I didn't even bother to read their Exciting News email this morning.

Dear contributors,

As a creative marketplace with an international community, we are committed to aligning with global market standards and maintaining an up-to-date agreement that governs delivery, licensing, compensation, and other legal relationships between Depositphotos and contributors.

With this letter, we would like to inform you about changes to our Supply Agreement. We encourage you to read the updated agreement for more details.

We value your contribution to our marketplace and look forward to collaborating with you in 2024!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team.


Regards,
Depositphotos Team

After working with them for more than 4 years, I earned 35-40% of what I earn from my top earner in one month

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.

Bummer. Looks like that's one more agency that will not get any new content from me, just like any other agency that gives me no opt-out option for AI training.

Quote from: Me on February 05, 2024, 09:13

But they do not specify what the changes are, you have to go through the whole thing and compare it to the old one to try and find the changes and hope that is right.

I've emailed to ask for a summary detailing the changes as even with the old document it would be very easy to miss any changes made. I'm not entirely sure how legal those changes would be... certainly setup in such a way as to bury them and make it hard for the user to see what they're up to. Not very transparent.

Would you please let us know the answer? Thanks in advance! (Even though I've got the feeling that they won't answer anyway)

Quote from: HalfFull on February 05, 2024, 09:36

Quote from: Me on February 05, 2024, 09:13

But they do not specify what the changes are, you have to go through the whole thing and compare it to the old one to try and find the changes and hope that is right.

I've emailed to ask for a summary detailing the changes as even with the old document it would be very easy to miss any changes made. I'm not entirely sure how legal those changes would be... certainly setup in such a way as to bury them and make it hard for the user to see what they're up to. Not very transparent.

Would you please let us know the answer? Thanks in advance! (Even though I've got the feeling that they won't answer anyway)

Will do... if I get one that is!

The clause that Me thinks is about using our images for AI training looks more like protecting themselves.  If someone thinks their Depositphotos images have been used that way, they can't sue Depositphotos.  I don't think they intend to do it themselves, but are concerned by some of the lawsuits they have seen lately.

"Depositphotos distributes the Files to third parties under various types of paid and unpaid agreements. Such agreements may cover various areas of permitted use, including right to use the Files for the development and training of algorithms, networks, technologies and solutions."

does not sound like some concern over lawsuits to me, but pretty much, as it says, that they will give our images to third parties that may use them for AI training. Even without compensating us. 

Quote from: Wilm on February 05, 2024, 10:27

This is modern slavery without any transparency. I

As unfair as our relationship with the agencies may be, it should not be compared to slavery. If we do not like the arrangements, we can just walk away and take our images with us. Slaves do not have this option.

In principle, of course, I agree with you. It was meant to be symbolic.

However, after thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that many people who make microstock have to make a living from it - that doesn't apply to me and I'm grateful for that. The agencies are also aware of the dependency of these contributors. And in my view, they exploit this shamelessly.

If someone e.g. in Bangladesh, Vietnam or other countries where there may not be so many job alternatives that pay even halfway well, some people may not have so many options. Perhaps they suffer from a physical limitation that prevents them from taking a job involving hard physical labor.

And at a time when the gap between rich and poor is widening all over the world, the example of Depositphotos is, in my view, quite exemplary - so ultimately not so far removed from "slavery".

Start deleting my files� bye bye deeps�

Not defending these clowns, but let's be honest: you don't even know what has changed since the last agreement.

Quote from: Wilm on February 05, 2024, 09:53

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

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.

What is so striking about this one? They won't distribute your files for free without your permission. Almost any agency has a free section, for which you need to give special permission.
If you don't give your permission, you have nothing to fear.

That's right, other agencies also offer a free download of images. But when I read in the same agreement

"...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...and the right to use, integrate and otherwise incorporate the Files for the development and training of algorithms, networks, technologies and solutions." 

and

..."for repeated downloads or repeated use of files by the same third party under the same contract"

then in my opinion this goes far beyond what is offered by other agencies. I admit, however, that I would probably have to critically re-read what is written there in detail about the free licenses.

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.

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.

Yea so here's the thing with this one. I'm not sure if in this case, you can nominate particular files from your port for the 'free section.' Or could it be that by agreeing with the terms and conditions, you automatically give them permission to give away any of your files for free. Though they do say 'special permission' so perhaps it could be the former rather than the latter - hopefully. I'm not a contributor on DP but for those that are, perhaps there might be something visible that might appear on your dashboard maybe that would allow a contributor to select individual images for free use. If this is new, something like this might appear within the next few weeks (I could be wrong.) Of course if I joined up to DP myself, there is no way that I would give any of my photos away for free.