General Discussion
 

Please use this thread for general discussion about the shutdown.

I've been wondering why they are shutting down? I'm starting to get a bit worried about image hosts in general. Last year it was Someimage, now Imagebam and Imgbox, which are even more established than Someimage was. Are they shutting down because they aren't making enough money or is there something more sinister to this, like maybe lawsuits against them?

Possible shutdown reasons
 

Hi there dolfinator!

From what I've been able to find on the web, the main theory is the shutdown is connected to a copyright infringement lawsuit by ALS Scan.

Image hosters are being accused of hosting copyrighted images.

Possible that closing is easier than fighting a lawsuit.

Typing into Google:

ALS Scan lawsuit Imagebam

Brings up a few interesting discussions on the matter.

Hope this is of use!

Damn, so it's exactly what I was afraid of. This is really bad news...

Court case stories on torrent freak
 

Imagebam has gone from being largely off the radar to number 680 ranked site for daily visits.You can blame many things but posting the best of the best - full HD sets - would be the main reason for their rise to the top.

I'd imagine their eating into some heavy hitters bottom line profits

Hence the lawsuit thats brought them undone - they were linked to Steadfast

The 3 named - Cloudflare , Hivelocity Ventures Corporation , Steadfast Networks

These 3 dont have DMCA protection so they can be made to co-operate
https://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudpartial.pdf


Basically any site thats had dealing with the 3 American firms named in the law suit is dead in the water because their happy to hand over details to the courts to save their own hides.

Everything that occurs on an imagehost is filtered through their servers

If their owners are American they close rather than face the courts
Presumably to keep previous profits intact.

Cloudflare, Inc. is a U.S. company that provides a content delivery network, Internet security services and distributed domain name server services, sitting between the visitor and the Cloudflare user's hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites.

Cloudflare was ranked 7th among the top 50 Bad Hosts by HostExploit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudf..._controversies


Timeline - has been bubbling away for quite a few years


2017



Cloudflare Fails to Limit Scope of Piracy Lawsuit
By Ernesto on June 10, 2017

Contains PDF which contains the law suit document - names the 3 companies being sued
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...awsuit-170610/


2016


Hosting Companies Dragged into Piracy Lawsuit Alongside Cloudflare
By Andy on November 26, 2016

https://torrentfreak.com/hosting-com...dflare-161126/

Cloudflare: We Can’t Shut Down Pirate Sites
By Ernesto on September 27, 2016

https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...-sites-160927/


Cloudflare Faces Lawsuit For Assisting Pirate Sites
By Ernesto on August 23, 2016

https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...-sites-160823/


2015


Cloudflare: We’re Not Aiding and Abetting Piracy
By Ernesto on May 30, 2015

https://torrentfreak.com/tag/cloudflare/

RIAA Drags CloudFlare into Piracy Lawsuit, Scolds LeaseWeb
By Ernesto on May 27, 2015

https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-drags-...aseweb-150527/

Can you list other possibly affected image hosts used on VEF or discussed as alternate hosts here?

We need quickly an overview before reupping to hosts that could be next to be shutting down.

The sites listed in the law suit are as good as it gets i'm afraid

Aside from that script blocking extensions like noscript / script safe (chrome) will show up the names of any reverse proxies / companies their associating with

The question of ownership and how far this court case will effect foreign sites is anyones guess

The full list of the pirate sites in the complaint:

a. i m g c h i l i .net.net (Dolphin, Cloudflare, OVH) - banned on vef
b. namethatpornstar.com (Hivelocity)
c. slimpics.com (Cloudflare)
d. cumonmy.com (Cloudflare)
e. bestofsexpics.com (Cloudflare)
f. stooorage.com (Cloudflare, OVH) - closed apparently
g. greenpiccs.com (Cloudflare)
h. imagebam.com (Steadfast)
i. imgsen.se (Cloudflare)
j. i m g s p i c e .com (Cloudflare) - banned on vef
k. imgspot.org (Cloudflare)
l. img.yt (Cloudflare)
m. vipergirls.to (Cloudflare)
n. pornwire.net (Cloudflare)
o. fboom.me (Cloudflare)
p. imgflash.net (Cloudflare)
q. i m g t r e x .com (Cloudflare) - banned on Vef

source

https://torrentfreak.com/hosting-com...dflare-161126/

Same owner = same risk
 

Imagebam
https://www.whois.com/whois/imagebam.com

Imgbox
https://www.whois.com/whois/imgbox.com


The list is who is in the lawsuit - most likely the worse offenders in the eyes of ALS
not who else might be at risk of a similar fate

I first saw this when...i was googling my ihg problems and found hot-honeys.com. they were posting galleries of DDF and nadine jansen and score and a slew of others, nice while it lasted, but their host of choice was img.yt....then they went kaput, this happened a few months ago..