MicrostockGroup

but they didn't give me an extended licence! The newspaper claims more than 700000 prints. I've noticed the photo was bought at SS by subscription and my royalty was standard 0.25$. What do you suggest me to do now?

I spent 2 hours in a book shop the other day and was amazed at how many fiction books use stock images. Less than 10% credit the photographer.

Not sure what the sales are like in your country, but in Australia, a best seller can be lucky to sell 25,000 copies

This is the final answer from SS:
"... As the same image appears on a number of other microstock agencies (e.g., stockxpert.com, fotolia.com) we are unable to conclude that the photo in question was
downloaded from Shutterstock. ... "

very sad because I had only 2 downloads of that photo. I have wrote this to SS in my first complaint:
"The photo was used on the newspaper to comment a article from another
major italian financial newspaper "il Sole 24 ore": it was a research
over quality of life in italian cities and Siena results the winner. Well this research was
published the 18 of December on "il Sole 24 ore": so the same day
someone bought my photo of Siena from ShutterStock and published it on
our newspaper the day after. For this reason I don't think the photo
was bought at StockXpert the 11 of December, because the research
wasn't published yet."

But they seem don't matter about this. very sad

I would have thought they would know who their customers were.  it was eitehr someone else who bought that one, or it was them.  if it was them, they should follow up with the only defence being "we bought it from someone else" or " our circulation is less than 250,000".

I would follow up SS on this.  Since SS doesn't offer exclusivity, it makes a mockery of their extended license as in most sitations, every photo on the site si potentially elsewhere.  So they can never pursue a copywrite case??

I would also ask StockXpert who bought it from there as you are investigating potential copywrite infringement.

Ok - agree in part but in this situation, SS should at least tell snem who it was that bought the image.  This could eliminate the person or identify who Snem should contact.

If the agencies dont provide any information, we cant even start to pursue.

Hi Snem,

why don't you contact the newspaper. Maybe they did it on accident and are not aware of the limits of the license. I know the world is full of cheaters, but once in  while you might meet someone who is honest or repents when convicted

I'm failing to see why you "can't even start to pursue". The only way this situation comes up is when the photographer knows that the photo was misused and he/she also knows who misused it. The newspaper is who you would go after, and you don't need SS to tell you that. If there is a middle-man selling the photo to the newspaper then the newspaper will tell you that when you call.

I also don't understand why snem thinks he needs a lawyer to contact the newspaper. The majority of the time getting a lawyer involved only makes a situation more difficult to solve. Just give the newspaper a call. I don't know what the phone rates in italy are but I get the call would cost a lot less than a lawyer.

@snem - it's not that they don't have the power to defend their contributors, but the cost/benefit analysis doesn't normally sway in favor of the photographer. Especially when a US company (SS) would have to go to Italy to pursue this. Giving up is not the answer, just make the phone call and see what happens.

That is way open for debate IMHO - just ask the person who's old man image was used on a 'racy' site and IS said it was acceptable use.

I was thinking about the same image when it was mentioned that IS would protect their users.  Just goes to show you that they probably should have done something in that case.  If that image came immediately to mind for three of us, imagine how many others remember that case as well?

check out

This Thread

for that old man image used in an indecent manner incident.

Quite frankly I don't see what the photographer had to complain about, you can't see any tit, I certainly don't find it offensive in any way. I don't see the person in the image being degraded. However had it been a child then I could see it being a problem.

Most Extended Licenses are created to allow a buyer to "resell" the image thru various means (mousepads, t-shirts, mugs, etc).  So purchasing multiple images from various sites wouldn't help with this cause.

If a buyer wanted a higher run rate, then they should just purchase the image from Fotolia or LuckyOliver (which both offer unlimited run rates).