(see image)

Have you seen this?
https://openai.com/sora

That's really devastating... much more than midjourney for photographers in my opinion

yep and waiting for https://stability.ai/stable-video 

I don't remember what was in the old contract, but the following passages, among others, are striking:

Depositphotos distributes the Files directly and indirectly to third parties under various types of paid and unpaid agreements as authorized by Depositphotos. Such agreements may cover various areas of permitted use, including but not limited to the right to create and re-use derivative works based on the Files, the right to incorporate the Files into any media or embodiments now known or hereafter devised, and the right to use, integrate and otherwise incorporate the Files for the development and training of algorithms, networks, technologies and solutions.

Depositphotos may obtain special permission to distribute certain files under the Attributed Free License or another free license. By granting permission, the contributor waives the right to receive compensation for such distribution, which, with few exceptions, will not be credited to the contributor's level.

Depositphotos is not obliged (i) to inform the contributor of the details of any transactions made by Depositphotos or third parties; (ii) to pay compensation for repeated downloads or repeated use of files by the same third party under the same contract; and (iii) to pay compensation for licenses that have been cancelled, refunded or returned.

CLASS ACTION WAIVER. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, CONTRIBUTOR AND DEPOSITPHOTOS AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN HIS OR HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER. Unless Depositphotos and Contributor agree, no judge may consolidate the claims of more than one person or otherwise preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding.

yep, I read them this morning on my WC, that's the right place to be while reading such kind of content.

Notice: using ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4) to spot "generative ai related content" it didn't find anything.
Reading by myself, I immediately spotted the problems:

"We can do whatever we want, but we are not obliged to do anything, you could only go away, but we still have some rights in perpetuity, and if something is illegal in what we clam as legal, the rest remains legal. You can't use Ai, but we can use for free or not for free your copyrighted material for Ai training. And your moral right won't exist and even if we live using copyright, we piss on your copyright" - take it or leave it

But there are SO MANY PEOPLE who don't read contracts that they won't give a *. This is the stage where they screw us all over, take all the money they can before they shut down, and eventually our copyright will have been LEGALLY drained (if you don't leave immediately) and the value transferred as datasets for training machines that will replace not only us, but any idiot capable of writing a prompt, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow any Ai capable of using another Ai.

Welcome to the machine.

I just want to remind you of one thing: model releases, no matter what is written in them, can always be revoked by people (other than "perpetual and irrevocable"! ) . There is not something such an irrevocable image right, because for human rights they are part of the rights of the human person.

That is one of the reasons why there are Getty's "enhanced model releases," which I am careful not to use. We would take the moral responsibility of explicitly giving consent to train Ai's with people's biometric data, when it is already so much if these people lend themselves to help us in our work, certainly with compensation quite different from the world of fashion modeling and traditional advertising. Do we also want to bugger them? I certainly don't.

Well, Deposit shifts the burden of this responsibility to us.

(...)

There is no need to take any action to accept the updated terms. But if you do not want your content used in this broadened capacity, you will need to remove your content from Envato Market before the changes come into effect on 1 June, 2023. By continuing to use Envato Market after this time, you agree to the updated terms.

We appreciate your continued support and membership of our community and look forward to helping you thrive in this ever-changing creative landscape.

Team Envato
-----

Well BYE BYE and mostly farewell Envato ! :-)

This also happens with video.

There are plenty of EXCELLENT microstock and stock photographers and agencies with tons of wonderful works. They are not leaving. They are actively WORKING to feed the beast, because NOW this is a source of income.

I saw also an incredible behaviour: someone is creating actively tons of composites. NOW! In a moment in which we all see Ai's coming: these things are the best to do composites.
But these composites SELL , now. Now they earn money, they could do something with that money.
And there is nothing we, as photographers and videomakers could do to stop these generative Ai to come. We have proven we are totally unable to unite and fight. So agencies will fight to defend some assets until they are worthwhile.

I can see each and every agency change these rules: the last ones are ENVATO and ALAMY : they also included training of machines as a possible use. Ok, they offer an opt-out.

But what does it means for you now? It means : you are not earning without any other effect that not earning. The beast will be fed with millions of millions of other excellent images AND videos.

Maybe photography will return what it was before microstock.

I also noticed that ugly form with Envato. But what effect will have to remove my things and not-earning? Nothing.

We PROVEN we are not united. All the non-internet world proven to be unable to fight as a whole thing, as a "union". No political power, no legal power. Nothing.

Quote from: Lina on May 06, 2023, 04:38

I'm afraid he might be right, we'll see. I loved this sentence: "I am belly laughing at this stock agencies because they're bunch of thieving soul suckking scam-eyes who've been ripping photographers off for decades so fuck those guys..." 

I admit I had that sentiment myself.

I am convinced AI will destroy my means of living, but I think "at least it will take down stock agencies with me". It's like the only good thing about it.  Stock agencies played a huge role in devaluing artistic work and to this day they are looking for ways to pay us even less (See Adobe �-$ currency change) and AI is only completing what they started.

I really don't believe that the Big 3 agencies will fall. It is human beings at the lowest level of the chain (we all), but capable of doing specific work that instead now no longer requires skill, knowledge, and commitment -- who'll lose their jobs replaced by typing by the first * who comes by (although there are great scripters, there are also scripters who delegate to other Ai , and it is still the nature of all this to make specific and specialized human skill increasingly irrelevant, making anything idiot-proof; if it's not today it will be tomorrow, the nature of all this is to be very fast, faster than us humans).

But the agencies handle most of our royalties, they make more money than we do on what we produce - I don't think they will drop the bone that easily. While being disingenuous they will sell their skins dearly and say they care about us, our work, the value of copyright, and MAYBE do some legal battles, perhaps to manage the assets that feed the machine training. They will try to stay in the game, with or without us. They have the platforms, they have lawyers, they have facilities, they have sales capabilities, they have basic materials, they have customers and manage value.

Yep, happened to me this morning. Nice surprise of $190!

it's Ai Contributor Found.

Zorba, you need to be opted in to receive marketing emails in order to receive Adobe Stock Contributor related emails.  Send me a private message here with your Adobe ID email address and I can check if we have the right email on your contributor account.

I sent you some other private messages but I've never seen answers... the last was about PNG

But thanks I'll check by myself about that! thanks! I want to keep this profile very private and non-retrievable
Adobe is ok, but there are some other companies that are not so fair ! :-D

Anyone see it yet?

Awful. Yet another change for the sake of pissing off contributors.

They never implemented a system to assign releases to multiple files in a group. Never! And we've certainly all asked them a million times.

Of course a nerd has a chance, but as a nerd he or she quickly realizes that this is hogwash: the release must already be there and it must be referenced with an INTERNAL Dreamstime code, not with its own file name.

The simplest thing would be simply to use OUR filename and that if the release is loaded multiple times with a fingerprint-like code check (hash md5, crc, sha ... any one) you consider that it already exists and ignore it, without blocking the workflow.

But let's drop something like this: now on the main page you can copy data. But ALL of it! Obviously you will want to copy a selection of it. Is this possible? Of course! only from ONE file to ANOTHER file. Not from one to many.

The most obvious and stupid thing that everyone would like to do, which is to set one or more MR or PR releases to multiple files ... cannot be done even though we have been asking them to do it for TEN HELL OF YEARS.

Otherwise everything is beautiful.

Do they have to be PNG-16 or PNG-8, or are both okay?

Between August and October 2022 Adobe Stock is requesting and accepting PNGs with transparency.

What other agencies are doing this, if you know FOR SURE ?

Since - they say -"they listened to us" and now there would be this wonderful and very useful information function tailor-made for us (thank you, how nice!) , I went to click "CHANGE" but nothing happens.
Exactly the same way nothing happens by clicking , exactly the same way, "ticket submit." And it's interesting that by contrast clicking on the link next to "forum", that one instead strangely works immediately. As if to say: help yourself?

I don't understand why both adobe and getty go out of their way to disseminate information in a thousand different streams when all you have to do is send us an e-mail newsletter with information. Do you want to make the information (the same!) available in multiple channels? That's perfectly fine, but keep using the ones that have been working great for ages.

Or at least make the new ones work.

...

...

In my opinion, as a contributor, I feel that $5 per image for a non-exclusive, 12 month agreement is fair and reasonable, so I have personally opted in the majority of my eligible files. The eligible files in my account were not generating consistent income for me and I don't see why that trend would have changed.


....

I totally agree. And I apologize that my knowledge of the English language and use of translators may have made what I posed as a hypothesis more aggressive than determined and clear: an "if so, then so, otherwise something else" form.

But you have made it perfectly clear that it is all fair.
So I renew my apologies for the aggressive over-form: you do not deserve it, nor does the initiative.

Thank you for your help.

Mat will correct me where I am wrong, but here are the answers to your questions:

are you and adobe employee or do you have official sources with documents citing data to give these answers? I think this space should be leaved free for Mat only about answers, and for us to only ask questions, leaving private messages the privileged way for us to discuss, in this specific thread.