MicrostockGroup

Actually I'm surprised they're recognizing this and offering to correct it. I was expecting an "oh well, it got rolled out early and we're not changing anything" type of response.

You are absolutely right, it is beyond belief.

Only two possible explanations occur to me right now - either they're the most incompetent people ever to run a multi-million dollar e-commerce site, or else they are absolutely desperate to make some kind of number for end-of-quarter or end-of-fiscal-year.

I've seen and heard of lots of corporate skullduggery when the management knobs are desperate to make their numbers.  For example in manufacturing it is (or was) some kind of rule that you don't declare revenue until the product has been delivered to the customer's door.  Two scams I heard of were, (a) when you can't ship the product fast enough to the customers, make a rectangle of tape around a corner of your warehouse and declare it to be "customer property" and pile up all the crap there which the management weasels are desperate to declare as "revenue" for the current quarter; and (b) ship stuff to customers that they never ordered, just drive up to their shop, unload and take off.  The inevitable product returns can be kept off the books for many quarters if necessary.

But I suppose it's more difficult to scam when you're doing e-commerce - either the credit card/paypal transactions happened, or they didn't.  If (hypothetically) a bunch of management weasels were desperate to put lipstick on an e-commerce pig then I suppose that making "mistakes" with the software would be about the only way, either overcharging customers or underpaying suppliers.

I don't have to tell you, when these scams occur they do not end well for the company management or shareholders.  When the chickens come home to roost a wrecked share price is the least of their problems ... civil lawsuits are very common and criminal investigations are not unknown.

Okay, I just had to laugh about this one. Can those retards* do nothing right?

From the iStocky's thread:

Just a quick question...when I went to the Stockys page, I noticed that the categories given on the homepage differ from those given on the "Enter Now" page. Just curious if this is a misprint. Or it could be that there is a slight name variation and I'm not getting it.

*no disrepect to the mentally disabled, but I have to call a spade a spade here

This is awesome, Sean. Let's see, you created that script in what, a day or two? Yet IS cannot? Enough said.

I missed the greasemonkey thing the first time around. Will go download and install it all now.

To be fair, she didn't get paid for the EL, because the buyer didn't license it correctly initially or after the fact.  Nothing you can do with RF until it is noticed.

I don't understand why, if IS was able to track down the sale and determine who bought it and that yes, it should have been purchased as an EL, why doesn't IS know before the contributor discovers the mistake? Does IS not have data of what their clients purchase? Especially LARGE clients? Just doesn't seem right.

That's just my reading of the post.

That's what I expected too.  This is the first good surprise from IS since the announcement.  But any word on when we can expect to get paid for the ELs or how long the "error" was going on for?

Just because a buyer is a large magazine does not mean all their downloads will end up in the magazine.  They could use it in internal communication, a tv ad for the magazine, etc.  With millions of buyers, I can't imagine IS would have subscriptions to every magazine, and monthly go through to correlate images to things licensed.

I think you're missing something, or crossing wires here.

Story: Magazine licensed image with regular license.  You received regular royalty.  You later find in magazine.  Usage requires EL.  You tell IS.  IS locates sale in history and notes magazine didn't purchase EL.  They contact magazine to request money for EL.

I'm not getting why you think IS doesn't know who licensed what image.  Of course they do.  You can go to your download history and see all your downloads as proof that it is recorded.  All they don't know is whether a license is used properly (ie, without an EL where one is required).

Twice last year when Time magazine used iStock photos on their front cover, an EL wasn't paid until all the woo-ways about the cover brought up the fact that they hadn't paid ELs either time. iStock chased them up both times.
I'll buy a possible mistake the first time, but the second time?
AND: has an iStock photo been used on the front cover since they discovered (twice) they had to buy ELs?

+1