Both Apple and Haiku take a cut before photographers get their paltry amount.

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Woo Yay

awesome news, they should run a discount though $1.99 is far to expensive.

Is there anything to stop Getty from forming another company that handles these type of deals to cream off another 50-80% ?

^^^ Above comment in sarcastic font ^^^

Getty can only get away with this because the vast majority of contributors keep uploading new stuff to them.  What would it take to stop contributors uploading to them?  The final straw for me was the Google deal.  If they can get away with that, they can do almost anything they like with my portfolio.  They no longer have my best images and I haven't uploaded anything new there since.

I don't understand people complaining about them but uploading all they can at the same time.  Why is it surprising when they screw you again?

Is there anything to stop Getty from forming another company that handles these type of deals to cream off another 50-80% ?

They don't even need to.
ASA Clause 5e:
"In the event iStockphoto facilitates a sale or exclusive license of Exclusive Content, iStockphoto shall be entitled to deduct a reasonable administration fee relating to such sale or license, in addition to its share of the revenue relating to such sale or license, which share shall be based on the royalty payable pursuant to the Rate Schedule at the time of the transaction."

Maximizing profits, applying all costs on the contributors, squeezing every last drop out of your portfolio and looks like they run amok with your images by absolutely not caring about ownership of the images. Its close to illegality if it hadnt been written in their ASA. I wonder if someone were to test this in court, what a judge would think of it. I also find it surprising that out of 35k or more contributors, there is not one lawyer that has enough of all of this and just put it all to the test.

I guess Canadian law must be pretty lax. I've found recently a couple of things iS have done which would be illegal in the UK, though all they would mean is that the contract was invalid so you wouldn't be tied to the 30 days' notice. However, presumably iStockLawyer knows Canadian Law and has been all over it.

Also in the UK, claiming that Yuri and the other 'golden teams' are 'exclusive' to the Getty family breaksat least of the 'legal, decent, honest and truthful' terms of the Advertising Standards Authority. But again, presumably Canada has more lax laws in that area.

So, you'd need a Canadian lawyer for iStock/Getty issues, and presumably an American one if dealing directly with Getty, which 'most' of us don't (AFAIK)