Recently there are multiple discussions about stolen images at various sites.

If the guy bought the images from subscription sales, if the subscription user agreement in one of the sites allows the buyer to use the images anyway they like,  does it make him a legitimate reseller of the "stolen images"?

It all depends on the Terms of the individual site. In 99.5 % percent of cases, number one, as a contributor you must agree that it is your own original work being submmitted. Then as far as buyers (or subscription holders), there are usually resale and distribution clauses. For instance, you could not buy a group of 50 images, put them on a CD or in a zip file, and resell. Although I do believe this probably happens on EBay.

and we won't know about that unless we find them.
still, isn't there something in our agreement that says we own the copyrights and they cannot resell them in any form?

this is scary, for sure! as a newbie perharps not as bad, as now i know not to put certain images that i couldn't care to suffer a ripoff artist like this one.


another possibility is that he may be the rightful owner and is registered under different user names with different sites.
could that be?

None of the TOS allow purchasers to resell images (the closest is the template extended license, but even that would forbid what this guy did).

I thought about contacting SS about this, but we have no idea where this guy got those images from. Some of the originals I couldn't find at 123rf (another subscription site); StockXpert has a lot of the images and has subscriptions. Unless there was something he stole that just happened to be on only one site, I don't know how we'd be able to ID the source of these. It appears (from the DT stolen images) that the EXIF is stripped - he's stupid, but not stupid enough to leave that in

The copyright right or proprietary right owners may not be the photographer. One simple example is where a studio owner hire photographers to shoot the photos, the studio owner is the copyright and proprietary owner, while the photographers are the employee and not the copyright holders, because they took the photos in the course of their employment.

I am not saying that guy was the legitimate owner. However, since DT has not taken down the photos, I wonder if there is a reason behind their inaction.


 

It all depends on the Terms of the individual site. In 99.5 % percent of cases, number one, as a contributor you must agree that it is your own original work being submmitted. Then as far as buyers (or subscription holders), there are usually resale and distribution clauses. For instance, you could not buy a group of 50 images, put them on a CD or in a zip file, and resell. Although I do believe this probably happens on EBay.

All I know is that this incident made me hate subscriptions even more.   

Regards,
Adelaide

It's an arbitrage - someone signs up with a subscription agency just for a few months and downloads perhaps 3,000 pictures.  Cost is about $1,000.

Then that person creates a portfolio elsewhere hoping to generate 'credit sales' with those pictures at an average of $1 a download.

Lets face it - a good portfolio of 3,000 pictures should be able to make between $2,000 and $4,000 per month for a number of years.

Too good to be true.  But is IS true and we can expect a lot more of it.  The agencies need to be on their toes.  But above all they need to stop selling high rez images for peanuts, because that creates the arbitrage opportunity.

Please correct me if I am wrong but there is a simple way to prevent images from being stolen: Agency should require RAW file for every image but not put it online for sale.

I don't know if it's possible to replicate RAW from jpegs but if not, this would be the only solution. But then again I think agencies don't care enough about theft. They earn the same amount so probably they don't care...

Vectors are the most widely abused format, and they are not available in RAW.

Yes. because vectors ARE actually some kind of RAW...

Sorry, but that doesn't make much sense.  Your solution doesn't work for Vectors because you could just re-save a downloaded .EPS (as an .AI file) and claim it was the original.

The really depressing part, is that as far as I know, nothing ever actually happens to the person stealing the images - we never hear of anyone ever being prosecuted or charged, we never hear of them having to give back the money that they've earned from the stolen images (which hatman says, could be thousands of dollars). All that happens is their account is closed - and no doubt they just open a new one. 

I know I'm pipe dreaming, but I'd love just for once to hear about one of the big sites making an example of these thieves by proceeding with court action (I appreciate this isn't practical, as the majority of the time the thief is in a different country).

I think my post was incomplete but I never said I have a solution for vectors. I was referring to photography and my solution still stands for it. Anyway no agency would go for it because it would decrease their income and increase traffic.

PS: By the way selling vectors for .25 never looked like a good idea to me

Not all photographers shoot in RAW (not all camera have this option). Moreover, RAW is like the old negative: I don't want to give my RAW files to an agency even if it is not available for sale.

And RAW don't apply to 3D and composite photo.

Not a very good idea IMHO