MicrostockGroup

It's not fair, but it's a heck of a lot less unfair than the earlier deal

As expected, a thread started in the main forum asking where was the photographer's deal. Until they're willing to put their Vetta income on the line, no deal for them. And enough of them won't even consider opting out, so I can't see anything similar happening for photographers.

...I really wish they could dump the Getty imports (which I think is part of the reason they had to jack up Vetta and Agency prices so high) and go back to where Vetta was initially. Add Agency as a similarly priced collection (light and bright vs. edgy and dark) and keep the royalty rates across the board....

...I dozed off for a bit and was dreaming...

I'm really starting to feel like the last kid in grade school who believes in Santa.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=325962&messageid=6322462

I saw your post in the main forum about there being no chance for photographers to unite and stand up to all this bullsh*t. Why not?  Why couldn't we?  I know our numbers are much larger, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, and I definitely think there's enough anger brewing on the surface for people to be willing to try. 

I feel like a beggar asking for a piece of bread. These are only only crumbs tossed over us.

Somebody brought this up in the video forum:

"Will there be more of a legal clause in the contract binding iStock to these rates until the end of 2012 other than just a 'promise' in the forums? We've learned from the past that promises in the forums by admins don't mean anything."

He's right, you know.

Seriously!  The artists affected should all take screen shots of this promise so they will have proof if/when they need to sue. 

When you have a contract without a fixed end date (which is how the IS ASA is) and you have a clause that says they can change the terms unilaterally at any time just by posting the new terms on the site (which is essentially what the ASA says), whatever they put in the contract is no more binding on them that what they write in the forums.

They can change anything at any time for any or no reason. We get to accept and continue to do business with them or pull our content and leave.

The Getty contract has a term - and although they can still issue a take it or leave it requiring you to sign the new contract when yours is up, there is at least a period during which you have something a bit more stable. I think the weasle out provisions in the Getty contract are via the rate card which I think can change during the contract - to add new products like the cheap web license that earlier had a lot of Getty contributors furious with them.

That long post that got deleted from one of the conference call participants referred to us (contributors) learning to live with this "nothing is certain" state of affairs. I really do get the idea in principle, but when the combination of naked greed and a bunch of spin about how it's all so good for us as contributors get combined, it's very hard to live with all the changes being so one-sided.

And yes, I know I can delete my portfolio and leave - I consider that on a weekly basis

Perfect!  Can't wait to see that one

Yes, so true, and the jsnover answer has the correct reasons why. A screen shot of a promise from the moderator or the president doesn't mean spit! There's a notification period and the change goes into effect. The contract only protects them, not us!

ball singular RubberBall images. They are one of the Agency Collection pseudo-exclusives on iStock, and here on Getty Images (not Agency Collection).

I say pseudo-exclusive as they operate by none of the regular rules of iStock exclusivity - they sell RF images from their own web site, for example, have no upload limits.

I was joking, but you've called my bluff. I guess I'll have to work on one when I get some free time.

This isn't generally visible because it's in the Vetta forum, but apparently they gave insufficient attention to the details of rolling out Vetta for video and illustrations.

Now the program is accepting nominations, contributors who want to participate are running into bugs that prevent them from doing that.

Trying to nominate a legacy file, they get the error "This file was previously in the Vetta Collection but it is no longer eligible for nominations" which is what you would get if you had taken a file out of Vetta and tried to nominate it again later.

Trying to nominate a new file upon upload, they get the error:


It's hard to say if this is because they're rushing this, or it's just the typical poor quality software rollout.