MicrostockGroup

It does make sense if they have had a legal warning or thier 'fingers burnt', we do not know if there has been a compensation claim or just a policy change after a risk assesment and they are not saying, there is no profit in the exercise of looking again at every single image, so it is a cost to the business which needs to be tightly controlled.

If I remember there is no way to retrospectivly assign a model release to an image with Istock, so they would have to develop one, then they would have to mail shot all the contributors giving clear instuctions on what needs a release and ask them to attach a release or delete images, there would be an massive number of support emails from contributors questioning if one is required for a specific image, and the cost to look at these would be high, and after all that they would still have to look at all the images and find any offending items and delete them.

So they likely have it right from a business minimum cost perpective, but not from a contributors perspective.

David  

The same holds true for any recognizable building.  You have always needed a Property Release signed regardless of whether a site accepted the photo or not, it's your ass on the line if the wrong person gets miffed you are selling a photo of their building.  Pretty much all the casino's in Vegas are easily recognized so that's a no-brainer.  Others maybe not so much but you run the risk of a major financial liability to sell an image of something you don't have permission to sell. 

The same thing happened to me a couple years ago with images of the Space Needle in Seattle.  I learned that if the Space Needle photographed in a generic city view then it's fine.  If the Space Needle is clearly the subject of the photograph it is not. 

Dan Heller has a book all about releases, when they are needed, what they should have in them and so on.  It's a good resource if you have questions about them.

Mat