Quote from: cobalt on January 15, 2013, 14:50

The parties in the pink isolation chamber must be amazing...no time to check on the low lives...

From jhorrocks, on the price slide thread on iStock:
"Which brings me to another point... have the forums just become someone's sick idea of entertainment?  I get the impression these little changes are being introduced, then Getty execs watch the forums as if they were watching an ant colony being slowly tortured with a magnifying glass.  "Watch them scatter!" .. "Oohh.. we made that one REALLY mad!" ... "HAHAHAHA!" "

Feels like shouting in an empty room. 

After all did some make phone call with them iS or Gredd y or Google?

After all did some make phone call with them iS or Gredd y or Google?

Istock no longer accepts phone calls from contributors 

Not sure about Getty or Google, but I imagine it would be difficult to get through to anyone above entry level receptionist.  Letter from an attorney might be the way to go IMO. 

At the end who is guilty IS or Greedy?

Sorry if this is already discussed here and I missed it, but does anyone know if there is any way to know which images are included in this program?

New thread started by Mr Erin seems to indicate that there is some movement and they are working with Getty to amend this deal:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350613&page=1

We�ve heard you, and we've met with Google and are working with them to refine the implementation which we believe will address some of the concerns raised over the past several days--including copyright ownership.

Implementation aside, our goal is to do the best deals for Getty Images, iStockphoto and our contributors for the more than one million customers we service on an annual basis.

We want to stress that we realize the importance of copyright law, compliance and enforcement to our collective futures. Getty Images is a leader within our industry in advancing these ideas - including active participation in the legislative and government regulatory processes with numerous governing bodies around copyright issues. We also acquired and continue to invest aggressively in the PicScout ImageIRC platform to provide technical solutions for copyright compliance and we look forward to sharing new developments with you as this evolves.

Then he goes on to repeat the bullet points we've all seen at the top of the last thread.

Discussions with Google now is just shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.

 The fine print on that deal is so fine and so unrestricted, the average Google user won't read it, and if they did wouldn't understand it. And it's so wide that if they did understand it they can still do pretty much what they like with the images.

Having an image in that deal would require a total payout of the value of the image over its expected stock lifetime to be reasonable. Even if it did have metadata attached so it wasn't legally orphaned, with what can be done to it through Google under the EULA, and what is likely to be done to it by people who don't understand copyright it's a dead image as far as your ability to be able to get return on your own copyright.

For istock to go forward from this they need to give a cast iron guarantee that they would never give away contributors IP like this again. And I wouldn't believe any statement they made could be that cast iron after the number of times they have gone back on things.

Sorry if this is already discussed here and I missed it, but does anyone know if there is any way to know which images are included in this program?

http://seanlockephotography.com/googleImages

Beat me, Lisa! 

Who sign this kind of contract with Google? Dont Tell me that sign is from greddys new gofer who need to prove himself that he can walk over corpses. Kelly Konjson?
Sorry for my late in I was on winter vacation
wasnt similar story last year from they side how to screw us even more...

Sorry if this is already discussed here and I missed it, but does anyone know if there is any way to know which images are included in this program?

This is a searchable text file Sean put together - not all of the files have info in them, but it's much faster to work with searching text than visually scanning thumbnails.

The new statement doesn't really help much.

The mantra - "we've heard you" now sounds very much like "...your business is very important to us. Please hold for the next available operator..." to me. I don't give a sh*t if you've heard me if you go on acting the way you acted before you heard me.

So the deal was done over the fall and summer. They didn't think it was worth sharing with iStock contributors as "good news". A month after it goes live, Sean starts a thread to ask and they scurry around trying to find details they can share with us.

Now, with a deal long-since inked and images long-since released, they are going to do something about contributor concerns?

How about replace all the content for iStock contributors with wholly owned Getty content in the Google stock library? How about give Google a couple of thousand extra Getty wholly owned images for their troubles?

How about an opt in for any future deals. All off by default, but anyone who wants to opt in can choose to do so. And if they find no one wants to opt in for a $12 royalty, then perhaps they can improved the terms.

They just tried to stick a pacifier in contributors' collective mouths IMO

New thread started by Mr Erin seems to indicate that there is some movement and they are working with Getty to amend this deal:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350613&page=1

We�ve heard you, and we've met with Google and are working with them to refine the implementation which we believe will address some of the concerns raised over the past several days--including copyright ownership.

Implementation aside, our goal is to do the best deals for Getty Images, iStockphoto and our contributors for the more than one million customers we service on an annual basis.

We want to stress that we realize the importance of copyright law, compliance and enforcement to our collective futures. Getty Images is a leader within our industry in advancing these ideas - including active participation in the legislative and government regulatory processes with numerous governing bodies around copyright issues. We also acquired and continue to invest aggressively in the PicScout ImageIRC platform to provide technical solutions for copyright compliance and we look forward to sharing new developments with you as this evolves.

Then he goes on to repeat the bullet points we've all seen at the top of the last thread.

To my reading it's starting to sound as if it may be a major cock-up. Perhaps somebody agreed to something, possibly chasing a bonus target, when they didn't understand (or care about) the implications. Why otherwise would Istock/Getty be 'meeting with Google' when it is a done deal that was supposedly a win-win-win for all concerned?

At this point I'm favouring cock-up over conspiracy although possibly that's the optimist in me. It simply didn't make any business sense from the start, other than for Google. Hopefully we'll find out before D-Day.

:

License information: Under the agreement, Google has a bespoke EULA to allow these images to be used by Google users through the Google Drive platform. Users of this platform are granted rights to place this imagery in content created using Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Presentations and these end uses can be for commercial purposes; however, users are not granted rights to use this imagery outside of Google Drive created content and Google users have no rights to redistribute image files outside of the context in which they�re used

Can be used for commercial purposes is bad enough but it doesn't even state the scope of those 'purposes'. I like the way they try to spin it by saying that they can't use the imagery in non google drive stuff - when they can use whatever they've created with google for whatever purpose they want.