I blogged on Wednesday about the photo archiving site Digital Railroad's abrupt shutdown, leaving thousands of professional photographer customers confused and worried. On Thursday, I got a statement saying that the site will extend the window time until Friday, October 31, 11:59 p.m. PST, for customers to migrate their photo archives.
(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)
The statement comes from both PhotoShelter and Diablo Management Group, the firm in charge of the shut down the defunct Digital Railroad, and reads:
As part of the process of terminating the business operations of Digital Railroad, Diablo Management Group has informed PhotoShelter of its intent to shut down the DRR site as early as 11:59 p.m PST on Friday October 31. After this point, it is very likely that all the images located on the Digital Railroad servers could be permanently inaccessible. Given the strong possibility of this event, PhotoShelter, on its own initiative, is strongly suggesting that customers migrate their files from Digital Railroad immediately. Digital Railroad, at the present time, has no plans or resources to accomplish this task.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, upon announcing the termination of operations, DRR stated it would provide only 24 hours of server access, which actually lasted only about 10 hours. This tiny window of time was exceedingly insufficient both in terms of making the news known to concerned parties, as well as time to download their photos off DRR's server.
Although the extension through October 31 is still short, it will provide more time to help photographers find backup options and transition their online presence. Both DRR and PhotoShelter stress that the situation is highly fluid and the deadline could be altered with little or no notice.
Since Tuesday, PhotoShelter has offered DRR customers a special three-month free offer and FTP solution to help migrate their images.
If you are a customer of DRR or know somebody who is, it is time to take action before it is late.
Related story:
If my eyes serve me right, you are gone.
If the news about bank collapses hasn't devastated you enough, I have another depressing one. This time it comes from the Internet, but is no less devastating for a good number of people, hopefully not including you.
As of Wednesday, if you go to the Web site of Digital Railroad you will be greeted with this:
To our valued Members and Partners:
We deeply regret to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.
On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to close all operations.
Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of customers and partners, and we regret this unfortunate outcome. Without sufficient long-term financial support, the business had become unsustainable.
Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.
The once popular Web site, where professional photographers archived and sold their photos, is now gone, completely. As it turned out, at about 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, the Web site alerted existing customers about the shutdown and gave them a 24-hour window to download their photo archive. However, just about 10 hours after the alert, the site was shut down completely.
It's unclear now if customers can still somehow retrieve their photo archive or will get money back for the undelivered services.
In the meantime, PhotoShelter is offering Digital Railroad customers a special offer--three month's credit for their Digital Railroad account. The offer is set to expire November 4.
Take the offer or not, but definitely take this as lesson that you can't rely 100 percent on online archiving services. It's best to keep a copy of your data offline as well.
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