Should bloggers ever worry about photos disappearing off of Picapp's servers?

Well looks like your servers have failed you and half of the photos on our blog which are from PicApp have completely dissappeared.

Someone needs to reply to this guy and provide users with some confidence that this service isn't dead or dying.

What is going on. My site no longer has images coming up either.

Have no idea why, but picapp's URL is completely screwed.
http://www.picapp.com works
but
http://picapp.com does not work, and all images are pointed picapp.com and not www.picapp.com

ughh..

Did Pic App just change their Picture use terms....my pictures all vanished...it looks like I now have to put a code in that puts a bar under each photo...this will not work as i have multiple pictures on one page..it will look unprofessional...help...I hope Pic App doesn't ruin their company

Since the OP asked this question, pics have disappeared twice. Yesterday being the most recent example http://getsatisfaction.com/Picapp/top...

Frankly, for a new service I'm willing to accept these things - That's why I'm waiting. The key is that they acknowledge it, fix it within 24 hours. The service is free to use at this point even though the partnership my be critical to all involved.

I also have that concern, not only from a server reliability angle, but also from a company standpoint. To make a comparison, another provider called Gumgum has the same concept as you - licensing from various image agencies - providing centralized image source. However, in their case, we access the licensor's site, and download the images. So, if Gumgum should go under, we still have the images. If their servers die, we still have the images. And if worse comes to worse, we can negociate directly with the agency that owns the image. But under all those scenarios, we, as a website, don't end up with broken links in the meantime. With you guys, the terms state you have no responsibility, should you fail to provide the images, and we don't have the images on our own servers, so any issue whatsoever equals broken links.

We need to wonder why the administrators have not answered this question. I think they haven't because they don't know. No one ever thinks that their company will go down or that they will fail. So from the point of view of users, we have to take the risk, like we do for any good thing. Balance out the risk by using pictures from different sources.

One reason that some pics 'disappear' is that they are being used without the copyright holders permission. As some photographers earn a living from their photos (and it can cost a fortune to achieve some of the results) they aren't very happy when sites distribute them for free and dont pay them for the privilage!!!

Bloggers should be very concerned!!!

Using photos without permission is theft and can result in court proceedings and fines... the sites who host such images without permission will be regularly having to remove photos and disrupting service and leaving you with missing links on your sites!!!

If you have a smaller site and cant afford to buy pics, companies like GumGum.com supply images with permission and you pay with it through banner advertising on the individual photos.. some of that money also goes to the photographers and agencies so as they can continue to provide a service for you to use.. and the circle continues. Its only fair!