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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 287
1
« on: April 17, 2024, 14:01 »
...So what about 69,151.50 is on one image?
I multiplied 6050 images x a charge to the OP of 11.43 for one image to arrive at the 69k figure for legal costs to date. From the email the OP posted: "To frame your expectations your liability for costs incurred to date in connection with these claims (1 of the 6050 images removed as part of the injunction compliance to date) stands at 11.43."
2
« on: April 16, 2024, 14:06 »
I am no longer with Alamy (terminated in Jan 2022) but I went to look at the clause in the contributor agreement regarding indemnifying Alamy (Emphasis mine) "5. Indemnities 5.1. You will indemnify, defend (at the request of Alamy) and hold Alamy and its affiliates, Customers, Distributors, sub-licensees and assigns (the Indemnified Parties) harmless against any and all claims, damages, liabilities, losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal expenses) which any of the Indemnified Parties incur arising from or in in relation to: (i) any claim that the Content or Metadata infringes any third partys copyright or any other intellectual property right (ii) any breach of your representations, obligations and warranties under this Contract or the System. This clause will remain in force after the termination of this Contract." I assume the dispute with Axel Springer is over 5.1(i) - I looked online for information about this lawsuit but didn't find anything. Not sure how an editorial image could infringe a copyright or other IP - did the original email say anything about the details of the dispute? Where a contributor has breached a representation, recouping legal costs from earnings seems reasonable, but if all representations were accurate and Alamy decided to represent the work, charging the contributor for legal expenses seems out of line - that's Alamy's cost of doing business. I never had any images with any of Axel Springer's papers, but my reading of clause 5 suggests that if I had, Alamy could come after me for a contribution to their legal bills even if I had terminated the contract. Good luck trying to collect though. My concern would be that lawyers are exceedingly expensive and that the current deduction could only be the start of it if Alamy keeps going. And the contributor has no control over Alamy's actions in the case The letter suggests that to date they've only spent 69,151.50 - a couple of letters and a few meetings...
3
« on: April 15, 2024, 15:53 »
Adobe hasn't provided us with a user interface for this feature, but you can do it by editing the URL See a post I made earlier: https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/what's-your-weekly-ranking-and-how-many-images/msg600772/#msg600772You can look at search URLs for syntax examples, but after the URL there is one question mark and then additional filters are prefaced with an ampersand, so for transparent images sorted by downloads in my portfolio you'd use: https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/4221/jo-ann-snover?&filters%5Btransparent%5D=only&order=nb_downloadsIf you wanted to see everything except transparent images it would be =exclude versus =only Some of the things you might find useful: &filters%5Bgentech%5D=only &order=creation &order=nb_downloads &order=relevance &filters%5Bcontent_type%3Azip_vector%5D=1 &filters%5Bcontent_type%3Aillustration%5D=1 &filters%5Bcontent_type%3Aimage%5D=1 &filters%5Bcontent_type%3Aphoto%5D=1 &filters%5Bcontent_type%3Avideo%5D=1 &filters%5Bis_editorial%5D=1 &filters%5Billustrative%5D=include &filters%5Btransparent%5D=only
4
« on: April 13, 2024, 12:41 »
Bloomberg article about Adobe Firefly training - "Adobes Ethical Firefly AI Was Trained on Midjourney Images" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/adobe-ethical-firefly-ai-trained-123004288.htmlPetaPixel via Bloomberg: https://petapixel.com/2024/04/11/adobe-will-buy-your-videos-for-up-to-7-25-per-minute-to-train-ai-report/Bloomberg: "Adobe Inc. has begun to procure videos to build its artificial intelligence text-to-video generator, trying to catch up to competitors after OpenAI demonstrated a similar technology." More interesting, especially in light of the first article is one of the comments (emphasis mine): "I just realized what this actually means. It's mostly marketing. Clever marketing. They can't possibly gather enough material in a timeframe that can compete with simply scraping or buying in bulk. While they wait for volunteers to upload content, the other AI companies will have stolen the entire Internet twice over (which is what I think they are also doing, behind the scenes). This is made to become product differentiation at launch.
And it's impossible to check the numbers (creators, video time etc) because it's confidential.Brilliant. PS: they can use the material they gather through this method, it is useful, but it's just too little. This method provides protection in the case of overfitting, or it can be used to produce better results by referencing more aggressively."
5
« on: April 06, 2024, 18:41 »
...I am clear that I do not have to pay taxes since the agencies already pay them through the 30% withholding, but...
I am a US resident and am not an expert in tax law or the IRS, but I wanted to clarify what you said about withholding. Taxes are owed on the basis of your return, filed with the IRS. The return will show the calculation of total tax owed and also the amount already withheld during the tax year. If there is a difference, you either pay the extra or get a refund. There is no correspondence between what you owe and what was withheld - although it's important to try and have the right amount withheld to avoid incurring penalties for underpayment during the tax year. So you could owe more than the 30% withheld and the only way to know that is complete a return. My suggestion is that you get whoever helped you to set up the LLC to help with the tax issues - or recommend an accountant to do it.
6
« on: March 25, 2024, 08:19 »
I feel there is STILL something wrong( despite negative earnings). I am missing ALL the sales from US on my iS earnings graph in February ( I see them in pdf ). How about you?
I just tried out the stats features in DeepMeta4 (it's in beta but that part is working). It needs the text file version of your stats (not the PDF) and then produces much better graphs than anything on the Getty ESP site. It also handles refunds correctly - i.e. shows that they are refunds rather than just muddling them with new sales. https://deepmeta.creativ.zone/
7
« on: March 25, 2024, 08:11 »
Hi Matt,
Went to check now and I have 500+ downloads, and 30+ uploads in 2023.
However, I did not get my redeem code. I went to double check my upload approval, and most of them occurred in January, even though the files were uploaded early December.
Is this supposed to be like this? Do I not qualify because of that?
I thought the rule was "images uploaded in 2023". 
https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/royalty-details.htmlFrom the above (emphasis mine): "An active contributor is an Adobe Stock contributor with at least twenty (20) submitted and approved qualifying assets in 2023."
8
« on: March 22, 2024, 18:46 »
Curious why still the views, interactions and downloads have not been updated. Probably because it will reveal a huge discrepancy.
Kelvin Jay's post on this was that it's a separate technical problem, only affecting some contributors (mine haven't updated either). Someone will resolve this next week... I have, effectively, a report on all my February downloads from the royalty statements along with payment. I'd rather be missing the list with pictures of the downloaded files than the payment 
9
« on: March 22, 2024, 14:17 »
Regardless of the explanation there is a problem, I never go under $150 a month and feb it shows $5 for the month. I do not believe my warnings can drop like that and iStock owe a lot of money to a lot of people for February. Everyone should raise a ticket.
If you had royalties of $155 for February and refunds for $150 (from all those November licenses that were refunded), that'd leave you with $5 net. Your earnings probably didn't drop (if you exclude the refunds) Getty's charts are useless and are incorrectly showing your percentages of February's total sales. They are tallying the negative refunds with the positive sales and presenting the net result. In my case they stay Premium Access was 31% of my February total, but it was actually 40% if you just count the royalties for February and not the November refunds. When you look at your royalty statement (the PDF), do you see a bunch of licenses that are negative numbers? Look in the Getty forums - Kelvin Jay has provided a statement and said there's no need to raise a ticket as they know about the problem. I doubt ticket responses will provide anything useful as an answer
10
« on: March 22, 2024, 07:19 »
In addition to the comments above about how outrageous this vague explanation is, I noted (and posted about it in the Getty forum) the strange wording about "...low-resolution image use...". What exactly is that and why is it free? And the icing on the cake is not notifying contributors ahead of time about this mess. Did they think we wouldn't notice? I had to modify my spreadsheet where I track this stuff to correctly count downloads as only those items where the sale amount is >0 as bundling (in my case 10) refunds in with the licenses really makes a mess of the totals, RPD, etc. Unfortunately Todayis20 makes the same naive assumption
11
« on: March 18, 2024, 19:25 »
...- There are several tiers of custom sales - certainly different products on the buyers' side - and all sales within the same group/product come in for the same amount. So, the commissions can't be based on whatever currency the respective buyer pays in, but on US prices in US dollars.
- Those commissions either decline or increase over long periods of time (weeks and even months) and they do so solely in one direction - there aren't any ups and downs - cent by cent and day by day.
There has been discussion about these "custom" royalties in another thread. You can read the other posts in that thread as well, but I think the gist of the puzzle about the royalties we see is that there are "Pro" plans (enterprise customers) which include unlimited stock downloads https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/i-see-many-$1-40-royalty-per-photo-sale-this-year-anybody-noticed-too/msg598710/#msg598710 Mat had said in a different thread that the nominal "price the customer pays" for these downloads is calculated daily for all users of that particular plan. We then get 33% of that. There appear to be several tiers of these unlimited plans as the royalties cluster around the $1.xx mark or the $0.3x mark. Today's royalties were $0.96 and $0.35 (for the custom section). These plans aren't new, but when I looked at the pages advertising them recently, I was pretty galled to see customers advised this was a way to lower their overall stock spend! https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/i-see-many-$1-40-royalty-per-photo-sale-this-year-anybody-noticed-too/msg598710/#msg598710 Mat has been asked repeatedly about whether there is any floor for these custom royalties, and each time he has repeated that we get 33% of what the customer pays (whether that's a constructive price or an actual payment). Unlimited download plans are never a good deal from the contributor's point of view
13
« on: March 08, 2024, 10:22 »
...3 out of 52 photo/image sales today were $0.36. But I'm not worried. It's only 2 cents less than $0.38 and still more than 3x the $0.10 you get on Shutterstock on 80% of photo sales there. Also, 33 of 52 sales today so far are either $1.02 or $0.99. That's impossible on Shutterstock.
Today's "custom" numbers are $0.35 and $1.01; I guess yesterday's download total was large I do appreciate the $0.99 and $0.66 subscription royalties that help keep the overall RPD up, but the concern is watching new lows for "custom" royalties in 2024
14
« on: March 07, 2024, 17:00 »
An update on the prevalence of the $0.36 "custom" royalties. In Feb 2024 there were two of those. In the first week of March, there have been 11. They were non-existent before Feb 2024
I assume that one of the plans with unlimited stock assets has seen a growth in the number of items downloaded and that's why the royalties are going down. Sort-of takes the fun out of seeing more downloads...
16
« on: March 07, 2024, 16:30 »
... It's a flat-out theft of our money.
No. It's not. I completely understand the frustration with the too-high payout threshold - although it was what everybody used back when DT, iStock, CanStock, Shutterstock etc. started. You signed up with the site when these payment terms were clearly stated - no changes, no subterfuge. Making totally false statements about the agency doesn't help anyone. I have no idea how DT is still puttering along - it's a shadow of its former self - but during the pandemic, when the loathsome Pavlovsky was cutting royalties at SS, Dreamstime gave a small bonus to contributors. They're not going to make anyone rich, but they are a decent agency. For a while, Fotolia allowed you to request a payout below the threshold but would then charge a fee, which seems very reasonable as they have to process the payments and that takes someone's time. They need to have some way to avoid getting drowned in nuisance requests. I've been getting paid regularly by them, but the days of getting a monthly payout from them (for me) are long gone. I think they should drop the payout level and institute payout on account closure with a (small) fee to cover the payout if it's below the minimum. I don't expect that they'll be rushing to do that though
17
« on: March 06, 2024, 21:06 »
I'd never heard of Trolley (or Payment Rails, its former name) before your post, so I was curious. I don't supply Canva, so I have no specific knowledge about their setup. It appears to me, based on this review and looking at Trolley's site, that the fees are for the companies who set up Trolley to be their payment platform for employees or suppliers, not for those receiving money from the platform. https://www.jibble.io/us-hr-software-reviews/US-payroll/trolley/There are references to being able to make payments to a bank account or to a debit card, but I couldn't find anything specifically saying that recipients of Trolley payments don't pay fees. There were complaints about onboarding being cumbersome - I think that means adding new payees to the system Assuming there aren't any recipient fees, the reviews seem to say this makes a ton of sense for a company sending out payments worldwide - and in local currencies (no idea if Canva will be using that capability)
18
« on: February 29, 2024, 07:46 »
...Did this happen last year too or just January 2024?
Read a few posts above. Back on the topic of "custom" royalties getting lower in 2024, this morning I had one for 36. (Reminder that I had been tracking "custom" royalties lower than 38, my minimum subscription royalty. I am in the US, thus no tax-related deductions apply) Taking a wild guess, there's a new "Pro" subscription including unlimited AdobeStock downloads where the rate is set daily based on usage. Earlier this week I had seven 37 "custom" royalties in total. Edited to add that I found a page describing the Creative Cloud "Pro Plus" plan - it's an enterprise subscription that includes unlimited access to the entire Adobe Stock library - including videos & music. In listing the benefits of this plan it says: "Lower your organizations total stock spend"I can see the appeal of that pitch - to the buyers. But to contributors, encouraging the biggest spenders to spend less on stock, means we're just the bait on the hook for CC subscriptions that we don't see any share of. I know we all know this, but 33% of eff all is eff all...
19
« on: February 27, 2024, 16:21 »
..."The royalty rate remains at 33% of the price paid by the customer. The rate paid by the customer varies based on the plan."...Much less complicated than being concerned if I just got a 36 sub or a 37, 38 or 39 custom. ... It's a mix.
It's true that the 33% is uncomplicated, but contributors need to watch changes in agency pricing as well as what their royalty rate is. My primary reason for watching the mix of prices (as opposed to just the monthly total compared to last year) is that when agencies start competing on price with other agencies, unless there's a huge influx of new business - not just a shift from one agency to another - contributors lose out. Remember that Adobe Stock is a tiny pimple in Adobe's large business. I'm guessing that they want to show growth in their subscriber numbers (along with new sources of revenue derived from AI wonderfulness) to keep investors happy. Various plans include stock assets in the monthly price - including those "Pro" plans where there are unlimited downloads where our royalty fluctuates daily based on usage by subscribers to those plans. Cheap stock content could be, effectively, a marketing lure and/or discount plan for building up or retaining subscribers to the Creative Cloud plans. Erosion of the price the customer pays even as our 33% remains unchanged is not good for contributors. 33% from Adobe Stock is a lot better than 15% from Getty/iStock, but some months a handful of very high price sales can bring the Getty RPD close to that of Adobe Stock. I want to take the temperature of the water in the pot in which we're all slowly cooking
20
« on: February 26, 2024, 12:50 »
A new value for a "custom" royalty today - 37 cents. I'm hoping this doesn't mean an increase in very low royalties (below my 38 subscription royalty). For the royalties discussed by the OP, what was $1.4x fluctuates daily, but is mostly $1.03 recently. But in addition to those there are other "custom" royalties which, with a very infrequent exception, never went below 38. The infrequent exception (which started a couple of years ago when the Pro plans did) was 33 - typically one or two a month at most. I had three 37 "custom" royalties this morning.
21
« on: February 21, 2024, 11:02 »
Rights managed licensing is essentially what you're after. Once upon a time that was common, but royalty-free licenses are now dominant almost everywhere.
Where there is unusual or unique content there might be some opportunity, but that will depend on the kind of work you produce. Unless it is radically different from what's available at royalty free-based agencies, it's not a realistic approach in today's marketplace
23
« on: February 20, 2024, 10:42 »
Interesting article co-written by a journalist and a law professor about where the fair use argument has succeeded - and failed - in prior cases. The key issue, IMO, is that things that might be fair use by an individual for personal use, or researchers for academic use are not so if done by a for-profit company for commercial use. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york-times-might-win-its-copyright-lawsuit-against-openai/After a discussion of why Google won its case about building a search engine for books, including that it was built to be unable to produce no more than snippets, the article says: "Ultimately, the fate of these companies may depend on whether judges feel that the companies have made a good-faith effort to color inside the lines. If generative models never regurgitated copyrighted material, then defendants would have a compelling argument that it is transformative. The fact that the models occasionally produce near-perfect copies of other peoples creative work makes the case more complicated and could lead judges to view these companies more skeptically."
24
« on: February 18, 2024, 20:09 »
I thought the consumption of generative credits had already started, but in looking around my account to see where it told me how many I had, I found a link to this page which tells a different story https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/using/generative-credits-faq.html"Note: Starting January 17, 2024, we will begin enforcing generative credit limits on select plans, including but not limited to Adobe Firefly. Your plan-specific information will be available on your Adobe account management page, where you can review your generative credit allocation, usage, and experience when you exhaust your generative credits. Check back here after March 1, 2024, to learn when credit limits will apply to other plan types." The screenshot shown in the FAQ doesn't match what I see in my account and I don't see any information about credits used or remaining Most confusing FAQ page I've seen in a while. My translation "It depends...check back later'
25
« on: February 18, 2024, 15:34 »
This sounds like good news - but I'm puzzled about the need to check during the week to learn if we qualified. Is there something other than total downloads and being active (20+ accepted assets in 2023)? Unless the US is no longer included in the acceptable countries, I think I'm good
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