Would it matter if they closed it down?  Surely all the contributors would disseminate across other agencies and the buyers would follow.  The contributors would just make their income elsewhere, and the buyers would still get what they want.  They certainly wouldn't suddenly be paying mid-stock or trad-stock prices at Getty just because Getty dumped the microstock model.  

For that reason, I don't see why it would be logical for them to close it down.

The only way that would make sense to me is if they plan to snap up and close down every microstock agency in existence.  My hope is that the other agencies will stand firm and not sell out to them, on principle.

No youre misunderstanding!  when I say closing-down, I mean Getty will probably amalgamate them into something else, poor IS, has always been a thorn in the side and here is a brillant paving the way chance.
Seen it a thousand times over the past 20 years. Same pattern.

I dont believe in the 'selling scenario' either. Selling the most well known and best selling milk cow in the industry and let it become a competitor again? makes no sense to me...
close it down so the MS customer base hups over to the competitors (not TS)? makes just as little sense... then again very little of what they do makes sense of course...

I'm speechless. We pay over 80% in commissions for IS to take care of the selling part of the business, and not only they don't control the frauds, when they happen they pass all the damage to the contributor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this even legal?!

Asking for an audit , if agreed by istock, would normally drive to an agreement in which, if the audit goes all right and nothing is found to be wrong, the contributors would pay the expenses of it. Otherwise it should be istock to pay. They would probably also set a certain amount  of money to differentiate everyday business accounting  errors with �fraud�  . For example, silver sub sales are not payed correctly, we have raised tickets, they have told us they would address the problem and nothing has happened yet and I don't expect anything to happen, the amount is probably too low.

What could be done IMHO was to ask for legal proof of the fraud. I don't think they can pull off royalties without legally demonstrating that the illegal DL have taken place and the actions that are being carried away to i)prosecute fraudsters, ii)solve the problem, iii)protect our IP, iv)insure the company against future frauds, etc.

BTW: istock is a cash cow and its numbers have saved the crisis pretty well. It is a business that gets paid in advance (in cash) and pays suppliers with delay. It finances itself pretty well. I don't think merging it with other companies is the idea but a sell out or more likely IPO. The problem is getting a good price for it. Money is still very cautious and looking for bargains in the market. Credit doesn't flow with ease to the companies and many are still in distress. Mainly those are the companies being traded in the market right now. Difficult to believe that istock is in such problems when it is clearly short in manpower, don't think overheads can't be that high. The moment for big operations when everything is bought at any price is not here yet. Same for the IPO, you need consumer confidence to be higher, you need to sell shares to common people to achieve a successful IPO and we are not at that moment either.

In fact it seems to me that they are trying two things at the same time. What I said about istock and remaining in the sector with Thinkstock, etc. That could explain why they are driving base micro buyers to them. They know the business and have seen this company grow. At the beginning you need to offer content a low prices, and get loyal buyers. As the  content gets better they rise prices and also get more selected buyers, and the story repeats.

There is one saying in private equity. It is easier to sell two companies and double what you invested in each one than selling only one company and getting the same profit.

It looks like everything they have done in the past few years is geared towards selling the site.  I think it would be madness to merge istock with Getty but I thought they were crazy closing StockXpert.  I just don't understand why they have allowed so many serious problems to happen with istock when they seem to be working towards selling it off.  I don't think they want to kill istock but their incompetence has astonished me.  Wouldn't they get a much better price for a site with few problems that had reasonably satisfied buyers and suppliers?  Surely potential buyers are going to want to pay a lot less for a site that has a tarnished reputation?

I would really welcome a new owner of IS and preferably a "creative owner" someone who isnt a pawnbroker.

Quote from: Blufish on March 10, 2011, 23:18

By his clipped responses over there, I personally think he is everything but calm. But yea, OMFG.

Let's call it 'restrained' then. I'd be raging like a freaking lunatic and would most certainly have been banned.

What I also find interesting is that many people are saying this time it was more than the last, only iStock is claiming it wasn't as much. Hmmm...

No, Andrew said that February was 10% of January, which it was, because it looks like the fraudsters went on vacation 2/1-2/27.

I'm not sure what an audit will reveal.  They presumably have a list of rejected numbers, it's easy enough to cross-reference those with the accounts that used them and list all the downloaded images for those accounts.

One kkthompson has deemed fit to make a short statement;

"I realize this is frustrating, but it is for us as well. Not being able to speak about it or explain our position makes everyone a little crazy.

BUT, when we are able to make a statement--believe me--you will understand why we're doing what we're doing.

Please be patient. That discussion could still be months away.

Kelly"

Still no apology of course __ or letter of resignation either.

One kkthompson has deemed fit to make a short statement;

"I realize this is frustrating, but it is for us as well. Not being able to speak about it or explain our position makes everyone a little crazy.

BUT, when we are able to make a statement--believe me--you will understand why we're doing what we're doing.

Please be patient. That discussion could still be months away.

Kelly"

Still no apology of course __ or letter of resignation either.

...and utter,utter, bullsh*t. There doesnt exist a valid reason for doing this.

Anyone else notice that Kelly's title is still COO and not CEO? He was never promoted to CEO. It's poorly thought out answers like the crap he posted just a short while ago that speak volumes to his poor leadership ability. It's no wonder no one at Getty has promoted him. I wouldn't either. In fact, I think (as another istocker stated in the forums as well), they need a good cleaning at the top levels of iStock. Things are clearly not going right and that falls squarely on the shoulders of the person running the show there. He's not cut out for the job. 

I suspect this post may 'disappear' very soon in reply to KKT's post:
Posted by Ildi_Papp
"I doubt that. Besides not telling why you took back the royalties back from constributors, which you most likely refer in this specific posts, you do a lot of things (as the CEO or at least as part of iStock administration team), which are beyond any reasonable explanation, which will make me understand, why are you doing those.

You can fold it into lot's of soft logical phrases made out of empty words, which will sound like the voices of politicians desiring to get reelected, to shortly afterwards lead the people, who "understood" these words, into the next crisis.

That's about all you can do and that is what you get paid for anyway. You are the one who led the loyal long-term constributors of iStock into falling download numbers and being confronted with disgruntled customers leave or opening frustrating threads in the discussion forum.

Can't you see that iStock is practically falling apart, even though your salary might rise? Or is it that iStock is for you just a sum of numbers, which somehow determine your salary, while for most of the constributors it is something different?

Here is one possible guess, why you are doing this: The copyright holder is the constributor and maybe from definition of law you need the copyright holder to have a "loss" to make it possible to sue or pursue the thieves, because maybe if the copyright holder got payed by you (and the copyright holder), you cannot do anything (within court) against the "thieves".
This explanation although still does not explain, how download patterns as from sjlocke can stay unnoticed in your iT department. That of course is only right, if the downloads weren't made from old accounts and splitted over hundreds accounts using hundreds of different credit card numbers. Although you might have found it unusual in that case that suddenly hundreds of new accounts are opened, filled with thousands of dollars and starting to download files in high amounts right away.
But i am pretty sure your find another meaningless explanation for that too. Or you just could invent another one.

... boring. Go to a university, learn how to program and help to fix the search. Or sit down at a phone and do customer support. In these cases you at least do something useful, which would make sense to pay your salary for."

 Jonathan Ross - other thread:

Hi All,

 It seems slightly unbalanced that our credits are covering their mistakes. I wouldn't mind if it was a one time deal but are we going to start seeing these every month or two? Must be awesome to own a company that when you don't conduct your business in a proper manner that it doesn't cost you a cent, I want to own a company like that Cheesy

Best,
Jonathan

Exactly, this sounds like a risk free business opportunity. Maybe iStock is the pioneer of this kind of operations.

Simply do whatever you want and hand down the losses to your suppliers since obviously it's their fault that the buyers didn't pay.

Saying it like that, it sounds pretty weird. lol.

I'm starting to wonder what IS does for the 85% they keep?
Or that is more like 86.5% if the fraudulent purchases are included.

Their next plan is propably to give the contributors 0% and do nothing (except buing BMWs and Yachts for themselves)

IS lacks RESPONSIBILITY in every way.