Recently Alamy sent me a generic letter without any specifics. It has charged US$250  Exclusivity Administration Fee (EAF) on my sales.

But it doesn't bother to tell me which image(s) were in violation.

I have been an Alamy contributor for almost 18 years. Initially, there was no such thing as exclusive to Alamy. Since I became exclusive, I have always been careful to mark my submission to Alamy with a special code. Could there be a mistake somewhere? If there is, it would be an advertent error.

But my images have been stolen many times.  Is it possible that someone stole my images and sell them through other agencies?

I sell prints through FAA. But it is permitted, according to my understanding.

Alamy should have the decency to give me the specifics so I can assess the situation. Maybe it is wrong and I can help find the thief.

The following is the email from Alamy:

Hi There,

 Exclusivity Admin Fee on your sales report

We�re adding an Exclusivity Administration Fee (EAF) on your sales report due to you incorrectly marking images in your account as being 'Exclusive to Alamy' 

This is a fee that is charged in one of two scenarios: 

We have found a potential infringement, and we've opened up a legal case to make a claim but then had to close the case because the image has been incorrectly marked as being �exclusive� to Alamy ($150 charge)
We have searched for a potential infringement but the image is found to be available on another stock site so the image has been incorrectly marked as being �exclusive� to Alamy ($50 charge)
The reason we are adding this fee to your account is because there is a considerable investment in looking for infringements, whereby each �exclusive� image we search for incurs a cost.

As the image has been incorrectly marked as being �exclusive� we are now passing on a proportion of the cost already spent to your account, as outlined in the contributor contract:

2.10. Notwithstanding clause 16.7, by marking Content as Exclusive, you grant Alamy the right to chase third party infringements of the Content without Alamy having to consult you. Where pursuing such infringements if it is found that the Content is available on another licensing platform, Alamy has the right to recoup any fees (including reasonable administration fees where escalated to legal action), that Alamy has incurred in the pursuit of any action taken.

An image should not be marked as exclusive if:

o            It�s available on another stock agency site

o            It�s an exact reproduction (in all or part) of a work of art (this does not include having additional unique or incidental features in the image, for example a person standing in front of a painting. The general rule of thumb is that to be exclusive an artwork can�t take up any more than 1/3 of the image frame.)

o            It�s not protected by copyright

o            It�s in the public domain (for example, copyright has expired on a photograph from 1880)

o            Copyright ownership is unknown

 

For the image(s) which should not be marked as �exclusive� we have added the Exclusivity Admin Fee to your account and have removed its exclusive status.

It�s important that your images are marked correctly � we'd prefer to work with you so that these costs are avoided in future, and we can help you claim for images that are genuinely exclusive to Alamy.

To avoid further charges being made on �exclusive� images being incorrectly marked, please can you now review and check whether all the other images in your account should be marked as exclusive. Please remove the �exclusive� status if you find that they should not be marked as �exclusive� according to the terms outlined above.

If we find new cases of images being incorrectly marked as exclusive incurring further costs, after two months from the date of this email, then we will apply the corresponding fees to your account and we will also remove the exclusive status for all the images found in your account and remove any default settings for exclusive status.

If you need more time to amend your images, or if you have any questions about this please contact [email protected]

Thanks

Alamy

This is shocking.

This administrative fee made sense when Alamy paid higher for exclusive content, I believe it was 60% when sold directly...but they got rid of this benefit about two years ago.

So now it just seems like a cash grab. As someone who does occasionally upload exclusively on Alamy as RM I will be extra careful from now on in case I upload elsewhere by accident.

In related news, the lawsuit brought on by Bild where I'm involved is still pending. Had also to pay an administrative fee.

They did tell me the specific image ID and I'm pretty sure it was up on Adobe. I don't think it has ever sold anywhere. But that means, yes it was me and my image, not a stolen image that someone else was using. An underlying fact is, we don't get paid more for exclusive anymore, there's no reason for me to have anything exclusive. Now I don't.

It looks like AIM has tools where someone can find all the exclusive images and mark them to regular status. Alamy was kind enough to do that for me, after I wrote.

I'm glad you brought this up again, it might have been missed, within another thread or only on the Alamy forum. Anyone can go look, make the should go look, right now and check for Exclusive images that aren't or possibly Exclusive images, that don't need to be, because there's no benefit to uploading Exclusive to Alamy anymore, that I know of?

Maybe they want to get rid of the exclusive program?

https://www.alamy.com/blog/safeguarding-your-photographs-from-copyright-theft

Quote

We have also updated our monthly process and comms about when a contributor may have incurred an Exclusivity Admin fee, so that if an image has been incorrectly marked, they'll get fair warning to fix any incorrectly marked images whilst we pause the infringements process for their portfolio. Unfortunately, these fees cannot be avoided, but we hope that the improved comms will reduce the number of incorrectly marked images we find, and this will be a benefit for both Alamy and contributors.

Well I'm so happy for everyone else now that people got $50 and $150 fees and Orchidpoet the worst I've ever read $250! 

True, Alamy is supposed to protect our Exclusive images and go after stolen and misused images. If someone is interested, that's fine. But no warning, and they've been slapping people with fines for months. Not only that, there are questions whether the images were actually marked Exclusive, when uploaded many years ago, or if something in the Alamy system, changed them. But we have no way to contest the fines or prove some image from 2013, wasn't altered. And I'll admit I could have made an error, or maybe it was exclusive then, and I added it to Adobe in 2015, after they bought Fotolia.

So yes, there is some help, for someone who does have true exclusive content on Alamy. And if someone does and they find an infringing use, and we report it to Alamy, then Alamy will go after that for us.

Reminder:

Cannot be marked as exclusive to Alamy if:

    It�s available on another stock agency site
    It�s an exact reproduction (in all or part) of a work of art (this does not include having additional unique or incidental features in the image, for example a person standing in front of a painting. The general rule of thumb is that to be exclusive an artwork can�t take up any more than 1/3 of the image frame)
    It�s not protected by copyright
    It�s in the public domain
    Copyright ownership is unknown

For $250 I assume you have to sell a lot at Alamy to get that fee covered. Doesn't seem worth it to go exclusive there since almost nobody sells well over there as I get from here. Unless offcourse you are absolutely not sloppy and know where you uploaded images to.

This thread caused me to run a check for wrongly marked exclusive images. For anyone not sure how to do this - just go to the Alamy Image Manager from your contributor dashboard then use the Attributes box at the top and scroll down and tick Exclusive to Alamy. This brings up any images marked as exclusive. I only had five of which three were correct. The other two (a Greek ferry boat and a British politician) were wrongly marked as exclusive. I suspect I was intending to tick the Sell for Editorial box and got the wrong one All sorted now....

Thanks for the very valuable tip. I actually also found 2 exclusive pictures, for the same reason, just clicked on the wrong box.

I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you.  However, thank you for warning the rest of us about it.  I had quite a few old files marked exclusive, going back to the distant past when Alamy was the only agency that I dealt with that accepted editorial photos. 

I have now gone in and unmarked all of them.  It was relatively easy to do, thanks to the person above pointing me to the attributes feature.  Once you have located them, you can just select all and unmark them as one batch.

I have not uploaded to Alamy but things like this make me wary. The amount of the so called "fines" vary for the same "offence" as though it is a random amount from some person  who may or may not be having a good day. Coupled with the number of people who find sales for which they have not been credited .... it does sound like their accounting department needs a good shake up!