MicrostockGroup

Dreamstime has been going through my portfolio and reversing decisions made on acceptance, having deleted 3 of my images as being too similar.

Now I've been informed by dreamstime that you're not allowed to show Canadian currency in commercial stock photos and so they decided to transfer 4 images that have coins in them from commercial to editorial. I have looked online and can find no restrictions other than photographing Canadian bills flat (the reasoning being that those images could be used for counterfeiting) no such restrictions are in place for coins however and my photos do not show the coins flat anyway.

I'm not going to argue with them as they are not about to change their minds on their absurd interpretation of the law but I wanted to see if anyone has any direct information on this. I found, in my search, hundreds of commercial royalty free photos of Canadian money on bigstockphoto, creatas, istock etc. They don't seem to have a problem with it.

They may ultimately be doing this to protect you as a contributor. And to potentially protect buyers. You should trust them on this since they would not randomly do it just for the fun of it. Therefore they have a reason.

The rules in general with regard to what can and cannot be sold as stock for commercial use are getting tighter (or perhaps becoming more clear would be a better description). All of the sites are tackling this in their own ways. The practicalities of how these things work inevitably mean that content which needs to be pulled does not all get disabled at once.

yes I did. That pertains to notes not coins since there has never been a case of counterfeit coins because they're much harder to produce. That article also states that the government recognizes the currency is an important symbol of Canada and is therefore acceptable to reproduce for education and. Advertising. There is no mention of the queen in the article and i think it would be hard to claim copyright on a public figure like the queen of England. People put her likeness on everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts for sale, for profit.

46 pictures removed due to similar!

a few from last week

I would very much like to see a source then because I see stock photos of coins on a lot of agencies that are not restricted to editorial use. Paper money is also widely available and I don't see where the difference would be. Perhaps if the source was available it would explain. That might make me feel better.

That just seems to cover photographs produced by the Mint (produced by RCM employees and of which the RCM owns the rights)...