It seems that after over 10 years Photobucket (the service nearly all of us use to host photos here) have decided to start charging people to host "3rd party" images.
*What is 3rd Party Hosting*
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc.
The charges are:
Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:
o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year.
The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.
o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year.
The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.
This obviously is a major problem, as to ensure photos are displayed on site EVERYONE who has a photobucket account for hosting here would need to upgrade to the "Plus 500" plan at $399.99 a year
I don't know about you but that is unacceptable and totally outrageous that they would suddenly do that and basically hold everyone's photos to ransom, I am looking into alternatives but by doing this they (Photobucket) have effectively rendered this forum (and indeed many others) useless.
At this stage I don't know what will happen and I have sent an email to Photobucket explaining what the consequences of this action are, in the hope that somebody will see sense and reverse the decision.
Meanwhile we will have to consider options on how to restore the photos (they are not gone as such just hidden) there are a few options but none so far that are going to be easy or cheap.
As they say, watch this space.

Edit - Still no response from Photobucket on this, I am also a paying customer so this was not a case of getting "free" hosting, in fact I just paid my yearly subscription a few days ago!
Also, I would advise members to NOT pay the amount they are looking for, I am already seeking alternatives not least of all the ability to host all the images myself on here.