MicrostockGroup

never say never.

in another photo blog, where i've got banned because of other silly reasons, i spoke with the
guy who shot the images on istock that got notorious for the "BNP scandal" in UK months ago,
and he said that all he did was sending an email to iStock.

DMCA notices will lead you nowhere.

I would assume they come from a variety of sources. Saying it is all subs seems short sited. Employees can swipe their company's purchased stock images and style guide images. Credit card fraud probably contributes as well. I assume some of these people use file sharing and just keep accumulating files from a variety of sources. They may not have purchased any of them.

Spiders don't search in zip or rar files... or am i wrong.?.

Patrick.

Agree, It doesn't make sense to me that someone would pay $25.00 PPD for an XXL size and then give it away for free. Yes, there is Istock content on there as well as other sites, but I bet the bulk of it comes from subs. If Sean was submitting to SS, his stuff would be all over that site. Like I said, I found a bunch of my images on the first ten pages, I'm not about to go though 800 pages and send emails. It's totally out of control. The movie "300" comes to mind.  How many sites are there like this?

there is plenty of macro RF, Macro RF Cd's and even some rights managed images there (and 000's of istock). I think it would be more employer has paid, not the person uploading it.

the big question remains ... how should we react ? and will Getty or iStock move a finger
against these sites or just say thank you for the feedback and good bye ?

they always knew there's a ton of pirated image packs on the net, it can't be a shocking news for them.

on the other side, if the agencies are really "representing" us it would be fair to expect
a bold move from their legal department and especially from Getty.

did anyone wrote already to iStock and Getty ?
any news ? any reply received ?

I haven't read every single post here and don't know for sure if this was addressed:

The agencies sell images on our behalf. We don't sell. They do. We authorize them to do so.

So whose job is it to go after people who got a hold of these images and then offer them for free? Us?

Yes it is infringing our copyright but, again, we're the ones working for free (doing the research) in favor of the agencies. Once we see our images for free we let the agencies know so they can take action (or not - since it is out copyright), but they are the ones possibly losing money as well.

I think by now every major stock site should have agreements with rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile etc. that any upload/post with their (trademarked!) name in it will be sent for review before going live. Hell, the agencies could even pay for that service just to eliminate a significant bunch of such postings. But again, I don't see serious efforts on the agencies' side.

These day you have to be proactive to stay ahead of the game. Just reacting will eventually push you out of the competition.

And since many here are complaining that subs are the reason for all this (I don't think that subs are the sole reason...) then you need to pull your images off the agency that offers subs - period (if you're exclusive with one of them and have no way to opt out, it shows painfully what we (you) signed for...).

As I posted before, the agencies want to make money in every way possible. If it means selling subs then they will do that as well. THEY want to make money/stay competitive but it all goes to the cost of the contributors.

We can not control price changes, the agencies do that (for us?). They cover their costs and maintain their salaries by adjusting prices. We can't do that. All we are supposed to do is shoot more (a lot more), upload/edit/keyword faster and be prepared to take pay cuts in terms of commissions. This is inevitable for every photographer unless you have a 99.9% streamlined business which many of us don't have (as there are still things happening called "life").

That's exactly right. If it ain't broken, don't fix it (no matter how much the contributors complain...).

Whilst piracy is an issue, I doubt that it is significantly damaging our revenues - in so much as I do not believe that many clients who would otherwise buy stock photos are choosing, instead, to use pirated content. I do not think that sales are being lost.

I do not believe that the relative availability of pirated images necessarily points to a significant demand for pirated stock photos to be used commercially.

I am also in no doubt that the best way of discouraging the use of pirated stock photos is by bringing users into the system via free and cheap content including subscriptions.

I think it could even be argued that the use of stolen content ultimately encourages sales via encouraging the use of stock content in general.

All businesses have to factor in a degree of theft. I'll bet there are people even on this thread who at sometime have used pirated software or watched a pirated movie or ripped a cd.

I remember when you posted a nature video on this forum featuring stolen bbc documentary clips with the message "watch it before it gets taken down again because of the copyright infringement" (I'm paraphrasing)  so it's not just your "friends" that don't care is it?

ETA oh here it is http://www.microstockgroup.com/off-topic/we-are-all-one/msg144486/#msg144486 and there's a few of the people complaining on this thread thanking you for it too!

Sean did address him as Marco in some fairly recent thread, so I'm guessing his identity was on open secret.