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Author Topic: FOTOLIA's partners  (Read 10869 times)

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« on: January 29, 2010, 17:50 »
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Having a portfolio removed from Fotolia is not a problem.  However, having your images removed from some Fotolia's partners is a different story.
In my experience, the Chinese partner http://www.tuweimei.com  is the worst.
Now, as they sell images through Fotolia, I don't think they can sell them.  They just display them.

What I wonder is whether this would be a problem to be accepted as IS exclusive.


« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2010, 17:54 »
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Are you saying you deleted your portfolio at Fotolia, closed the account, and your images are still showing up for sale at a Chinese "partner" site?

If that's what actually happened, and Fotolia doesnt have a sensible explanation, that may mean they've lost control of your images and the "partner" may have full size image files, and not just the ability to show thumbnails produced by Fotolia's servers. And if that turns out to be  true I'll close my account immediately, and I probably won't be the only one.




« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2010, 18:07 »
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Are you saying you deleted your portfolio at Fotolia, closed the account, and your images are still showing up for sale at a Chinese "partner" site?

If that's what actually happened, and Fotolia doesnt have a sensible explanation, that may mean they've lost control of your images and the "partner" may have full size image files, and not just the ability to show thumbnails produced by Fotolia's servers. And if that turns out to be  true I'll close my account immediately, and I probably won't be the only one.



Yes.  I closed my Fotolia account in August 2009.  And the Chinese partner still has my images.

I've written many letters to Fotolia... still waiting for my images to be removed!

And no, I am not the only one with this problem.  

If you remove your files from Fotolia, go first to the chinese partner site and copy all file_IDs they have of your images, so you can check later.  Just use the URL http://www.tuweimei.com/goods.php?id=FILE_ID   and type your file ID where it reads FILE_ID in the URL  (Note: I think tuweimei file id's are not the same as those at Fotolia site)


« Reply #3 on: January 29, 2010, 18:58 »
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How do you locate you images on tuweimei.com without knowing Chinese?

Has Fotolia responded to you on this, and if so what did they say?

How do you know that this "partner" can't still sell your images?
« Last Edit: January 29, 2010, 19:09 by stockastic »

« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2010, 19:12 »
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Can you actually buy the full images or are they just holding a bunch of cached thumbnails?

« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2010, 19:24 »
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Can you actually buy the full images or are they just holding a bunch of cached thumbnails?

Only someone who reads Chinese could answer that question.

« Reply #6 on: January 29, 2010, 20:42 »
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How do you locate you images on tuweimei.com without knowing Chinese?

I was able to locate my portfolio there by just searching images (search box and button on top)

« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2010, 21:11 »
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How do you locate you images on tuweimei.com without knowing Chinese?

Has Fotolia responded to you on this, and if so what did they say?

How do you know that this "partner" can't still sell your images?


1. You may use an online translator.  Google...

2. Yes, may times.  Always the same response: "We apologize for the inconvenience.  We have informed technical department in order to completely remove your files."

3. I don't know. I would have to register.  But as I said above, they sell images through Fotolia, so I don't think they can sell images which have been removed from Fotolia.  They just display them.  But they should not even do that.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2010, 21:18 by Digital66 »

« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2010, 21:39 »
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Sounds like Fotolia is finding it impossible to make all these "partners" play by the rules they agreed to.  Someone at Fotolia keeps emailing a guy at tuweimei.com, telling him he has to delete those obsolete thumbnails, and months go by and nothing happens, and no one at Fotolia really cares as long ast tuweiwi.com keeps sending over some money now and then.   

And we hope it's just thumbnails, and that tuweimei.com wasn't given copies of the full size images to "enhance performance of their servers".

The whole deal smells really bad and I'm thinking seriously about dropping Fotolia for this reason.   My impression is that Fotolia is the one with a lot of crazy unspecified "partner" sites and that DT, IS, and SS aren't playing that game.  Is that true or just a false impression I've been getting?   

How long before all our images show up for 10 cents on a site with a .ru domain?






nruboc

« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2010, 00:14 »
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Sounds like Fotolia is finding it impossible to make all these "partners" play by the rules they agreed to.  Someone at Fotolia keeps emailing a guy at tuweimei.com, telling him he has to delete those obsolete thumbnails, and months go by and nothing happens, and no one at Fotolia really cares as long ast tuweiwi.com keeps sending over some money now and then.   

And we hope it's just thumbnails, and that tuweimei.com wasn't given copies of the full size images to "enhance performance of their servers".

The whole deal smells really bad and I'm thinking seriously about dropping Fotolia for this reason.   My impression is that Fotolia is the one with a lot of crazy unspecified "partner" sites and that DT, IS, and SS aren't playing that game.  Is that true or just a false impression I've been getting?   

How long before all our images show up for 10 cents on a site with a .ru domain?



It's really quite easy, Fotolia has an API that allows any "approved" site to sell Fotolia's images. All, of which must access the Fotolia database to download the full resolution image. The thumbnails are a different story. If I am an "approved" site I can query all the thumbnail images as of today's date and store them in my own personal database (which Fotolia would have no control over) and display them for as long as I please. But Fotolia retains the master database of the full resolution images, so if they attempt to sell one and they access the Fotolia API to get the full-res version, they will be denied. Do you really think Fotolia would send full resolution images to their partenr sites??? That is just rediculous.

RT


« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2010, 05:31 »
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And we hope it's just thumbnails, and that tuweimei.com wasn't given copies of the full size images to "enhance performance of their servers".

That statement is just ridiculous, a) Because then the site would just sell them direct and FT would get nothing out of it b) because of the work involved in the actual transfer process would be huge for both sites concerned, the very point of being an API partner with FT is that you access their servers for downloading the image and c) servers don't get enhanced performance the more you load on them, they actually get slower.


« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2010, 11:51 »
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That statement is just ridiculous...

It's part of "cloud" computing - for example, Amazon's content delivery network, which caches redundant copies of data at "edge servers" in various locations around the world.  People in China will, generally, get faster downloads of content located on servers in China than in Europe.   When I said "enhance the performance of their servers" I meant performance as seen by their customers, who don't know where the downloads are comong from, and that's why I put it in quotes, because it isn't really about server performance, but location.

But that was just a facetious example.  In general I don't share your faith in the ethics of these agencies.  If a business gets in financial trouble,  creditors and lenders are demanding payment and the owners are facing repossession of their Audis, funny things tend to happen. 'Contributor agreements' with anonymous people on the other side of the world could start to look pretty disposable.  A "partner" with fewer scruples than yourself, with servers safely offshore, offers a big wad of cash for a couple of removable hard drives full of images.  It will happen sooner or later.
 
« Last Edit: January 30, 2010, 12:04 by stockastic »

« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2010, 08:11 »
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I just removed all my images from Fotolia, because I want to go exclusive with IS.

I have to wait 6 more months anyway beacuse of Dreamstime's rules, and I hope that in the meantime I can get all these partner sites images removed, because it would really suck if I cancel all my portofolis from the other sites and get rejected as exclusive at IS because of something like an obscure partner of Fotolia is keeping thumbs of my images.

It looks like becoming exclusive with one site is going to be more and more difficult since many big agencies start having these "partner" programs.


 

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