Fotopic hosted not only the “British Rock Art Collection (BRAC)” and the “Worldwide Rock Art Selection (WRAS)” for about six years but thousands of other websites with over 27 million photos on-line. With over 18,000 rock art photos on-line and over half a million photo hits so far, the site was used by many rock art enthusiasts from around the world. But it was not only the photos – hundreds of them contributed by our good rock art friends – that are no longer enjoyable on the web. Stories and literary thousands of links to relevant information are gone as well. Thousands of clients trusted the company and lost all their photos what makes it double sad. The chance of a re-appearance of the site gets slimmer by the day and we foresee that we will never get a glimpse of its content again. And no one saw this coming; no warning in advance… e-mail bounced back, telephone lines dead… over & out!
Hopefully BRAC will rise like a phoenix out of the dust and re-assemble a new website but what has been lost is of course irreplaceable.
Conservation by record? Make sure there are non-electronic (paper) backups of the information!
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01/04/2011 at 18:35
StonehengeGuy
The operative word here is FREE!
Thousands lost their photos, did not one person have a backup or a plan ?
So you are telling me: Thousands relied on Fotopic to keep paying the bills on a free service forever, and no one even kept a backup ?
As someone who pays power and bandwidth fees every month. Free accounts start looking more and more like freeloaders at a rate inversely proportional to the current income stream. While at the same time directly proportional to their bandwidth needs and the data-center resources consumed.