MicrostockGroup

Hey all,

Yesterday, David Hobby twittered about the criminal sales of 3000 stock photographs over ebay on DVD, sourced from Micro with the most recognisable images coming from Yuri Arcurs. The DVD was being sold for $US4.99 or thereabouts, and this is in direct contradiction to the allowed usage of microstock images. Ebay has now removed that posting and is hopefully tying up any loose ends there.

However, I went on to ebay and did a quick search for 'stock images' and this came up: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/digienlight

Not to start a witch hunt, but this seems ridiculously cheap, and why sell them on eBay??

ebay should be awared about this

You are 100% correct. .... But, thieves do not obey laws. If it is easy to steel them, they will.

-Larry

It does look like outright theft to me. No way that seller obtained those dozens of collections legally. Just my take on it from scanning those offerings. I hope ebay investigates.

I have been an ebay member for ten years and I do know that ebay investagates and removes illegal, stolen, pirated items etc., ONLY when the OWNER or Law Enforcement request an item be removed. I reported dozens in the past with no results. When I was able to contact the OWNER of the item and they told ebay to remove the item, ebay then did so.

-Larry

It's like when I reported watermarked images of mine to Flickr (I think, it may have been MySpace) with links to stock sites to prove my rights over the image, and they replied (an automated reply, perhaps) asking me the same information.

 Theft is worked into the cost of most production of goods by manufacturers and resellers. Our business is really no different. Some people steal. Hard number to get a line on but if you were to guess and say 2% of your images were going to be stolen in their life you can start to add that figure into the cost of your production.

Best,
Jonathan

Jonathon's right. Unfortunately it is simply part of the costs of doing business. It's more cost-effective to accept (begrudgingly) a small amount of 'shrinkage' than expending huge resources trying to eliminate it __ which is virtually impossible anyway.

Theft is indeed a legitimate cost of doing business and should be factored in as such. Here's how theft is found at the retail level. From a 2009 study:

BOCA RATON, Fla., June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail theft, including shoplifting,
employee theft, administrative error and vendor fraud, is up, according to a
recent annual survey conducted by the University of Florida with a funding
grant from ADT Security Services.  The National Retail Security Survey (NRSS)
preliminary results show a real increase in the rate of retail theft for the
first time in six years.  In 2007, the lowest rate of retail theft in the
18-year history of the survey was reported at a rate of 1.44 percent of
overall retail sales. Last year that rate rose to 1.52 percent of sales
translating into losses of $36.5 billion.

I would use a 1-2% factor of image theft if I were into such calculations. Maybe a bit more since there is little fear of getting caught and punished. On the other hand there is a smaller market for stolen images in that there is no ready market to resell the items or to return them to a store for a non-receipt cash refund or store credit (ala drug-related thefts).

I'm not going to lose sleep over this issue. But I agree it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when seeing such obvious theft of images.

1. I'm going to guess that most piracy is the result of cheap subscription sales.

2. As with the music industry, piracy also probably ultimately generates sales. The use of stock images in general, even pirated, leads to a bigger market for stock images in general.

3. When agencies and photographers give away free images: Far from encouraging piracy this very likely draws people into the idea of using legitimate agencies.

4. It may take a while to be implemented but there is no reason why every image sold could not be uniquely encoded - each image therefore traceable back to a unique account and name. And not in the metadata.