"The disk carrying all of the already uploaded images were lost,"

Mom hit the server that was running in the garage when she was parking. Or the sump pump failed in the basement and the computer was ruined. 

These people never heard of Back Up?

Maybe Dotweb will come back and tell us how things are going there now that there's been a fair trial period?

I recently had someone copying one of my vector designs, not 100% exact but 95% copy and 100% copy of my keywords. I found the copy doing a google image search and it turned up on Shutterstock and Colourbox. I emailed both, and Shutterstock responded by removing the image almost immediately. Colourbox, on the other hand, wrote me a polite but curt email saying that the image was not close enough to my image so 'tough luck'.

It put me off completely and, coupled with the terrible commission they pay, they are now well and truly bottom of the Microstock heap, in my opinion.