Quoting from http://www.bve-terminus.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1444
Snappy Designs Ltd, which owns the image-sharing website
Fotopic.net, is going into liquidation, director
Stephen Dyer has confirmed.
Dyer
has been forced to issue a public statement after Amateur
Photographer (AP) tracked down the Fotopic.net boss earlier
today.
In
his statement Dyer said: 'The company has ceased trading
due to an unexpected, significant decrease in revenue and
I apologise that our efforts to recover from this have not been
successful.'
Snappy
Designs Ltd has appointed Jeremy Bleazard of XL Business Solutions,
based in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire as
liquidator.
Dyer
claims that photographers will be able to access their material 'in
the near future' if the liquidator manages to sell the
business.
Whether
Fotopic.net customers will see their images again is far from
guaranteed, however.
Even
if the business is sold, the website that hosts Fotopic.net would
have to agree to the transfer of images, said Bleazard in an
interview with AP.
The
Fotopic.net website is estimated to hold tens of thousands of
images that users have not been able to access for
weeks.
Bleazard
estimates that Fotopic.net holds around 30,000 pictures, though he
was not able to confirm this figure, nor the total number of
customers.
One
source has suggested to AP that Fotopic.net holds around 70,000
images.
Among
the victims is Richard Hall who said he paid Fotopic.net £90 for a
'Premier Service and renewed his subscription
recently.
'It's
not a lot of money but a lot of time was taken, on an ongoing
basis, editing, uploading and captioning photos... All this
now appears lost.'
He
added: 'Some users use the site for business purposes, they must
have been really hit by all of this.'