1. Awareness campaign to the public that photos and videos do cost money to make and hence are things to be paid for.

We live in a world that food also costs money, people starve to death in some places,
but chef's in tv cut and throw away half of the not used ingedients
not to mention unsold food, fruits, grocery ending up to trash not even compost,
not to mention the domestic waste etc etc etc.
But people still die from hunger. No such thing as a free lunch, huh?

Nope.

Free lunch do exist, for people gathering other's media and selling or giving away.

Example:

Since hyperstock beta launch I read the P5 forum related thread.
And people still cry or protest or even discuss what will be their cut out of this sh*t.
But everyone is still protecting own files by asking opt-out.
Where is the union? Where is the "let's inform" not the public, "let's inform fellow contributors".
One person in 16-17 pages, only one declared that will delete all photos from port.
I didn't post anything but did the same. Not much to lose. I don't suggest it to anyone, anywhere.
But this is the only solution as I see it. I don't care if right or wrong, as long as the contract changes
and allows subs sales for the item, you have two ways, take it or leave it.

There you go:

It seems like a lonely path and at the end of the day before the client it is my files against yours.
And if you people learned me something it is to protect me and my files. (And I thank you for that.)

there is only one reason people bying content:
they need it.

its your fault if you offer too cheap.

if content gets withdrawn and put to a reasonable place,
buyers go there -simple as that

btw, just wondering, usually if someone comes up here with words like fair, idea, union...
this forum outrages freaking out

But I've said from the start, if most of us, stopped supporting the low paying and parasite agencies, they would soon be gone and the better paying, serious sites would thrive. Adobe has shown us that a big agency can be fair? I won't upload to anyplace except SS, AS and Alamy.

When I say, drop the bad agencies, the cheap ones that only sell on price, or avoid the agencies that we can't trust, you know what we heard? I need the money, I can't leave them.  So there goes any union or demand for fair commissions. The artists themselves will not join in and fight for change.

Being rational and seeing reality, how we are powerless, and there's no unity, is not freaking out.

One more thing, anyone who starts a union, whether it's pay or membership, all they need to do is find a way to force the agencies to listen and negotiate. You tell me how they get that power to set terms, and we're there.

Now let's see, is e.g. BlackBox a community?

No! It's as much of a community as us lot are a community on MicroStock Group. Yes, we're
a bunch of people in the sample place that have some similarities... but that's about it. I have a lot to say about Blackbox, but maybe not today... it's around 50% positive, 50% negative! Or 60% negative... I'm still figuring it out!

and yes to stop contributing to low payers.
you dont lose money, its the opposite.

Agree to all replies above. But union,agency or community, BB have only "happy" users
and standard agreements with agencies and standard policy on members.
Perhaps I do not use the correct words to express it, agree with people above though.

Uncle Pete, perhaps it is not semthing or nothing issue, going deeper,
a large amount of people seem to prefer to sell low price the part of their port
that might be great imagery but low commercial value files rather withdraw / deleting them.
If you observe, google it, microstock, as a keyword is withering.
 "passive income" do rise and return more results.
Leave it there and forget about it. Collect in time (after we abuse your content to death).
No viable as full time? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Here is another observation:
Do a youtube search for "microstock", scroll down results
and then ctrl+F word shutterstock, observe the word count and videos origin.
Whatever goes public known or overused "how much I earn" is abused and ruined.