First I have heard about it. I tried looking in the FT forum but can't find anything there either.

Awesome!  Everyone says blog sizes are what sells best these days, so what an amazing move to just give the content away!

Maybe it's a leftover April Fool thing.

I found some hugely amusing quotes in fotolianews (pointed to by Andy's blog) From 8 reasons for Fotolia Microstock:

"7. Supports The Arts
The world would only be shades of gray without the Arts. By paying for images, you�re helping photographers and illustrators earn a living. We need them."

I'm not sure if that makes me feel like photographers are the equivalent of those starving kids in famine relief ads or if the irony of multiple commission reductions and royalty level increases is lost on FT's PR department.

And then there's the lovely revisionist history in How it Works

"Fotolia is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations."

I'm guessing that FT is drawing a distinction with IS on the basis of "worldwide" because FT was the first to internationalize their web site, but IS was selling worldwide before FT was even though they only localized their site after FT showed they could gain market share that way. And I know SS was pretty early with doing translated versions of their site, but I don't remember if they followed FT or beat them to it.

I think it'd be a good idea for some FT contributors to inquire of them if the contributor is compensated for these promotional freebies - fine if FT wants to foot the bill, but is there anything in the contract that allows them to just give away images from the paid section?

And the march of anti-contributor cash grabs marches on. I didn't see anything in FT's blog or press release section. Have they told contributors about this "opportunity"?

Wow, the thought entered my mind about becoming non-exclusive from Istock and then I see stuff like this.

No explanations, no emails, nothing on teir forum, just a tiny thing on the news page....  Irritating.

Wow, the thought entered my mind about becoming non-exclusive from Istock and then I see stuff like this.

If you have any thoughts at all about doing that, and any notion of contributing to Fotolia, then you need to be quiet about them in public or they will ban you (as they did me, albeit after I left to become an iStock exclusive; they just threatened me with closing my account beforehand).

 I think I was seen as a troublemaker for coordinating efforts to hold off uploading after their initial lowball offer when they started subscriptions (with no opt out).

All I want to know is, do they pay us for this?  Does anyone know?

I have sent a message to support about this.  I would presume they are paying us, as it really would be a mess if they were giving away our images for free.

I thought that's how it would work.  Funny how people jump to the wrong conclusion.  I don't like a lot of things fotolia have done, especially cutting commissions but this looks OK.

Thanks for asking and clarifying, Rob 

It's better than the VOX deal on IS. Bloggers had free use of IS images without no payment to the contributors. Just a click through link to the purchase page. I just hope that this one is monitored better. VOX started making blogs private after it was discovered that bloggers were using IS images in posts titled "Girls I F****D this week"

Classy.

IIRC, that Vox deal had an opt-out, either under Partner Programs or Promotional Use. That's when I opted out of both.