Scan and Upload Analog Photos... Filter

May 10, 2018 5:53 PM

I am looking for a cloud-based website on which to store scans of my analog photos. My concerns are that these photos will no longer belong fully to me if I upload them. I want a site that will not assume some sort of rights to my photographs, or have the right to claim rights on these images in the future. Does such a site exist? Or does all content in such cloud-based storage sites automatically remain the sole property of the person uploading the pictures? Suggestions for sites and general info on how this works is much appreciated.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Or does all content in such cloud-based storage sites automatically remain the sole property of the person uploading the pictures?

They remain the property of the copyright holder. Sites like Facebook and Flickr require enough license to show the photos because otherwise they couldn't do the social media aspect of what they do. Periodically people notice the small print and get worked up by it but it's not a concern - otherwise professional photographers wouldn't be uploading their content to Instagram and the like.

But in general, it sounds like any of the cloud storage sites like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc. would be fine for your purposes if you only want to store them. Just remember that their SLA is a refund policy and not a guarantee that your data is safe, so keep at least one complete backup elsewhere.
posted by Candleman at 6:53 PM on May 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Amazon Prime comes with unlimited image storage and the back end is essentially the service they are selling to other people. Mass upload speeds I find fairly slow but for uploading a few hundred at a time they are pretty good.
posted by Mitheral at 9:03 PM on May 10, 2018

An alternative if you've got your own hosting, is to run your own gallery software, which removes even the suspicion that the user agreement may give rights over to someone else. I've used Gallery (which is now discontinued), but Piwigo looks like a good alternative.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:23 PM on May 10, 2018

Photographer friends of mine use SmugMug for this. Er...on previewing the link, apparently SmugMug and Flickr are merging? So I don't know which will stick around.
posted by hydra77 at 10:49 AM on May 11, 2018