Sorry but I feel that there are people without ethics.
What do we do when we find that another shutterstock user has taken a picture just like yours and put it on sale? My picture was taken in 2015 and his picture this week. It was clearly a copy. I contacted the user and he replied that it is not forbidden to do the same ... will it be that way?
Sometimes our effort at being creative is just for others to take advantage !!

Brave New World...

Happens often.  Here's an example from my portfolio.

I created this in May of 2016:
https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/61523334/super-popular-social-video-counter-counts-1-billion-views.html?ref=odesigns

After it started selling, I saw copycats like this:
https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/73031793/beautiful-3d-animation-close-video-counter-quickly-increasin.html?ref=odesigns

So blatant.  When I complained, the agency said unless they take my actual file and re-upload it, not much can be done about it.

The only consolation I have is the fact that my file, for the time being, has a higher placement in search results.

If you copy Youtube no one else can copy Youtube? Your example is a bad one. If you had done a completely original clip and someone copied it I would be behind you 100% but to suggest that a clip showing elements done in a style suspiciously like Youtube can only be your creation and any other clip with a similar look must be a copy, I'm just not with you.

Unfortunately there are only so many ideas in the world and eventually 2 or more images/videos are going to be created that look very similar even when the contributors have no connection to each other. You can't always chalk it up to copying.

Quote from: ODesigns on August 06, 2018, 06:14

So blatant.  When I complained, the agency said unless they take my actual file and re-upload it, not much can be done about it.

"Not much can be done about it....." Yeah, right. How about rejecting the image/footage because it's too similar to creative work already accepted? I've had
my own work rejected by agencies because it was too similar to things I've submitted in the past. So are they saying it's not alright to submit similar themes I've done in the past but its alright to copy/plagiarize someone else's original work?

The agency in question should at least contact the copycat and inform them that their image/footage will be withdrawn due to copyright infringement. If they don't respect/encourage uniquely creative ideas what's the motivation for submitting to them?

You said everything. your perspective is entirely correct.

This is the image that caused the problem is what I did is the one that is on the right side.
Only now did I notice that the dates almost coincided with two years of difference.

That is despicable but it is what happens in the microstock world.  Plagiarists even the big boys

Plagiarism is very common in microstock when you get a million images a week.

If you do not want to deal in such things then better try macrostock or direct selling.

How would that stop someone copying your image and selling it on micro? (unless you were only direct selling prints offline and the copycats couldn't see your images?)

microstock is like any other business. If you run a shop, for example, you will have shoplifter, starting from the first day of your business. Take it like it is. I also guess that everybody has copied someones idea at one time, maybe unknowingly.

But but, maybe he used different Flour type-550 

   "Good artists copy, great artists steal". Pablo Picasso....  As one of the great artist to live might say, get       over it. Everone copies , everthing has been done..Just do more...Be great and make more art.

What a charmingly whimsical generalization. Ironical too considering Picasso paraphrased that himself from TS Eliot. Except the true spirit and meaning of that quote says exactly what Pauws99 said - that as a good artist you build upon the work that came before you, and as a truly great artist you do it so well that you effectively co-opt it into your own immediately recognizable style. It does not give you the right to copy others work verbatim. So no, I don't think the great Picasso would have conflated this and said "get over it" in the two examples above.

One way to prevent our work being copied is by avoiding posting on those silly "show me your best-sellers" threads. They seem to have gone into overdrive on the SS forum. Happy days for thieves.

I remember one time this happened to someone, they were able to get the copycat images removed.  I think the site in question was iStock however.  Either way, if you want, you could always try making a complaint to Shutterstock and see if the image is removed.

I remember one time this happened to someone, they were able to get the copycat images removed.  I think the site in question was iStock however.  Either way, if you want, you could always try making a complaint to Shutterstock and see if the image is removed.

IStock did used to do a good job on this. They called it "abusive inspiration" or something like that. I am not sure they still do, it's very hard to even get a response as a contributor now.

I've only contact another contributor once and it wasn't a disaster. He download some image from a pirate website that was "free" and he flipped it and sold it as his own. He removed it after a few messages of me lightly threaten to report him (after 2 weeks of back and forth).

The other 5-6 times where they had multiple thefts, I just reported them and got their entire portfolio taken down. It's not a good idea to contact another contributor if they stole or copied your work. If you report them afterwards, they know it's you. If you don't, you're probably not going to like their response and you're going to walk away angry.I probably won't contact another contributor again if they steal my work. It's too much of a headache.

As for copies, sometimes there's little you can do. They borrowed the idea, but they didn't steal your work, so it's a bit of a gray area. There are times where you can report them, but most of the time, the agencies won't do anything about it.