July 2010: I’d just published Bad Dog to Best Friend, and it’s the book that got me banned from Photobucket.
One thing I’m good at is writing a blog and building a website, so of course I started with those, but there’s so much more an author needs to do to get their name and their book in front of people.
Some authors swear by Facebook and Twitter, neither of which I’m good at. The little voice keeps telling me to do what I do best — blog. It tells me to show people my strange side, like the Wall of Weird on Smallville. The little voice has talked to me for two decades, and the one thing I know is that it’s smarter than I am.
To that end, I started sharing my ghost stories on my blog and yes, people found them. They didn’t buy dog books, but they flocked to read the ghost stories, which brings me in a very roundabout way to the subject at hand — how I got banned from Photobucket.
I’d never had a Photobucket account before, and from what I read on their website, they were all about sharing your photos, videos, etc. Other authors were using them to post their video book trailers, and it seemed worth a shot, so I opened an account.
I attempted to upload one of the Bad Dog to Best Friend video book trailers, and the upload failed to finish. Three times I tried, and three times I got an error message saying sorry, something went wrong and the upload didn’t take.
To be honest, I don’t remember which video I attempted to upload. I may have tried uploading the long one first, and then assumed it was too big for them to handle, and then tried the shorter one. I don’t know, who remembers such details? All I know is that I never got a SUCCESS, your video has been uploaded message, and I gave up.
A few days later I got an email from Photobucket. It was short and to the point:
“Unfortunately your account has been banned because it violated our terms of service. These terms apply to both free and premium accounts. — Admin.”
Say what? Banned? But why?! Unfortunately the email did not say. The entire text of the email is what I posted here, which leaves me muddling with the possibilities of what I could have possibly done that was so bad as to get me banned from Photobucket.
I did attempt to log in to make sure this wasn’t some spammy email pretending to be from Photobucket. The ban was real. It would not let me log in, and across the top of the window it offered the cryptic phrase: “Account banned for violating TOS!”
I went back and poured over all their fine print to see where I might have failed. What baffled me is that the videos never even uploaded to the best of my knowledge, so was it the content of the videos, or something else that triggered the ban?
Did they think that my domain name “gityasome” was a dirty girly site or something? The main gityasome.com sells my t-shirt designs, while books.gityasome.com sold the Bad Dog to Best Friend book. Perhaps the t-shirt designs were offensive? Sports, animals, beer, pirates, hippies, happy thoughts, grumpy thoughts, politics, holidays — just your standard t-shirt fare.
Bad Dog to Best Friend is a positive, feel-good, happy ending dog book about a two-time shelter dog who finds her forever home. In spite of all her problems we fix her, retrain her (offering up the full details of how we did it) and end the book on a happy dog note. How could that possibly offend anyone?
There’s no hatred, violence, racism, harrassment, nudity, sex, drugs, or rock and roll anywhere in the book or videos. According to their TOS, “spimming” will get you in hot water, too, except that I’ve never heard of it. There’s no illegal activity, fraud, or stalking involved. I’m not selling a Ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme, or any trade secrets.
They mentioned using the photograph of a person without their consent. The only photos involved are of me and my dog. Surely I didn’t need our consent? Surely they didn’t think I was impersonating someone or making illicit videos of someone else’s dog?
In the middle of the long video book trailer is what’s supposed to be a humerous skit about Dakota being bad in her crate. Instead of highlighting bad dog behavior, it shows a partying dog with a clown hat, empty pizza box, empty generic beer can, and it says “Party Like A Dog!” Maybe that phrase was trademarked and got me ousted? I tested the theory searching the trademark database but nope, that wasn’t it. Maybe it was the sentiment itself? Maybe the video was just boring although I didn’t see “boring” mentioned in the TOS.
In spite of the videos failing to upload, I couldn’t help but wonder if they actually had uploaded and I just got the wrong message. Perhaps attempting to upload three times in succession is what got me outed. I’m just an author fumbling for an answer to a totally baffling question: What was so bad as to get me completely banned from Photobucket?
Also mentioned in their Terms of Service is the display of advertising without their permission on a non-commercial account. I don’t remember having to choose an account type but if that was the failure, surely they could have just banned the video book trailer itself and not me? Surely they could have had a big blurb telling me the difference between the two accounts before I chose one? I dunno, I’m just guessing. I didn’t make a log of the sign up process. I know I was heavy-headed when I signed up, coming down with the flu or something. I know I wanted to post the video in as many places as possible to get the word out, and signing up with a gazillion new websites is time-consuming, so maybe I didn’t read something as meticulously as I should have.
I will never know, but Bad Dog to Best Friend will forever go down in history as the book that got me banned from Photobucket.
Short version of the video book trailer (includes music and chapter list):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU6l1XhJpWw
Long version (Dakota telling her story and the Party Like a Dog skit):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0DCKBliAqU
Here’s the book that caused all the fuss, in paperback, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and audiobook.