https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190329/15352641901/getty-images-sued-yet-again-trying-to-license-public-domain-images.shtml

https://www.diyphotography.net/getty-images-sued-again-accused-of-profiting-from-public-domain-images/

The News

In 2017 the Download Target system has rewarded Exclusive contributors as we had hoped. Many have achieved higher royalty rates during 2017 and will keep these as their starting rates for 2018, plus many more contributors are moving up than will move down.

Really? Really? But wait, it gets better. All that hard work has paid off for you. Your being rewarded and here comes the love:

We�re now pleased to share the Download Targets for 2018, which will be effective from January 1, 2018. You�ll see that the targets are higher in 2018 by about 10%, which is designed to balance out these customer download trends.

Quote from: iStop on August 21, 2017, 09:18

I think v2 only provided data for total all time royalty earned on each file and an average royalty per month for each file. I think within those figure though it probably contains Subscription and Partner Program sales from prior to Jan 2017.

DMv2 did not count subs sales, and I'm pretty sure it didn't count PP sales or PA sales (fka Getty 360 and Getty Plus), only credits.

Thank you. I believe you are correct.

Quote from: HalfFull on August 20, 2017, 05:48

Quote from: iStop on August 20, 2017, 04:37

Also, if you still have Deep Meta 2 installed, it can import all your old data from Deep Meta 2 from all the years before iStock switched over to the new Getty system which was switched over on January 1st of this year. So now you can have both all of your old and new file data together in one app. It only provides sales statistics though from January of this year onward.

Really ? How do you do that ?

The easiest way is to click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of Deep Meta 3 program. Then go to Preferences > Advanced > and at the bottom you will see an option for DeepMeta v2 Data Import.

You can download the 6 data files for your sales from January through June 2017 from your Getty ESP account. Then you can upload those data files to TodayIs20 and see your individual sales for this past year more easily. That is the only method I know of.

There is no longer any way to see any of your individual sales on a daily basis or to see any sales made this year since the end of June. To see sales from the month of July you will have to wait until the July data files are provided by Getty on the 20th of August. Then for August you will have to wait until September 20th, etc. That is the significance of the name of the TodayIs20 website as all sales data is released only once a month by Getty on the 20th.

I believe Getty has been talking about (since the beginning of the year) creating some sort of new tools to become available through the Getty website in the future which will show you your sales in real time like before, but so far nothing has emerged and I don't think anyone is holding their breath on this really to become a reality anymore.

The only thing that is supposed to update in real time at this point are your total sales for the year on your Getty ESP profile page. But that counter often isn't accurate and, as an example, it did not record any sales during this past weekend, but then started recording again on Monday it seems. That figure only tells you a number of downloads though anyway. Nothing about which files have sold, royalties earned on sales, etc. So it is a very limited data set anyway and to make any use of it you have to note down your figure at the end of each day and compare the figure on a day to day basis to get an idea of the number of file sales you are making per day. Then at the end of the month you can get an idea of your total downloads for the month, but you still won't know any information about your total earnings for the month until the following month on the 20th.

Twas the calm before the storm, approximately 3.5 months ago, on July 14th, we all received that disturbing (but not so unexpected) email from Getty which violated our first amendment rights with the following words:

"You will no longer be able to edit your keywords via iStock.com or other third-party applications once submitted. Please ensure that your files are properly prepared and edited prior to uploading them to iStock.com and note that the option to edit keywords after submission will be removed from third-party applications shortly, prior to August 20th. (The functionality for editing keywords may still appear on the file edit page, but it no longer supports updates to iStock.com. In fact, you may have already noticed that keyword updates are not being reflected on the ADP and/or do not surface in search results.)

Starting August 20th (or shortly thereafter), and after Unification, you will need to submit a request to deactivate a file. Please note that we will only consider deactivating files for legal or similar justifiable reasons as it provides a negative experience for customers when files are suddenly unavailable for license."

We all took a deep breath and let it wash over us, something we often do after new changes are announced by Getty that we know, no matter how well Getty window dresses things, will ultimately result in decreasing our incomes exponentially even further.

Then, a couple days later, after the latest news sinks in, we often think about what we are going to do. At that time, the first thing many of us did prior to August 20th was to deactivate a number of key files before it was too late. Then we wrote pages and pages on this forum about our further speculations of what next self destruct bomb Getty will be dropping upon us come September 1st.

We waited, we watched, and it almost looked like Getty was going to resist hesitation to cut all our royalties to a flat 15% as the entire first month of the high selling season for stock imagery (September) passed by without as much as a peep from the Grim Getty Reaper. I was even expecting to see a thread appear entitled "It Looks Like We Finally Made It" through 1 full year without Getty completely ransacking our incomes again.

But then, here we are now. It was all too good to be true. The bomb did drop and the news is even worse than we ever could have imagined. How could we be so naive to even think for a second that nothing would happen? And, in true Getty form, it has sparked a thread on this site in a matter of just 2 days that already has over 200 posts and continues. In many ways, just simply and exactly what we expected but had hoped wasn't going to happen, just for once.

The worst part in it all is that there is no longer any room for humor, optimism, or any talk of the "glass still being half full" in any way. The bottom line is we will all now end up earning less than the price of a single square of toilet paper on image downloads. 

It even seemed unimaginable (from my already jaded perspective) that it would ever reach a point of capitulation like this. Especially after it appeared that Getty was, for once, standing up for our rights as creators with their email on September 27th entitled "Google�s Actions Threaten Creative Livelihoods - Take Action: We Need Your Voice".

But now I sit here, like many of you who have hung in with iStock this far, through all the pay cuts and other changes over the last 6 years designed to reduce our incomes, exploit our intellectual property rights, and basically destroy our enthusiasms, almost not believing what has just happened.

Many of us were able to even continue these last few years to quietly produce and upload content that was low cost to create, in denial thinking maybe we could even defy gravity a bit in some way, against our better judgment of course, until finally reaching the point we are now where Getty simply has adamantly decided "We are going to pay you nothing anymore for your work".

This finally is and will be the straw that broke the camel's back only because none of us here are in need of just "new lens cap money" and are going to be able to shoulder this latest convoluted tear down. So it is no longer a matter of feeling slighted or taken advantage of, it is simply game over.

The business model no longer works anymore for creators. It is finally time to leave and accept that there is nothing else we can do to try and swim upstream by simply living with the latest changes in one form or another and following the old tried and proven "shoot, upload, repeat" mantra.

It's been nice knowing you iStock, but bon voyage Getty and, despite all my pessimism and cynicism over the years about the way they do things, I must admit this time they have completely outdone themselves and even my own darkest imagination.

I would have never thunked, despite their greed and unethical practices over the years, that they would have ever tried pulling something as devious as this. But then again, most megalomaniac dictators were never able to foresee or envision the downfalls of their own regimes and empires until they themselves were finally swinging from a noose, taking in their last breaths, and realizing "yes it's really over", just before the screen goes black.   

Quote from: Rose Tinted Glasses on July 17, 2016, 17:17

Getty has never allowed you to remove an image unless it is for the same reasons they have posted for removal from Istock. Hmmmm, come to think of it most of the macros operate the same way ever since I can remember. At least the ones I have dealt with did not allow you to remove anything on a bipolar whim which seems to be common place in the microstock world.

Alamy may not count in your definition of macro, but their 6 month wait is a very different thing from what Getty is looking to impose. Alamy just makes you wait to delete so customers can complete their cycle of transactions, but you don't have to justify what you're doing to them.

Alamy's restrictions (given their business model) seem very reasonable and a good balance of customer and contributor interests. Getty's are one-sided and unreasonable, especially given the much lower royalty rates they offer contributors.

The easiest thing with Alamy that you can do is just remove all your keywords from all of your images in a batch so that all the files are left with only one nondescript keyword.

After that the files wont appear in searches any longer. This way, whilst you are awaiting the 6 month period for the files to be removed, they at least no longer appear on the site.

At the moment, you may still be able to do the same thing on iStock using version older versions of Deep Meta.

Broken is what broken does.

Yup, gone from file closeup page for me too. Either when logged in or not.

What B8 described seeing doesn't sound to be changes on how content is displayed that are "ever so slight".

You would also think if they've rolled it out to 50% of the membership then those 50% of the membership would at least see the same thing all the time. But it sounds like a rolling change which seems to be pot luck for everyone at any given moment.

I completely agree.  And what self respecting photo agency would even be shameless enough to go out to their contributors and tell them that their biggest and brightest brain fart is to revert to trying to get sales via search engines?

I'm also dumbfounded how pathetic this whole thing sounds to begin with. How can you build confidence with your contributors when you admit you can't make enough sales based on your own corporate branding and company image?

We want to hear words like "Market Leader",  "Buyer Network", "Marketing Strategy",  "Market Penetration"., etc.

The last word I want to hear coming out of my own agency's mouth frankly is "SEO". Sheesh!

Bravo to all the conspiracy theorists, but the chances of Bloomberg publishing such a pointed and comprehensive article like that about a company's financial state of affairs based on purely unsubstantiated conjecture and speculation is pretty remote.

Plus, based purely on the fact that everyone is selling about 10% the number of files that they were a few years ago, I think there is no reason to doubt that the dire state of the company is any way exaggerated by those articles.