Is it possible that agencies are selling our images and not paying us for every sale? Scary thought!!

Sound at all familiar

Snip

The Stock Artists Alliance�s ongoing Investigative Shopping Project revealed these hidden, often layered, sub-distribution arrangements. Photographers who had been puzzled by surprisingly low licence fees now had an explanation; many had been unaware that the revenues they received were often a meagre single-digit share of the licence fee, rather than their contracted royalty rate. When asked directly about these practices and the lack of transparency, the company line was always the same: these deals are essentially none of your business.

SAA�s study also suggested a troubling degree of accounting errors, as most of our investigative buys failed to be reported to artists until we contacted the company after a year or more of waiting. In 2007, a controller-turned-whistleblower gave SAA internal accounting documents, alleging that one major library owed several million dollars to contributors in back royalties. The company was dismissive of the accusations but SAA contacted hundreds of artists and substantiated the claims, leading to much of the monies owed being paid.

Back in the studios, the professional photographers anxiously watched the steady decline of their royalty revenues, commonly experiencing a 30-50 percent drop over the past few years, to as much as a 90 percent drop today. Once valued contributors, they found themselves increasingly marginalised. With their trust in the distributor relationships reduced, and a loss of confidence that investments in image making would be recouped, professional photographers started to drop out. Sadly, this was the root cause behind our decision to close SAA this year. As the stakeholders have dwindled, it was no longer economically viable to run a trade group dedicated to protecting their interests. SAA will officially shut down at the end of 2011.

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/opinion/2072022/stockpiling-trouble-stock-industry-ate#ixzz2aclYw3nK

Is it possible that agencies are selling our images and not paying us for every sale? Scary thought!!

My wife asks me this almost everyday.
I confess that I am unable to give her an answer�

Are agencies trying to shift costs for refunds, discounts, etc. towards us? Yes, they do! Are they creative when it comes to rounding sums, calculating currency conversion, etc.? Absolutely! Are they actively cheating us by not reporting sales and skimming money? I don't think so, I believe they are just ruthless, not downright criminal...

Plus they get into deals or 'partnerships' with other entities and no doubt award themselves a good whack for brokering the deal, while heavily discounting the images involved in the deal so we lose out, and although they will be getting lower $$ for each sale, their brokerage costs balance it out.

I think these companies have too much to risk to cheat us. If a company were doing this, it's not something they could keep quiet for very long. It would be discovered somehow, through experiments like what the SAA was doing, or through an employee who blows the whistle. It would take too many people being in the know to pull this off, programmers, accountants, too many ways for a leak to happen.

And if a company were discovered to be cheating artists, they'd be dead in the water. No one would send their work there anymore.

Seems like too much of a risk to take to save a few bucks (or cents).

a single sale / day / contributor can mean a lot of money, that said I agree with you, I don't think that agencies are doing this, if there are any I would bet on very small ones

Quote from: luissantos84 on July 31, 2013, 07:14

we can test it

That's right.

I have done tests in the past on several different agencies (on a very minor level) and have never found anything untoward. If I thought it were a real issue then I would definitely organise some private 'secret shopping' tests amongst my friends, here and elsewhere.

It's possible and while I believe that agencies are honest and have accounting checks and balances, which would expose fraud. Unlikely and improbable. They make more by being honest and wouldn't want to risk it all for some spare change. Big agencies. This doesn't apply to the loser parasites that are living off * artists blood, drop by drop. (potentially any on the right with no numbers)

I don't trust mystery partners and sales that we have no way to review or account for. Thus, I avoid any agency that has "Partner Programs" which the partners are not disclosed.

Hey wasn't there a site that lost it's partner contracts because they were storing images on their own servers and thus, preventing the agency and us from traceability and tracking knowledge of sales. Very suspicious.

Is it possible that agencies are selling our images and not paying us for every sale? Scary thought!!

I have friends who are designers/work in marketing. When they buy one of my files, they let me know. So far all sales have always been recorded. I think today it is very easy to verify if sales are being recorded correctly. In the old days the payments was often months after the order was placed, so I can imagine there was a lot more opportunity for error on all sides. These days the computer does the instant accounting in real time.

Not saying it doesn�t happen, but if it does, it will affect thousands of people who can share this info with each other. Just look at the recent problems with PP sales on istock. The community could easily identify the days were royalties were missing and the istock IT people can then rerun their scripts.

I don't want to add anything else to the long list of things to vex myself with in this business and until someone proves it to be the case I've decided not to worry about it

PS. I'll take Jasmin's (Cobalt) word for it that all is above board for now.

I think these companies have too much to risk to cheat us. If a company were doing this, it's not something they could keep quiet for very long. It would be discovered somehow, through experiments like what the SAA was doing, or through an employee who blows the whistle. It would take too many people being in the know to pull this off, programmers, accountants, too many ways for a leak to happen.

And if a company were discovered to be cheating artists, they'd be dead in the water. No one would send their work there anymore.

Seems like too much of a risk to take to save a few bucks (or cents).

You are bit optimistic. The bigger the volume the easier it they can get away with it, and if you do catch them not reporting some sale, they can just claim it was a hickup, what you gonna do?