Photobucket's going down like a sinking ship on fire. They won't last very long pulling this stunt. Most of their customers will leave, and some other company will take their place.
BACK UP YOUR PHOTOS if you don't want to pay for them in the near future! Mark my words, they will start forcing you to pay them just for the right to store them on their site, and won't give you access to them until you do!
I'm storing all of mine on an external hard drive (a good idea anyway) and then uploading to a site.
I've still got a subscription with Photobucket until the end of the year, so I can still host and use pics there, but I'm going to wait a bit and see if one company rises above the rest as the replacement for Photobucket.