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Author Topic: Did anyone receive an email about removing some roaylties due to buyers fraud?  (Read 24914 times)

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123XXX

« Reply #75 on: February 03, 2011, 05:12 »
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So, iStock takes no responsibility for the theft, neither financially or legally. Meanwhile, the theft is 100% their fault based upon their negligence and poor site security. They haven't compensated us, they haven't attempted to offer us any assurances that it won't happen again, in fact they haven't even formerly apologized. Furthermore, iStock does not guarantee the safety of our intellectual property once we place it on consignment for sale with them. How can iStock assume no responsibility at all when in fact our images would have never gotten stolen in the first place if we hadn't uploaded them to their site? Did we sign a disclaimer somewhere saying that we upload at our own risk? I don't think so. And if I see one of my images used on a billboard or being freely distributed on a web site which was stolen from my portfolio on the iStock site, does this mean iStock assumes no liability at all for this? Something is really wrong here. If we can't hold them responsible for the theft, when the theft occurred when the property was in their hands, then who can we make a claim against? This just seems surreal. In the old days of stock photography, when you placed your film with stock agencies, if they lost it, or a client stole it or damaged it, they would pay you for it. So how is what happened any different? In fact, I assume iStock could even let people download our files for free and simply again claim no liability if they wanted to. There is really nothing stopping them from whatever they choose to do with our images once they are placed on their server. They are not safe, they are not protected, and there is no liability at all. Is this the real world?
« Last Edit: February 03, 2011, 05:18 by 123XXX »


« Reply #76 on: February 03, 2011, 05:24 »
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This is such a big fraud, I really do wonder what they will do with all those images?  Is there going to be an illegal site selling our images?  Will they try selling them on CD's?  They must of planned something, to spend all that time downloading thousands of images, using lots of stolen credit card information.  I just hope they get caught.

As they're all RF, how can we ever tell if an image has been purchased legally or illegally?  At least with RM, we can see some information about each sale and can query if we see our images being used by people that don't seem to of purchased a license from us.

I really do think all the microstock sites now need to do something about this.  If buyers want to download thousands of images, they need to make sure the money isn't coming from a stolen credit card.

rubyroo

« Reply #77 on: February 03, 2011, 05:34 »
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I'm seriously beginning to wonder what we pay them 60 to 85% of our sales for.

They are failing to run the 'store front' properly, buyers complain that they can't find images - to the point that they're leaving; thieves are free to help themselves and sell our images elsewhere with no recompense to us; contributors are complaining that they haven't been paid for past sales; some say that reported sales figures don't add up - and so it goes on.

It seems we're paying this huge amount of commission to them simply to market our work and to make them available for sale if we're lucky enough to have a buyer with the patience and persistence of Sherlock Holmes.  

Sadly, I've come to expect 'another day another disaster' with this agency.  However, that posting regarding the cut they expect if we win a self-funded case is just unbelievable.  I have no words to describe how incredulous I am over that.  

My only hope is that this will be some sort of watershed, and that the agencies will take seriously the fact that they too will lose out substantially if our work is available illegally from competing sources.  It really is time for insurance to be in place on this issue, at ALL the agencies.

« Reply #78 on: February 03, 2011, 05:38 »
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After Istock was acquired by Hellman & Friedman it is heading from one of my favourite sites to the worst. Greedy, insecure, conservative stock very unfriendly to contributors. Again... I feel like a slave :-( Was not the slavery forbidden in the middle of 19th century???

« Reply #79 on: February 03, 2011, 05:46 »
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In some ways, I have a little bit of sympathy for istock with this.  They have been hit by a big credit card scam.  What I would really like to know is, what are istock and all the other sites doing to make sure this doesn't carry on happening?

lagereek

« Reply #80 on: February 03, 2011, 05:58 »
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I was the victim of something similar in Germany, some pretentious Ad-agency phoned me and wanted as many Port-industrial shots as possible, they had a really impressive site, page, etc, and made me busy for over a month. This was 4 years back and one didnt know what to look out for-

Long story short, I began to see my shots just about everywhere throughout Europe, even in the massive port of Hamburg. The CEO In Hamburg told me that we had all been conned, that was it.
The Ad-agency was gone, so was their elaborate home-page, the lot. We all had to bite in the sour apple, period.

eggshell

« Reply #81 on: February 03, 2011, 05:58 »
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Does anyone really believe that having the moral right is enough to make things move ? Unless we create some kind of acting union and file for legal action we have no leverage whatsoever . Some venting and bitter talk and the next day we continue supplying our work like nothing happened .

« Reply #82 on: February 03, 2011, 06:01 »
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6$ removed.

« Reply #83 on: February 03, 2011, 08:28 »
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$9 deducted from my sales.

« Reply #84 on: February 03, 2011, 08:29 »
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I had 4 fraud downloads. $12.10 removed.

« Reply #85 on: February 03, 2011, 08:57 »
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Have we just stumbled upon the achilles heal of online microstock? 

Just over $10 lost hear (not really complaining) - but based on the un-encouraging tone of the e-mail, I will not be surprised to get another.  I just hope they don't send me a bill and tell me I am going to owe them more this year than I can possibly make.  Wouldn't that be great?

« Reply #86 on: February 03, 2011, 08:57 »
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It would be very interesting what will happen to those contributors that was just over some redeemed credits target. Will these fraudulent purchased be removed from last years redeemed credits?

« Reply #87 on: February 03, 2011, 09:07 »
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You know, this really is fishy.  I went and looked at the file that was fraudulently downloaded.  It was a very simple image.  I am not sure why someone would need to steal it.  I am starting to think someone did this on purpose with the intent to hurt iS - and the contributors.  The timing after the announcement of decreased royalty rates seems somewhat conincidental.

Has this ever happened at iS before on such a large scale?

helix7

« Reply #88 on: February 03, 2011, 09:32 »
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To be fair, let's remember that istock isn't alone in this policy of passing fraudulent charges on to the contributor. DT has always done this.

It's a disgusting practice, I've never understood how these companies get away with it and I've often responded to the DT emails to express my disagreement with the policy (which always go nowhere, of course).

This is just another despicable practice of microstock companies to screw us out of every last penny they can. They know we can't/won't do anything about this, and just accept the loss. These companies figured out a long time ago that they can get away with anything in a business that is so crowded with contributors willing to work under these conditions, and now they're really using that to their advantage in every way possible.

« Reply #89 on: February 03, 2011, 09:44 »
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Previously taking 80% of non-exclusives to run an "unsustainable business", I would have expected iStock to be so smart to get an insurance for such cases.

We, the contributors, are not protected whatsoever by the largest image supplier on this planet as it appears that they didn't even consider becoming a victim of online crime.

That's a disgrace.

At this point I'm getting curious what mess they're getting into next.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #90 on: February 03, 2011, 10:19 »
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Previously taking 80% of non-exclusives to run an "unsustainable business", I would have expected iStock to be so smart to get an insurance for such cases.
We, the contributors, are not protected whatsoever by the largest image supplier on this planet as it appears that they didn't even consider becoming a victim of online crime.

Oh, they considered it OK, but didn't want to eat into their huge profits by insuring against it.
From the SpinDoctor's OP:
"Since early December, we've seen an increase in downloads of images using fraudulently purchased credits. We have been working hard on identifying and stopping these fraudulent downloads and have involved necessary authorities, whose investigations are ongoing. So, we are limited in the details we can share.
Ordinarily, iStock does not take back royalties after verifying a fraudulent download."
So it's clearly happened before, albeit on smaller scale. They took a risk, and we lost.

From the thread below, we can read of credit card crime at iStock since at least Feb 2009. (sic)
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-403-265-3062

« Reply #91 on: February 03, 2011, 10:43 »
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To be fair, let's remember that istock isn't alone in this policy of passing fraudulent charges on to the contributor. DT has always done this.

It's a disgusting practice, I've never understood how these companies get away with it ...


I think FT was the first company to do this, and I seem to recall in one case that the reversal was for a sale 4 months earlier. I just didn't see how it could take that long to figure out that something wasn't right. And as you say, protests at the  time that no other agency did this (which I think at the time they didn't) went nowhere.

What distinguishes IS in this case is how many cases over such a short time span for such large sums and how they handled it (complicated by the fact that they shut down over the Christmas break).

« Reply #92 on: February 03, 2011, 10:49 »
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There is so much wrong in this scenario.

The biggest Microstock image supplier in the industry happily announces to leave the office during christmas holidays.

Hellooooo, there are people on this planet that don't celebrate christmas and do business as usual. Unbelievable to leave such a big company on auto-pilot. And I don't even know if they learned from this mistake.

It doesn't take a genius to know that any serious business owner has to have insurance for their operation. I wonder what iStock actually insured but it sure wasn't our content that we allow them to distribute.

Since they are the ones handling the transactions, they need to have the insurance in case something goes wrong.

« Reply #93 on: February 03, 2011, 10:51 »
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I think FT was the first company to do this, and I seem to recall in one case that the reversal was for a sale 4 months earlier. I just didn't see how it could take that long to figure out that something wasn't right. And as you say, protests at the  time that no other agency did this (which I think at the time they didn't) went nowhere.

I had one reversed at FT 11 months after the original sale. I remember reading in the forums from other contributors about cases where it was more than 18 months.

Luckily I am not affected this time at IS - maybe it was a good idea to deactivate my portfolio before year end...  ;)

jen

« Reply #94 on: February 03, 2011, 10:54 »
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I am also one of the affected and also surprised at istock taking funds from my account without any notice.
It's not without notice. This is what they said they would do. I'm not sure why people are getting worked up about it now after it was announced weeks ago (though, of course, many people won't have read the forum thread, they should have e-mailed at the time).
I guess it was announced, if you define "announcement" as "an admin posting on a double digit page of a forum thread that was locked shortly thereafter".

« Reply #95 on: February 03, 2011, 10:56 »
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If they keep this up things will become unsustainable again.. oh no!  :-X

helix7

« Reply #96 on: February 03, 2011, 11:11 »
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There is so much wrong in this scenario.

The biggest Microstock image supplier in the industry happily announces to leave the office during christmas holidays...

And don't forget that this was a paid holiday for everyone at HQ. A week before the royalty cuts were scheduled to begin, they can afford to shut down the shop.

And now the company is apparently on a hiring binge. Lots of new opportunities in IT and marketing, and of course the new VP is coming on board now. As far as I know, that masseuse is still on call at HQ for back rubs at your desk.

And now we get to foot the bill for the lack of adequate security.

All this from a company that wants us to believe that they are hurting financially and had no choice but to cut our rates.

Disgusting.

« Reply #97 on: February 03, 2011, 11:29 »
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It seems like almost everyone was affected by this. Was there a final total on how much was stolen?

« Reply #98 on: February 03, 2011, 11:36 »
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Much like every other promotional offer, discounted credits and freebies we end up footing the bill.  Must be nice to take up to 85% of sales for marketing and administration then pass on the costs to the suppliers.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2011, 12:08 by dscott »

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #99 on: February 03, 2011, 11:40 »
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There is so much wrong in this scenario.
The biggest Microstock image supplier in the industry happily announces to leave the office during christmas holidays.
Hellooooo, there are people on this planet that don't celebrate christmas and do business as usual. Unbelievable to leave such a big company on auto-pilot. And I don't even know if they learned from this mistake.
I wrote to them and suggested they hire some militant atheists who wouldn't mind working over the holiday period. Seems incredibly obvious. I don't think it could be advertised as such in the UK, but maybe other places? But I guess you could phrase the job advert to indicate that working over Christmas and/or Easter would be required.


 

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