As of today, SXC.hu is redirecting to a visually similar clone, freeimages.com
Existing SXC login/passwords appear to be accepted, images all still there.
Just in case anyone is interested.
Timing out/very slow page loads at the moment.
People might consider deleting and moving their images here. I only upload here because its a friendly site.
@20 & 23 Colin
I discovered what you are talking about Colin but did not realize the extent and depth of what you were reporting. There may be a legal issue there as the site Quick Stats on the home page shows changes in the pending, newly added and photos online, but the images are not posted and if I went to a gallery to get a newer image, I get an error message.
Out of curiosity, I went to gallery of ba1969 (Billy Alexander) who is #1 in number of photos and downloads. I found that he has downloads for his images up to June 11, 2014. That image can still be downloaded http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1445865
The image to the left of it was posted June 14, 2014 and cannot be downloaded. http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1445920 Get an error message if I try.
So it looks like to me that FreeImages is continuing to build their online gallery, while denying anybody access to them.
Two questions Colin:
1) Were you sent a notice that there was going to be a change in policy?
2) Can you download your own images?
For those people that are using FreeImages for a repository of their stock photo files, there may be a time when you cannot retrieve a copy of your own image, but Getty has it.
Here are the current Quick Stats there now (just for the record)
» 409773 photos online
» 123 pending
» 0 added today
What I think is that we have done very well to have almost a quarter of the number of images on sxc. I also note that when I "left", there were about 35,000 MORE images on sxc than there are currently.
Interesting, Dez. When I started recording image numbers in mid-2009, there were 395,382 on sxc.hu and it stayed under 400,000 till June 2013. However, as far as I can tell no image uploaded since the end of May 2014 has been indexed (can't be found by found by category or by keyword - only by browsing a photographer's gallery). So I've had precisely no downloads of the new images I've uploaded there since the end of May.... For the site, at a rough estimate, that means that the images actually available on sxc.hu/freeimages.com just now is around 408,000.... And no response to me sending them bug reports, inevitably. And my gut feeling is that the level of scrutiny for images before approval there has slipped - stuff the approvers here reject, with good reason, gets through on freeimages.com now...
Colin, can you download your own images that were posted after May 29th?
Cris, intriguing... No I can't. Hadn't tried till you suggested. (NB, this for freeimages.com, not for rgbstock.com which is working fine, has great admins, and stuff gets sorted quickly!!!)
I have submitted a bug report as an image with text in the image, since I knew images were being approved - so being looked at. I'm pretty sure they are now aware of the issue, as that bug report image is the "one image pending" on the whole site at the moment - all my other ones have been approved, including more that were (sensibly enough) rejected here...
One of mine:
http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1448956
One of johnnyberg's
http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1448502
Both recently approved, can download neither.
To summarize from what you are saying, and what I see happening at freeimages:
1) People are continuing to upload in good faith to their site
2) They are accepting most anything that comes in
3) Once approved, the images are added to the galleries, but can't be found in a search
4) They no longer post newly added images in the new images section
5) You can't download your own photos
6) Registered members can't download images posted after the second week in June
7) Getty has taken the pictures, but won't allow anyone access to them including the image owners
8) These problems have been going on for months yet they give no hint of its existence.
So Getty has collected hundreds or thousands of images that are posted and can't be searched for or downloaded by anyone.
But Getty has the images.