I was about to give up on Crestock, then suddenly I get this phonecall from an overseas phone number.
The man identified himself as from Crestock.
He just phoned to inform me that one of my images have been viewed more than 4000+ times and was being featured on a site called digg.com http://www.digg.com/offbeat_news/Nastiest_traffic_jam_EVER
Then he asked me some feedback type questions about the site and said they value my contributions etc...
What a major suprise!!!
Here's the pic:

First off, congratulations on the great image.

But personally, I would be very upset if I was in your situation.

Crestock is displaying your photo without ANY watermark whatsoever.  So even though thousands of people are viewing your image, you don't make anything from FREE views.  On top of that, why should anyone buy your image when they can just steal it for FREE (LEGAL DISCLAIMER AND MUMBO JUMBO: I am not recommending that anyone actually steal your image, nor would I do that myself).

Didn't digg buy it?

if someone buys your image they can use it without the watermark, so digg isn't doing anything illegal.. or am i misunderstanding what you are saying.

Great image nonetheless.  Very exciting.  Great you had your camera with you

It doesn't seem that digg.com bought the image, since they are just providing a link back to Crestock.com (where the image is displayed without any watermark).

ahh yess.  Agreed.  That is an AWFULLY large image they are displaying to the world... especially considering their thumbnails are pretty small in comparison.

it seems as though all their 'judge ross Best Picks' are available at that large size.

Not sure the though behind that.  I guess they want to present the image in a nice way, but not sure it is protecting all their best images very well.

Usually I would be peeved about the no watermark, but in this case, I never even thought that image was stock worthy. I just saw it as a funny pic.
Now it's bringing attention and traffic to Crestock and my portfolio, so not too bad a trade off.
It's recieved 4809 views so far 
Any case, the un watermarked pic is only 549 x 369 pixels, not much good exept for creating another chain mail of crazy images. Won't see that one on a billboard soon.
I never thought that i would contribute to the chain emails that I hate so much... Such is life 

Are you sure the call came from Crestock and not Digg? It was submitted by someone named svaase. They had spammed me about their site a while back and so I had a log in. I just tested - all you need is a url of an image or a page to create a link on their site.


Check this out
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Check_this_out_9

Not sure that crestock had anything to do with it. OTH if it drums up some traffic, that's a good thing

Somebody at crestock had to have put the 'Dig this story' icon and link on the Crestock page featuring my pic.