pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Author Topic: Pixmac no longer a partner?  (Read 46643 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

« on: January 17, 2011, 11:06 »
0
I just received this email:

Quote
Recently you asked us why you have your images with Pixmac.com. We had contracts with Dreamstime and Fotolia, but those contracts are no longer in operation. However, if you would like to to profit from Pixmac sales anyway, then now is the best time to upload your portfolio to Pixmac!

We guarantee a fast review of your images and if you are uploading the same portfolio as you have at Fotolia or Dreamstime (and let us know), this will make the approval process even faster. Premium support will be included we promise.

Good luck with your images!

It seems that Fotolia and Dreamstime cancelled their agreements with Pixmac. Anyone got the same email?


« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2011, 11:16 »
0
Yes, me. And that's a very good news. Pixmac is a very weird agency.

But this announcement makes me wonder, do they really have over 11.000.000 images as state on their frontpage?
« Last Edit: January 17, 2011, 11:20 by ibogdan »

« Reply #2 on: January 17, 2011, 11:26 »
0
Something looks rather fishy...

« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2011, 11:38 »
0
I just received this email:

Quote
Recently you asked us why you have your images with Pixmac.com. We had contracts with Dreamstime and Fotolia, but those contracts are no longer in operation. However, if you would like to to profit from Pixmac sales anyway, then now is the best time to upload your portfolio to Pixmac!

We guarantee a fast review of your images and if you are uploading the same portfolio as you have at Fotolia or Dreamstime (and let us know), this will make the approval process even faster. Premium support will be included we promise.

Good luck with your images!



Just checked, mine are (almost all) still there... so what other agency is partnering with Pixmac.?...
Patrick.

« Reply #4 on: January 17, 2011, 11:48 »
0
I just received this email:

Quote
Recently you asked us why you have your images with Pixmac.com. We had contracts with Dreamstime and Fotolia, but those contracts are no longer in operation. However, if you would like to to profit from Pixmac sales anyway, then now is the best time to upload your portfolio to Pixmac!

We guarantee a fast review of your images and if you are uploading the same portfolio as you have at Fotolia or Dreamstime (and let us know), this will make the approval process even faster. Premium support will be included we promise.

Good luck with your images!



Just checked, mine are (almost all) still there... so what other agency is partnering with Pixmac.?...
Patrick.

As far as I know, BigStockPhoto is too.

This is an interesting development.

After the BigStock/pixmac/media bakery/colossus fiasco, I would have thought BigStock would terminate their relationship with them. Nothing has been said about whose fault that whole thing was. I believe that pixmac contends that it was media bakery who changed all of the contributor's copyright information, but a lid has been put on the whole can of worms, so I doubt we will ever know the whole truth.

« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2011, 12:13 »
0
The email starts off with "Recently you asked us why you have your images with Pixmac.com."

No, I didn't.  Never heard of them.  So the first thing out of their mouth is a lie. That makes a terrible first impression. Reminds me of robo calls in my voicemail that start off  "Sorry I haven't returned your call before now, about this great business opportunity...."

« Reply #6 on: January 17, 2011, 12:21 »
0
Has anyone tried to contact dreamstime or fotolia directly? You would think if they have dissolved their partnership, there would have been some sort of announcement...

« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2011, 12:24 »
0
Has anyone tried to contact dreamstime or fotolia directly? You would think if they have dissolved their partnership, there would have been some sort of announcement...

Why would you think that?  Was there an announcement when they partnered in the first place?

« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2011, 12:29 »
0
What was I thinking??  Wishfully I suppose. I've checked out both sites and nothing at all.

« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2011, 12:36 »
0
Has anyone tried to contact dreamstime or fotolia directly? You would think if they have dissolved their partnership, there would have been some sort of announcement...

Why would you think that?  Was there an announcement when they partnered in the first place?

Exactly. These partnerships are on the down-low. We're not supposed to know about them, we're not entitled to know where our images have gone, or how much money we have actually made off of them.

« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2011, 12:54 »
0
But this announcement makes me wonder, do they really have over 11.000.000 images as state on their frontpage?

A search without search terms returns slightly over 5.000.000 results.

red

« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2011, 14:05 »
0
Hmmmmm, Achilles just posted this on DT -

As you all know, Dreamstime sells content using a large distribution network, additional to our own site.  From time to time, we audit our distribution partners to ensure that everything is going as it should.

Earlier last week, we have decided to remove the access to one of our distributors for a serious infringement of the terms of our contract with that distributor.  More specifically, we discovered that the distributor has been selling some images at a higher price point than agreed with Dreamstime, with the extra amount not being reported by the distributor.  The added amount per image varied from a few percentage points up to several times the acceptable price.  Furthermore, some of the files were duplicated and used, via a caching system, to allow future downloads from new and previous customers, without any payments sent to Dreamstime or its photographers.  Dreamstime considers this to be a serious violation of its contributors rights one which we intend to see remedied by any and all available means.

We have consequently removed their access to all Dreamstime images, and were currently preparing a legal action towards this company.  I will not name the company here, due to the nature of the legal process.  Once this process ends, and we recover any royalties due, we will add any additional missing royalties due.

We are making this post to publicly advise our distributors and contributors that we will not tolerate any kind of infringements.  Similarly, we will not quietly end an infringement, endorsing suspected instances of fraud this way.  Strong ethics must prevail and should be the very first thing one analyzes before joining a partnership, no matter its type.

We will keep you posted.

« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2011, 14:12 »
0
Hmmmmm, Achilles just posted this on DT -

As you all know, Dreamstime sells content using a large distribution network, additional to our own site.  From time to time, we audit our distribution partners to ensure that everything is going as it should.

Earlier last week, we have decided to remove the access to one of our distributors for a serious infringement of the terms of our contract with that distributor.  More specifically, we discovered that the distributor has been selling some images at a higher price point than agreed with Dreamstime, with the extra amount not being reported by the distributor.  The added amount per image varied from a few percentage points up to several times the acceptable price.  Furthermore, some of the files were duplicated and used, via a caching system, to allow future downloads from new and previous customers, without any payments sent to Dreamstime or its photographers.  Dreamstime considers this to be a serious violation of its contributors rights one which we intend to see remedied by any and all available means.

We have consequently removed their access to all Dreamstime images, and were currently preparing a legal action towards this company.  I will not name the company here, due to the nature of the legal process.  Once this process ends, and we recover any royalties due, we will add any additional missing royalties due.

We are making this post to publicly advise our distributors and contributors that we will not tolerate any kind of infringements.  Similarly, we will not quietly end an infringement, endorsing suspected instances of fraud this way.  Strong ethics must prevail and should be the very first thing one analyzes before joining a partnership, no matter its type.

We will keep you posted.

Hurray for it's about time DT. I certainly hope they follow through and I hope they pass on some royalty money to the contributors who were ripped off. I personally opted out early on, so I don't think I will be affected, but there must be many more who will be.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2011, 16:01 by cclapper »

WarrenPrice

« Reply #13 on: January 17, 2011, 14:18 »
0
Doesn't say much for the ethics of people who so strongly vouched for the "honesty and integrity" of PixMac. 

« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2011, 15:47 »
0
Hurray for DT. I certainly hope they follow through and I hope they pass on some royalty money to the contributors who were ripped off. I personally opted out early on, so I don't think I will be affected, but there must be many more who will be.
'Hurray' is a bit strong to say the least __ after all it was DT that chose Pixmac as a partner and who gave them access to our property.  I'm glad that DT appear to have caught them with their hand in the till but we still have no way of knowing how long this has been going on or to what extent.

I don't understand the need for these 'partners'. Our agencies already take a big enough slice of the money our sales generate, certainly enough to do their own marketing. Introducing further middlemen can only dilute our cut yet further, reduce the transparency of the transactions and open our work to theft. We don't have a clue what is going on with these partnerships and have no way of finding out either.

Btw, from a few cursory searches it would appear that my images have disappeared but they do still have lots from contributors on here (e.g. Lisa 1800 images, Baldrick's T 900 images, Yuri 28K, etc).

« Reply #15 on: January 17, 2011, 15:54 »
0
Hurray for DT. I certainly hope they follow through and I hope they pass on some royalty money to the contributors who were ripped off. I personally opted out early on, so I don't think I will be affected, but there must be many more who will be.
'Hurray' is a bit strong to say the least __ after all it was DT that chose Pixmac as a partner and who gave them access to our property.  I'm glad that DT appear to have caught them with their hand in the till but we still have no way of knowing how long this has been going on or to what extent.

I don't understand the need for these 'partners'. Our agencies already take a big enough slice of the money our sales generate, certainly enough to do their own marketing. Introducing further middlemen can only dilute our cut yet further, reduce the transparency of the transactions and open our work to theft. We don't have a clue what is going on with these partnerships and have no way of finding out either.

Btw, from a few cursory searches it would appear that my images have disappeared but they do still have lots from contributors on here (e.g. Lisa 1800 images, Baldrick's T 900 images, Yuri 28K, etc).

Actually, the way I understood it to work was that pixmac would NOT have access to hi rez images, only thumbnails. And anytime someone bought from pixmac, the buyer would be directly sent back to DT to purchase. That's how it was explained in the beginning. Somewhere along the way, something changed, then apparently pixmac had access to hi rez files and could manipulate the sales. Exact same thing happened at pixmac/BigStock/colossus. And I'm guessing the fraud has been going on for months.

So yes, you are correct, hurray might be too strong a word because this should have been caught a long time ago. So I take back my hurray.  ;)
« Last Edit: January 17, 2011, 16:00 by cclapper »

« Reply #16 on: January 17, 2011, 16:08 »
0
So yes, you are correct, hurray might be too strong a word because this should have been caught a long time ago. So I take back my hurray.  ;)

Hurray to the taking back of your 'Hurray'  :)

I've checked and it turns out I was always opted out of partnerships at DT. I became very sceptical about the wonders of 'partnerships' when Istock kept breathlessly announcing partnerships or affiliations with various other business but none of them appeared to amount to anything.

Pixmac used to have some of my images though, possibly through FT. Does anyone know how/whether you can opt of of these partnerships at FT?

« Reply #17 on: January 17, 2011, 16:53 »
0
So yes, you are correct, hurray might be too strong a word because this should have been caught a long time ago. So I take back my hurray.  ;)
snip
Does anyone know how/whether you can opt of of these partnerships at FT?

IIRC, someone said you cannot opt out at FT, and I even think one person left because of it. But I am going by memory and I suffer from CRS*.


*CRS=can't remember sh*t

« Reply #18 on: January 17, 2011, 16:54 »
0
PM is also scraping from 123RF, or at least they were as of about 2 weeks ago. Just FYI.

« Reply #19 on: January 17, 2011, 17:11 »
0
^^^ Thanks but I never bothered with 123. Something about the tone of their wording put me off at the time and I've never heard much reason to bother ever since.

RacePhoto

« Reply #20 on: January 17, 2011, 18:51 »
0
Has anyone tried to contact dreamstime or fotolia directly? You would think if they have dissolved their partnership, there would have been some sort of announcement...

Why would you think that?  Was there an announcement when they partnered in the first place?

Exactly what I was thinking. We're find out second hand, after the fact.

Only reason I ever looked to see if I had anything up Partnered on Pixmac was because of what people posted here. No sales and now un-partnered by reading here. Oh wait, it's Microstock, no regulation, no open communications, fly by the seat of your pants, change the rules whenever it helps the agency and keep the suppliers in the dark or try to hide the truth.


« Reply #22 on: January 18, 2011, 07:25 »
0
1. We have sent the email mentioned above only to photographers that requested information about Pixmacs source of photos during the partnerships. The emails were taken from our customer support history of questions only. We thought it is fair to tell those photographers about the change.

TO rimglow: Please, could you state your email here? We will get back to you with n exact date and time when you communicated with Pixmac customer support. Were not crazy to do any robo calls.

2. The statement about 11 million images was taken off the homepage.

3. BigStock was never a direct partner of Pixmac, it was Colossus Agency (Media Bakery). And after the discovery of the issues discussed elsewhere, Pixmac immediately took offline the content and ceased the partnership few days later. We asked Colossus for more information about the issue, but we dont have it yet.

4. Unfortunately downloads of photos supplied by agencies are not reported in photographer reports on sourcing agencies. Theres no way how Pixmac can change that. Our way to change this was to set and stick to the Declaration of Fair Stock Photo Agency, where photographers clearly see which downloads are via the agency directly and which are via distributor such as Pixmac. For example, this already allows Pixmac's direct photographers to sign-off any distributors of Pixmac if they want. With a single click.

5. The reason why Pixmac might bring extra value "as a middleman" is that we might be smarter and more effective in marketing. And we can reach new customers in several other countries. In the end all parts of the chain should be happy. On the other hand we take all the issues discussed here or on other forums always very seriously and we are taking steps to explain and avoid any of them in the future.

« Reply #23 on: January 18, 2011, 07:43 »
0
1. We have sent the email mentioned above only to photographers that requested information about Pixmacs source of photos during the partnerships. The emails were taken from our customer support history of questions only. We thought it is fair to tell those photographers about the change.

TO rimglow: Please, could you state your email here? We will get back to you with n exact date and time when you communicated with Pixmac customer support. Were not crazy to do any robo calls.

2. The statement about 11 million images was taken off the homepage.

3. BigStock was never a direct partner of Pixmac, it was Colossus Agency (Media Bakery). And after the discovery of the issues discussed elsewhere, Pixmac immediately took offline the content and ceased the partnership few days later. We asked Colossus for more information about the issue, but we dont have it yet.

4. Unfortunately downloads of photos supplied by agencies are not reported in photographer reports on sourcing agencies. Theres no way how Pixmac can change that. Our way to change this was to set and stick to the Declaration of Fair Stock Photo Agency, where photographers clearly see which downloads are via the agency directly and which are via distributor such as Pixmac. For example, this already allows Pixmac's direct photographers to sign-off any distributors of Pixmac if they want. With a single click.

5. The reason why Pixmac might bring extra value "as a middleman" is that we might be smarter and more effective in marketing. And we can reach new customers in several other countries. In the end all parts of the chain should be happy. On the other hand we take all the issues discussed here or on other forums always very seriously and we are taking steps to explain and avoid any of them in the future.

So the Partner Program is really a partner of a partner program.

« Reply #24 on: January 18, 2011, 08:35 »
0
So the Partner Program is really a partner of a partner program.

In the Colossus case it seems so. Usually it is forbidden by the supplier. We were never allowed to resell the content we got from agencies like Fotolia or Dreamstime or any other agency to third parties.


 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
30 Replies
20117 Views
Last post February 28, 2007, 15:49
by Keefo
6 Replies
4463 Views
Last post September 10, 2007, 16:27
by leaf
7 Replies
4911 Views
Last post October 20, 2008, 09:34
by hali
6 Replies
5123 Views
Last post September 14, 2010, 10:34
by RT
6 Replies
6040 Views
Last post April 18, 2011, 04:13
by tbmpvideo

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors