Quote from: cobalt on April 29, 2014, 03:49

But Getty has a lot of "exclusive" content that is also being sold on other sites. Blendimages and others sell from their own website directly and getty also sublicenses their exclusive content to other agencies. So "exclusive" Getty content can be found on corbis, masterfile etc...I saw this with my own images when they were in the Getty House program.
Getty has a completely different understanding of "exclusive" content than istock does.

Do Getty claim to buyers that a faux-exclusive image is exclusive, or 'only on Getty'?

I have no idea what they write on their website, but I remember once talking to a Getty rep when I had my business and they claimed all the images on their website where handpicked and exclusive to them. This was many years ago, I have no idea what they tell people now.

When I discovered my images on other websites, corbis or Masterfile for instance, they were without my artist copyright name. Instead my files were attributed to "ocean collection" or something similar. We were told at the time that Getty is working with  their partners to have individual copyright names added, but 3 years later it hadn�t happened. I have no idea if the names are being attributed now. They did copy titles,descriptions and other meta tags, so it shouldn�t have been a problem to display our names.

My impression was that they use "cover names" for a collection to hide that all these images come from Gettyimages. The macro world is very intransparent, but they all sublicense their exclusive content to each other. Getty has hundreds of license partners, so your images are spread around the globe at many different price points. In principal there is nothing wrong with that. Obviously a local agency in japan with an office can give better support than an agency from the US. But the artist name should always be present and I found the missing names very disrespectful.

And of course this is why they only pay the artists 15-20%, there might be several middlemen agencies involved until the file reaches a customer and everyone takes their share.

It is refreshing to hear that Getty is now promoting istock. This is very good news for the istock exclusives. What a pity they didn�t do that 6 years ago. If they had given istock full support, who knows how strong the agency would have become.

I guess they must be losing a huge number of customers to SS to finally acknowledge istock.

ETA: Welcome to our world shudderstock. This is why we appreciate msg.

It has become very difficult to discuss subjects the contributors are concerned about on istock. Since not talking about issues doesn�t make the problems or concerns go away, the discussions have been moved elsewhere. And after what happened to Sean, Rob, Ivar, Alex Hibbert and others, many exclusive artists are scared they will be kicked out if they think too loudly. Traditional artists from getty seem to be more familiar with "using private channels" to very discreetly get problems solved, but the people that grew up with the internet and forums are using normal forum communication. They then got very frustrated with the aggressive responses they got from the new getty management. So the real discussions take place elsewhere.

I am also continually amazed that people think it is any of their business to speculate on a public forum about some else's contract or how much they earn.

Good job the feminists of the 20th Century didn't think that or they still wouldn't have equal pay.

Businesses would love to keep everything secret, a mature society realises that is no good for anyone.

Quote from: fotoVoyager on April 30, 2014, 05:09

Quote from: bunhill on April 30, 2014, 04:56

I am also continually amazed that people think it is any of their business to speculate on a public forum about some else's contract or how much they earn.

Good job the feminists of the 20th Century didn't think that or they still wouldn't have equal pay.

In this context, I feel that you are making a weak analogy since these are not comparable political or rights issues.

If forums like this didn't exist to freely discuss such issues the agencies would pay everyone the very least they could get away with, preferably nothing.

For example, Indian and Chinese photographers would be paid less than North Americans, any dissent could be ruthless crushed in private without consequence and we'd be back to digital sharecropping before we knew it.

Bunhill is always acting as the Devils Advocate regardless of what the topic is. I have never seen him agree with the majority, ever. Which is his right to do so, its his opinion, I just read his comments with the bold in mind.

but to delete a post confronting the deception to buyers and also to it's own contributor's is down right slimy. and yes, for that i really did think IS/GI would have had a little more integrity.

They've often done it before, on this and other serious issues.
Or else, we tell the truth and get banned sine die.

'iStock' and 'integrity' are not usually associated words.

Bunhill is always acting as the Devils Advocate regardless of what the topic is. I have never seen him agree with the majority, ever. Which is his right to do so, its his opinion, I just read his comments with the bold in mind.

The majority posting here is largely a self selecting group which over time has fairly aggressively silenced those who do not go along with the largely negative groupthink. There are many 1000s of people actively producing stock photos today. The majority is silent.

It is interesting and telling that what I wrote above has been interpreted as anything other than a straightforward statement of fact.  Here is the key point again, to be clear: "It does not matter what business you are in: If you are working with a company then it is stupid to start aggressively slating that company in public."

Going public is the only or little power we have. And you want to silence that as well.

 

The majority posting here is largely a self selecting group which over time has fairly aggressively silenced those who do not go along with the largely negative groupthink.

Well the istock forums have certainly been cleaned up to stop people from posting negatively. But this hasn�t lead to an increase of a "positive groupthink majority" now being happily active on the istock forums. The top 1000 thousand istock exclusives, i.e. the people that are bringing in the money, are a closely knit group that all interact. But they have moved to closed circles.

I have read many times that there are people who assume, that if the majority is silent, this means they are all agreeing.

From my experience in community work, it is the opposite, there might be few voices active on the forums, but they tend to reflect the opinions of a huge group of people. A large number of the contributor community is also at a disadvantage because they cannot write well in English. But as we can see with the current discussions around Fotolia, this doesn�t stop people from coming to the logical conclusions when an agency does something that is negative about their income.

And only publicity will get agencies to change things that are not good for us. What other choices are there?

The internet is great for all kinds of customer/business relationships. Transparency is what helps you see the scale of a problem. wether it is patients who are conncecting via the net because their medication is giving problems their doctor didn�t know about or a company keeps denying that it happened, or stock artist who discover their files are being sold for 30 dollars and they only receive 30 cents.

Of course every company can choose to say "oh just a few people complaining let�s ignore them - or delete them...) Other companies look at the problem the community is complaining about and solve the problems.

They are not my facebook or google groups. Why don�t you just ask around to get an invite? I was invited, I didn�t even know the groups existed before.

I prefer open discussions on forums, but I read everywhere. And I certainly don�t see a huge positive groupthink majority that is intimidated by msg. Just people who don�t want to get banned like Sean for saying what they think.

On many istock events the admins would tell us that the istock exclusives where the ones bringing in the vast majority of the money. There are around 5500 exclusives? It wasn�t a secret at the time, is it now? So I would guess the top 1000, maybe 2000 would be most relevant. Not everyone does stock full time or has the eye for what really sells.

I am just quoting what they told us. Maybe now this has changed and the majority of istock�s income is from indie content?

If you are exclusive you can probably ask in the exclusive forum how many exclusives there are now and if the exclusive content is still brining in the majority of the money.

Closed group doesn't necessarily mean that others can't join. I'm in two closed iS Fb groups (no doubt there are plenty more). One I was invited to join, the other I just asked.
AFAICS, in both cases the groups are closed to non-iS contributors.
This forum would be a better place for non-iStockers considering submitting there.

Neither of these groups only says what they want to hear: all shades of opinion are posted.

What I really can't understand is why you didn't know iS deleted posts and banned contributors from their forums, just for telling the truth, before now. It's been going on at least since I started there in late 2006.

I also don't understand how you could have imagined that Yu-know-who was double dipping without iS's knowledge. True, posts about same were promptly removed from iS, but they have been rehearsed here several times since his trumpeting on here of exclusivity (where 'exclusive' seems to mean simply 'not on SS'), and his famous 'professionals deal with professionals' quote.

They are not my facebook or google groups. Why don�t you just ask around to get an invite? I was invited, I didn�t even know the groups existed before.

I prefer open discussions on forums, but I read everywhere. And I certainly don�t see a huge positive groupthink majority that is intimidated by msg. Just people who don�t want to get banned like Sean for saying what they think.

On many istock events the admins would tell us that the istock exclusives where the ones bringing in the vast majority of the money. There are around 5500 exclusives? It wasn�t a secret at the time, is it now? So I would guess the top 1000, maybe 2000 would be most relevant. Not everyone does stock full time or has the eye for what really sells.

I am just quoting what they told us. Maybe now this has changed and the majority of istock�s income is from indie content?

If you are exclusive you can probably ask in the exclusive forum how many exclusives there are now and if the exclusive content is still brining in the majority of the money.

so now you are suggesting that i or for that matter anyone else should ask around to get invited to a closed circle?

that would appear to me to be desperate to gain acceptance in your so called closed circles. you can keep it. you guys can enjoy self applauding each other without me. from what it appears you are good at it.

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