Got an interesting response from Fiverr after I sent that email to their CEO:

Your email to our CEO was referred to our attention. Fiverr is a website based on User Generated Content (UGC). As such we do not pre-scan the Gigs uploaded by users. However we remove Gigs which are reported to us for breach of third party intellectual property rights (see our terms of service here: http://www.fiverr.com/terms_of_service and Intellectual Property policy here: http://www.fiverr.com/intellectual-property.

As an example - If Shutterstock, Thinkstock (mentioned in your email) or any other agency reports a Gig reselling their stock images in breach of their license/IP rights we promptly remove it, and in fact we regularly go through that process with several major brands. If any seller is reselling your photos without a license you should report such seller through our DMCA link.

On the other hand, there are stock photos sold on the site which are created by the sellers themselves, and if a seller claims to own the rights to the photos he/she are selling we have no ability to verify ownership unless a different owner of the rights complains and proves ownership. If a seller chooses to create stock photos and sell them for a low price compared to the price you charge it is beyond our control. Note that Fiverr has a large community of talented artists offering original work on Fiverr for prices starting at $5 but extending to much higher price points.

We hope this addresses your question.

Best,

Fiverr Legal Department

Nothing new or useful there. They're still saying that the burden is on us to use the DMCA, which of course is still useless in this case since these gigs don't identify specific content being resold so there's nothing specific to report.

Seems like they know it's wrong but they're just going to keep looking the other way.

So I was thinking about this - including the sad sack response from Fiverr - and it reminded me most of a fence. The stock in trade of a fence is to claim ignorance of where the goods came from and obviously, to stay in business, the fence has to have willing buyers - people who will turn a blind eye to the below market prices and buy anyway.

I did some searches to see what I could find about how law enforcement dealt with fences and if there had been any attempts to publicly shame the purchasers who are part of the reason the market exists. Couple of interesting thoughts came out of these articles I found.

One is that as a seller, being offered goods at a ridiculously low price was sufficient to impute knowledge that the goods were stolen:

http://www.lacriminaldefenseattorney.com/Legal-Dictionary/F/FA-FIRE/Fence.aspx

When someone offers 50 stock images for $5, that's a ridiculously low price even by subscription standards (and you have to sign up for a $249 subscription at SS to get images at 33 cents each which would still put the 50 images at over $16)

Places like Fiveerr that want to hide behind the "user generated content" smokescreen seem to suggest that they have no responsibility at all for what their marketplace participants do - beyond taking down items if anyone can prove they're not legit. But again, that seems to be an issue in the fencing of physical goods too - trying to conceal origins of items and mix legitimate goods in with the stolen stuff:

http://www.popcenter.org/problems/stolen_goods/

http://www.academia.edu/465485/How_Prolific_Thieves_Sell_Stolen_Goods_Describing_Understanding_and_Tackling_the

And with respect to the eventual buyers being responsible for the continuation of thefts, there's this quote from the first article above

"Generally, the demand for stolen goods increases the incidence of theft. This makes sense because, for the most part, thieves won't steal goods unless they first know or believe other people will buy or trade for them. General awareness that many business owners and members of the wider public are willing to buy stolen goods motivates thieves to start and continue stealing"

So I guess that a campaign to highlight that:

* too-good-to-be-true-prices probably mean the work is stolen
* buying from an established agency or the artist him/her self is the safe route
* don't buy anything else from marketplaces that allow probably-stolen work to be sold because you're supporting an e-fence

I think EmberMike's idea is the right one, but I'm not sure the graphic goes far enough. It's not just about being fair to artists - that's the fight with Getty and other agencies that are legit but don't pay us reasonably for our work. It's a pitch to buyers that it's wrong to turn a blind eye to impossibly low prices when it's likely stolen work.

I think EmberMike's idea is the right one, but I'm not sure the graphic goes far enough. It's not just about being fair to artists - that's the fight with Getty and other agencies that are legit but don't pay us reasonably for our work. It's a pitch to buyers that it's wrong to turn a blind eye to impossibly low prices when it's likely stolen work.

That graphic was intended to be more artist-focused. But maybe we need another graphic that is more buyer-focused.

For something aimed at buyers I think it's good to emphasize the idea that it's wrong to ignore that a deal is too good to be true. But maybe even better to inform them that the images they've purchased can't be used. Licenses don't transfer in this way. This isn't a designer giving a client the images they licensed and used in a project. This is resale, and it negates any valid license to use these images, especially in commercial uses.

LOL just hilarious, can't stop laughing

Me: you are just another shameless contributor at Fiverr, how can you even think that it is ok to sell your own accounts at Fiverr for other contributors? you really need to read the TOS because you just neglected it and possible will gain suspension, nice job man

David James James how will fiverr know i sell my accounts?i will deal safe bro

David James James pls lets end dis conversation.thanks for ur advice

Me: LOL how will they know? ahah man you just said it on their facebook page AHAHAH

David James James LOL!

David James James just pulling ur legs bro

David James James they are useless people

David James James i posted this ad here so they know how useless they are.....lol

http://www.fiverr.com/clickadv/send-you-10-high-quality-stock-photos-or-illustration

This "gig" actually uses a screen grab of SS in the listing - how much more clear can someone be that they don't own the images and yet Fiverr needs someone to report them?

I'm going to report this one to Shutterstock - possibly they can turn up the heat on this outfit.

And this guy doesn't mention Shutterstock, but uses their home page to make his purpose clear

http://www.fiverr.com/vlad56/sent-you-20-stock-photos-you-pick-at-stock-photos-website

Perhaps we need a bumper sticker like the one this blogger uses to express his loathing for bike thieves

http://www.plattyjo.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-bike-thieves-and-what-to-do-if-your-bicycle-is-stolen/

Anyone know if SS has been contacted or is doing anything?

I contacted SS specifically about the guy who is running one of these gigs and claims to also be a contributor. They asked me for whatever additional information I could provide about the guy (which isn't much since I think he's using a fake name at Fiverr) and they forwarded everything on to the legal team.

Not sure if it has progressed since then.

SS an other sites should be dealing with this, not us, the contributors.

We found it, and that is enough. We get only around 30% royalty, it's time they did something other than spending millions for server upkeep, marketing and new office space.

The thing is, SS and other agencies probably don't care. Are they going to lose subscribers because of this? Probably not, as the kind of people who purchase that "gig" and the kind of enterprises who purchase a Shutterstock subscription are hardly the same. They might lose a few on demand downloads, but that is much cheaper than trying to chase these people down.

Quote from: MarcvsTvllivs on March 25, 2014, 04:50

Quote from: spike on March 24, 2014, 17:23

SS an other sites should be dealing with this, not us, the contributors.

We found it, and that is enough. We get only around 30% royalty, it's time they did something other than spending millions for server upkeep, marketing and new office space.

The thing is, SS and other agencies probably don't care. Are they going to lose subscribers because of this? Probably not, as the kind of people who purchase that "gig" and the kind of enterprises who purchase a Shutterstock subscription are hardly the same. They might lose a few on demand downloads, but that is much cheaper than trying to chase these people down.

If that is the case then that would be  an unethical business decision. Fighting infringement shouldn't be based on a cost benefit calculation. It should be a no-brainer. Any company that claims to take infringement serious should take these accusations serious.

Why yes, and when has an agency *ever* acted in unethical ways!

Seriously though: I can understand that agencies don't mind the kind of infringement where someone buys a subscription and then illegally resells as much as the kind of infringement where someone just goes and steals images in the first place. I am not saying this sort of thing is legal or okay, I am just saying I understand and that we shouldn't expect too much from agencies in this matter. I mean, Depositphotos is telling us that this sort of scumbag resale is perfectly legal (Shotshop).

The thing is, SS and other agencies probably don't care. Are they going to lose subscribers because of this? Probably not, as the kind of people who purchase that "gig" and the kind of enterprises who purchase a Shutterstock subscription are hardly the same...

Subscription buyers are not always "enterprises", they are often individuals. I've been a subscriber. When I was doing more graphic design work I had a subscription, and I'm just me, no employees, no enterprise. Subscriptions are reasonably priced even for individual designers as long as they have enough work to justify the expense.

So I do think SS is losing subscribers over this Fiverr scam. These buyers are spending money on images. They could very easily find huge packs of free SS images on pirate sites, but they opt to spend money on Fiverr. Why? I suspect it's because as long as someone is spending a little money, they feel like they're not stealing and quite possibly they think they're getting legit images and licenses.

So these are people who would spend money on images, but get a better deal at Fiverr and probably think the gigs are legit. Without the Fiverr option, they would either pirate images or buy them the right way. Some will go the piracy route, sure. But some will buy images from an agency. So those sales are lost as long as the Fiverr scam continues.

And those sales I would bet are often lost OD and SOD sales. Maybe these people wouldn't spend the money on a subscription, but they might have bought an OD pack.

...I guess if they got their sub at SS you could point them directly to Clause 7 in SS's TOS or if from TS to Clause 2.2 in their Licence Information, but I suspect you won't get a "thank you, I didn't realise that" sort of response.

I did reply to them with that info, but I also suspect it won't lead to any acknowledgement of wrong-doing, definitely won't lead to an "oh, I'm so sorry, I'll stop selling these images right now..."

Just got mail from Fiverr, how nice to promote "Bank of shutterstock" by logovala.