So, after the "Istock affair", who is just the beginning, here is my personal list and thinking about some "bad" agencies:

-Fotolia: lowered many times commission, change many times the contributor ranking system, and is capable of vicious tricks like simulating a glitch in the file editing section to force the extended license at 10$ and many more to come...of course.

_Dreamstime: no more price difference for subscription download of high level files, disappeared during one night...more to come...

- photodune: very low prices, extended license is a joke, and never make the effort to change the painful upload procedure for model releases, they don't care at all for contributors, only "blablabla" on the forum, just to simulate a concerned attitude, but nothing in action, nothing at all.

Depositphoto: forces very low prices extended licenses if you don't ask for opt out by email, almost only subscription sales at the lowest price in the market. Tendencies to be not clear in the explanations and is capable of vicious tricks like his guru model, Fotolia.

123RF:new commissions cut and more...some of yours know better about it.

So, you think that you want, but we must warn every contributors about these sleazy acts.

Beside these agencies, others never stop to purpose new licenses and new products for both the customer and the contributor, some with 50% commission.

Like in the biological life, there's always symbiosis associations and always pests. If we want a nice future for stock photography, we must work in a symbiotic way and find solutions to stop feeding the pests.

Sorry for my low English level.

 

Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? 

H� h� h� 
I know only these ones: Pond5, Alamy, Stockfresh, GL Stock, Mostphotos, Shutterstock (maybe not so fair, but sell well for now and has done many improvements last two years).
So it's 50/50, same quantity, we have the choice, until now...

Quote from: lisafx on February 06, 2013, 13:46

Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? 

Yes, I would like to turn the conversation in that direction as well.

For me, aside from commission rates and traffic, two important characteristics for a distributor to have are: 1) a standard licensing agreement that includes sufficient prohibition of sensitive use, and 2) ingestion that does not strip the copyright information from the metadata.

As of this moment, the only two distributors that I am aware of that offer both of the above are Fotolia (by opting out of sensitive use) and istockphoto (Google post-license actions aside). I welcome accurate input from others so that I may add to my personal list.

I could add 3) transparent reporting to that as well, but have no history or means of investigating this outside of istockphoto, which I believe could be more transparent.

Did you say Fotolia?

For me the only site that actually �does what it says on the tin� is SS

add CutCaster for kicking out contributors

add CutCaster for kicking out contributors

As far as I can establish it was only 1 *sshole  (just joking Luis)

I think GL would tell you that you images suck CD instead of the them not accepting anymore contributors 

This is a good list. iStock (obviously) and Fotolia, in my opinion, are both greedy, shady agencies that seem to not value their contributors at all.  Fotolia really needs to work on their contributor relations (aside from their extremely low commissions). Both these sites have been performing worse and worse for me, so I guess it's catching up with them.

Yes, welcome to Bigstock, a low earner who start a wonderful subscription metamorphosis, almost a miracle, thank you Shutterstock, next?