, etc. take longer than they should. Boxstr requires that all images and audio have a direct link back to their service. As with Flickr, this can limit the types of images you use the service with. However, unlike Flickr, Boxstr buries this requirement in their TOS. Finally, the Boxstr app is Windows-only. Mac users, like me, have to get by with the kludgy interface.

Bottom Line

Fine for large files. such as podcasts, Boxstr is too hard to use and too restrictive to be a good image host. Best for occasional use where a little inefficiency doesn’t burn so bad and linking back to the original page is practical. A simple TOS tweak and Boxstr could have me as a paid subscriber.

My Rating: B-

What I Like

As far as features go, Divshare is by far the most complete. You can upload documents, images, audio and video to their service and make them either available for download or embedding through custom players. They also have a neat WordPress plugin that means you don’t have to visit their site to upload any content. On paper, Divshare is the perfect service to meet my needs.

What I Hate

Slowness. Divshare has not scaled well and the site and all of its files load incredibly slow. Images are noticeably delayed in appearing on the site, audio streaming is fickle and their “Add Your Logo” feature for pro members (allows you to customize audio/video players) seems terminally broken. Emails to tech support have gone unanswered and rumors of a buyout made me pull almost all of my content away from them.

Bottom Line

I like Divshare, a lot. I want to root for them but the slowness of the service combined with total silence from the higher ups, their blog has not been updated in nearly two months. I have a pro account with them, but only until I can figure out how to cancel it.

My Rating: D+

What I Like

Flickr is the mother of all photo sharing services and it commands a great deal of respect. It is fast, rock-solid, has reasonable restrictions on bandwidth/storage. It is run by Yahoo!, one of the better companies when it comes to copyright matters and has a great community behind it. Best of all, there are a slew of tools available for uploading and managing Flickr photos, including my blog editor, MarsEdit.

What I Hate

No video or audio hosting available. Furthermore, image hosting is clearly not the target of Flickr as a service. Finding the embed links can be a bit difficult and, worst of all, Flickr requires that all images be linked back to their Flickr page. Great for photographs and artwork, bad for logos and screenshots that likely need to be linked back to the sites that they were pulled from.

Bottom Line

If you’re a photographer and only interested in embedding your own artwork, Flickr is great. However, it works poorly for those seeking to other kinds of images and certainly doesn’t help much with mitigating against false DMCA takedowns.

My Rating: C

What I like

Fast, reliable and easy to use. Photobucket is a great service with a lot to love. Easy uploads, fast, reliable image hosting and no linking requirements. It even has a service called TinyPic that prevents you from needing to register an account. Simply upload, tag and run. An overall well-rounded and robust service.

What I Hate

Photobucket can only be used for images and short video clips. Audio is expressly forbidden and clips longer than a few minutes are not allowed. There is also no API so only a handful of applications work with the service making use of the site and its Web upload service almost a requirement.

Bottom Line

It gets the job done though it really doesn’t excel or inspire any kind real emotion. It works very well for images, it just fails to really simplify my life in any meaningful way by only offering some of the features I need.

My Rating: B+

What I Like

Webshots is power. With Webshots, you can crop and resize images online. In fact, every photo uploaded comes with five different sizes you can easily embed into your site. Webshots also accepts videos. The service provides unlimited bandwidth, no linking requirements and reasonable monthly upload caps and, all things considered, is a pretty effective service.

What I Hate

With power comes complexity. Going from upload to link URL seems to require about three times more steps on Webshots than elsewhere. Webshots also does not support audio and, as with Flickr, the main target of the site is not image hosting though, unlike Flickr, nothing in the TOS expressly prohibits you from using it as such. Also, as with Photobucket, no audio hosting is available.

Bottom Line

Webshots is a great site and a neat service. However, it doesn’t feel right for this use. Though the idea of being able to embed multiple versions is great, the system is just too complex to be appropriate for this. Using Webshots is like building a sandcastle with a bulldozer, fun but not really all that practical.

My Rating: C+

Final Results

In the end, none of these services really inspire any great feelings of love, just varying degrees of unimpressed. Of all of them, Photobucket is probably the best for image hosting, especially its TinyPic service, with Boxstr being used for larger files. However that isn’t exactly the type of elegant solution I crave.

Divshare would be that elegant solution, if images and files loaded promptly, and Webshots, though loaded with some great features, is just overkill. Finally, Flickr just isn’t targeted right and throws up unneeded roadblocks to make their service work.

So which do I use? Well, for this post, all of them. If you look above, all of the logos are linked from their respective service. If you want a “quick and dirty” load time test, hold shift and click “refresh” to clear your cache and reload all of the images. May the best site win.

As for what I’m going to do in the future. Writing this has, in all honesty, made me pine for self-hosted images. There’s a good chance that, until a more perfect service comes along, that I’ll resume doing just that, taking my chances with a DMCA notice, and waiting for a more ideal product to come along.

At least local hosting is built into MarsEdit.

What I Want

If anyone is wishing to build me “perfect service”, perhaps as a Christmas present, I would have the following requests of any such host.

Since it is unlikely that a company would/could offer such a service for free, I would be willing to pay a modest amount per month/year for it. In that regard, it would be like Divshare, but without the speed and reliability problems and with actual applications rather than just an unused API.

Conclusions

It really is a pity that Divshare doesn’t work. I really liked the service before the quality of it headed south.

However, I think it is an indication of the challenge that comes with trying to create such a complicated, server-intensive service. It is very hard to ensure that your resources outpace the requirements of your users. That makes the reliability of services such as Flickr and Photobucket all the more amazing considering they host billions of images.

In the end, I’m looking to see if someone out there has other suggestions on top of the ones I’ve mentioned above. I’ve used other services, just never enough to give a good review, but I would love to hear about your experiences in this area.

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts on this, I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Despite running several domains, I am nowhere near my bandwidth limit for my account and am in no danger of going over my allotted 1 TB of bandwidth. I could probably host all of my sites many times over without any problems terms of raw transfer.

Yet, whenever I want to insert media files into my site, be it images or mp3s of the podcast, I seek out alternative hosting. Be it from a photo sharing site such as Photobucket or, my current favorite, a file hosting site such as Boxstr (see update below), I offload these media files as much as practical.

Why do I do this? To protect this site and ensure that, no matter what happens, it stays up. By offloading these media files, I mitigate against not one, but two of the biggest threats that this site could face on the Web and avoid some potential headaches down the road.

The Digg Effect

One of the most obvious reasons for offloading media files is to shield against any sudden spikes in bandwidth use. As a site that has survived two Digg Effects, a Slashdotting, mentions on Boing Boing, an appearance Fark and dozens of StumbleUpon runs, Plagiarism Today has seen what traffic spikes can do and. Fortunately, since the move to Media Temple, this site has survived them all with grace.

However, that doesn’t completely eliminate the threat. After all, if a large image, or worse yet a podcast, hits the front page of Digg that bandwidth can still disappear pretty quickly. Offloading it ensures that, even if the media goes down, the site remains viable and that I am not slammed with overages by my host. That serves me better and it serves the visitors better.

However, the truth be told, even if a large file on my server hit Digg, I could probably survive with minimal trouble. One TB of data would likely take over a million downloads to use up completely.

In truth, the real reason is much trickier and, sadly, much more likely. Worst of all, it is a risk I expose myself to solely by what I write about.

Fair Use and Evildoers

When I started Plagiarism Today, I knew that I was going to be held to the highest standards both in terms of copyright and attribution. There have been many times that I’ve wanted to do something with this site but felt that the copyright issues were just too uncertain, even if others on the Web were doing the exact same thing with no major problems.

However, in recent months, I’ve made a conscious attempt to add more images, videos and audio files to Plagiarism Today and, over all, I think it’s been a success. However, it opens up a new risk. Where the content on the site is written directly by me, the images are usually screenshots of logos, sample images of a site or other demonstrative works used for clarification.

I am very confident that all of my use is well within the bounds of what would likely be considered fair use and certainly well within what one would call standard practices on the Web.

Still, this doesn’t stop someone from filing a DMCA notice. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from keeping on top of copyright news, it is that the law is generally used for good but, in some cases, can be used stifle free speech.

The mere fact that I am talking about and instructing in the responsible use of a controversial law almost instantly makes me a target for a false notice, a fact made patently obvious by some of the emails and comments I have gotten.

Quite frankly, given the level the hostility has reached at times, I’m only stunned that it hasn’t happened already.

Teaching Me a Lesson

When analyzing the risks of running this site, I decided that there were two types of individuals likely to file a DMCA notice notice against me.

There was no real way to mitigate against the first kind of extremist. Their claim would have no basis on reality and could just file a notice against anything on the site.

I did, however, work to find a host with a fair DMCA policy and I know the person who processes claims here at Media Temple. I am confident that, if it did happen I would be able to keep the site live and that they would not simply “pull the plug” like some hosts.

However, even if my host did shut me down, it would be a disaster for the person filing the notice. As I’ve worked on this site, I’ve come to know and befriend many IP attorneys. Odds are I could find someone to help me go after someone filing a patently false DMCA notice.

Such an event would not be tolerated.

Fortunately, the first possibility is very unlikely. False DMCA notices are rarely random and even those used to stifle unwanted speech are based somewhere in a misconception about copyright law. That makes the second scenario much more likely.

Fortunately, that of notice can be mitigated against much more easily.

Since everything written in this blog is by my hand. There is little chance of someone filing a notice against the text. The blogging application, WordPress, is open source, and both the header image and theme are used with permission and are properly attributed.

The only content on this site regularly used from other locations and without prior approval are the images and some of the content contained in the videos.

Though, as I said above. I’m comfortable that the use is legal, that is not a 100% guarantee against a DMCA notice. That is why it is important to be prepared for the possibility.

Shifting the Burden

The idea is simple. If someone objects to the use of a screenshot on this site and decides to skip contacting me or posting a comment in favor of a DMCA notice, they will be filing against the image host and not the company actually hosting my site.

Yes, the image will go down and it is entirely possible I could lose my account at that company, but the rest of the site will stay up. Even better, all of my images are backed up and can be easily reposted elsewhere if needed. The same goes for the videos and the audio.

In the event of such an attack, Plagiarism Today will suffer no downtime and there will only be a brief outage for the content so long as I am at my computer or nearby when it happens.

This is a pretty basic idea and it is one I started working on shortly after my first encounter with iPowerWeb but only started actively using in recent months as I’ve escalated the amount of images on the site.

However, it is a technique a lot of bloggers could benefit from, especially those that deal with controversial topics that might draw unfair DMCA notices from critics with little concept of how the law works.

Application (And Removal)

To use this system on your site, all you have to do is ensure that you only put things on your server that you have created or have direct permission to use. Anything that relies on fair use, no matter how clear cut it seems, should be hosted elsewhere.

Personally, I use Revver for video, because they have a fair copyright policy and are CC-friendly, and Boxstr for other file types as it allows direct linking and high bandwidth limits without any restrictions (see note below).

I, generally, do not recommend YouTube as their terms of service is overreaching and Flickr is frustrating due to its restrictions on the types of images you can use and requirement that the image be linked back to the Flickr page, rather than to a third party.

Both of these sites have at least the potential to create more IP issues than they resolve by forcing you to give up rights

Conclusions

For all of the hype that they get, false DMCA notices are actually very rare. Your average blogger has very little to worry about them and can probably go about their business relatively secure that it will never happen to them.

But those who deal with controversial subjects or frequently use content under fair use may want to consider using this technique to better shield themselves against the threat of such an notice.

When you consider that decent file hosting is both free and readily-available, there is very little reason to not take advantage of such services. In addition to providing protection against traffic spikes and DMCA notices, it also makes it easier to move your site to a new host (fewer files to transfer) and helps organize and backup the files you use.

All in all, using file hosts is a natural decision for many reasons, it just happens to provide a form of protection against a rare, but potentially devestating, form of attack.

Note: Just before submitting this I discovered that Boxstr has a similar linking requirement to Flickr. I apparently overlooked this when originally signing up for the site as it is worded differently and not made as clear as with Flickr. I am going to transfer my images over to Photobucket but leave the audio files with Boxstr as I already provide direct links with for all audio files.