MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: FreeTransform on November 12, 2012, 11:04
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So apparently they're aware of this, but I'm wondering how it was done. Looks like the entire iStock library for sale at a discount:
http://www.istockreseller.com/ (http://www.istockreseller.com/)
Kelvin has a post telling people not to link to it:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=348941&page=1 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=348941&page=1)
admin edit: updated thread subject
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That's pretty brazen! And I wouldn't dream of downloading my own images from them (and the thumbs are there, albeit with rather old fashioned looking rounded corners) but what would happen if I did? Do they have the XXXL image to sell me for $8 or is it some upsized thumb? And if they have the full size files, how did they get them, I wonder?
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I thought it could be some sort of elaborate phishing scheme, but that seems a lot of work to get the credit card numbers of a few gullible people. If they indeed have the full-size photos and vectors, that brings up the big question of iStock's security (or lack thereof).
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Hi
I didn't know istockreseller and I'm quite worried about how they can have our files on sale.
I've found many my istock files on that site.
where is the istockphoto security?
Also istockphoto doesn't work, again, since this morning GMT, and I can't contact them.
Dark times for istockphoto on the horizon...
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There's no way they have the files. They just taking your keyword search, passing it to IS, scraping the results and re-formating for display. If you could actually "sign-up", it would end up being either a referral link scam or somehow they would be using a subscription plan or something to buy the image and pass it on.
I'm sure it won't be around long.
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There's no way they have the files. They just taking your keyword search, passing it to IS, scraping the results and re-formating for display. If you could actually "sign-up", it would end up being either a referral link scam or somehow they would be using a subscription plan or something to buy the image and pass it on.
The voice of reason. Thank you. My lack of knowledge in this area made me paranoid.
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There's no way they have the files. They just taking your keyword search, passing it to IS, scraping the results and re-formating for display. If you could actually "sign-up", it would end up being either a referral link scam or somehow they would be using a subscription plan or something to buy the image and pass it on.
The voice of reason. Thank you. My lack of knowledge in this area made me paranoid.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't someone out there trying to get you. Always better to be safe than sorry.
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I see the note from Kelvin says, "...There are some scam sites that purport to offer iStock content. Please don't even think of posting a link to them on the forums. Yes, the lovely people in compliance and enforcement know about them. No, they're obviously not legit ..."
The thing is, how can we tell which are 'obviously not legit' and which are 'associates', or 'partners', which was the snippy reply I got when I reported a similar site a while back (spider... something, ...pics maybe).
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Seems that the site is gone? That would be good news.
And just adding, hey maybe this is where people get the fake CCs they use to steal images, those sales which are later reversed by IS?
Oops, now it's back. I was getting that same blank page with no data. I guess it's hit and miss. Miss would be best.
Oh and up to date too. An image that I uploaded last week, and just got approved, is showing in the search. They must be linking from the IS servers which is another infringement, stealing bandwidth.
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Not gone - at least for me, here.
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Not gone - at least for me, here.
I can still see it too
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I'm getting this:
Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at this site.
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
Either they are REALLY busy from people buying or they have been taken down.
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It was gone for awhile yesterday, but it's back up again, and still searchable (from a new machine, so it's not a caching issue)
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Yeah, I've just seen one I uploaded last week on there too, and it's being sold at half the price :o
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Yeah, I've just seen one I uploaded last week on there too, and it's being sold at half the price :o
It isn't "on there". The site is just taking search results from IS, scraping the data and reformatting and displaying it. Whatever is on IS will show up there.
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Yeah, I've just seen one I uploaded last week on there too, and it's being sold at half the price :o
It isn't "on there". The site is just taking search results from IS, scraping the data and reformatting and displaying it. Whatever is on IS will show up there.
Ooops, yeah I see where I went wrong on the pricing now. On IS the price shows up in euros on my screen, but on the scam site it shows up in dollars. Silly me :-[
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Yeah, I've just seen one I uploaded last week on there too, and it's being sold at half the price :o
It isn't "on there". The site is just taking search results from IS, scraping the data and reformatting and displaying it. Whatever is on IS will show up there.
Ooops, yeah I see where I went wrong on the pricing now. On IS the price shows up in euros on my screen, but on the scam site it shows up in dollars. Silly me :-[
Well, I'm not saying the price correlates to IS in any way. They could be making up their own "prices". But the other data (the sort, the title, the image) is just from IS.
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I'm getting concerned about this. The forum threads about it have been locked, as they should. But I'm wondering if TPTB are doing anything about it. It is back online, the add-money link to Paypal was broken (and reported as such by iStock) and is now working again. One can sign up, and get sent $2 in promotional money, and use it to download images. If these are truly being paid for with stolen credit card numbers, we'll undoubtedly be seeing refunds -- and in the meantime, it is possible to "buy" and download our images. I haven't received any reply to the emails I sent CE about this. It ticks me off -- they've known about this for more than a week. If this happened to an on-line retailer or bank or whatever, they'd have it shut off by now. (venting because thinking of refunds).
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Whats the deal here. I see its still live?
If iStockphoto cant shut them down, why dont they call PayPal and report the site. PayPal will crap their account down. Thats at least something.
Is istockreseller positively a scam site or is it legal? I dont believe for one second if that site was illegal GY/IS could not shut it down in a day. Makes you think.
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Please break the link to the scam site. That will make it harder for them to track our traffic to them. Just put a word like BREAK or some symbol in the link. ;)
So apparently they're aware of this, but I'm wondering how it was done. Looks like the entire iStock library for sale at a discount:
[url]http://www.istockreseller.com/[/url] ([url]http://www.istockreseller.com/[/url])
Kelvin has a post telling people not to link to it:
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=348941&page=1[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=348941&page=1[/url])
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If you click "buy with extended License" on one of the images you actually get forwarded to the real IStock page, weird
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There is already a long thread about this. This subject has been well covered already here:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/istock-is-hacked/
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There is already a long thread about this. This subject has been well covered already here:
[url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/istock-is-hacked/[/url] ([url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/istock-is-hacked/[/url])
I dont see an explanation why istock hasnt taken it down yet.
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Why does the search load faster than when I search on istock ?
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The site is using images from istockimg.com and also you can put the ID of an image with no sales or views and it loads from the site.
If it's not legit and istock wanted to do something about it, they just need to add a simple configuration in the server to prevent hotlinking of images.
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I reported the site to PayPal long time ago and they didnt tell me what they did of course but the fact it still has PayPal means they didnt find anything wrong either. Weird stuff. Still dont believe if it was a scam that Getty would let it operate this long. If Getty goes after small time grannies with their lawyers demanding 1500 dollars for a single use web thumbnail, why dont they shut down this one. I'd say its all Getty who set it up, so that they do not have to pay royalty to contributors 8) .
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Another iStock user has been downloading images today (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350053&page=1) - PayPal is working again, apparently.
In the last case of an exclusive passing on all the information to compliance enforcement about a scam sale (that they made to try and get the account closed and the problem taken care of) it took a week or more, but the sale was refunded as expected.
I don't understand why they haven't been able to shut this site down given how long they've had information about it and examples of it in operation.
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They seem to use a regular iStock account or API for obtaining access to full resolution images.
I find it very strange that iStock should not be able to shut down that account.
Makes one think that they are not really interested in shutting down the site...
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It took them a month to issue the refund for mine. I wonder just how much business that site is getting. I agree that they don't seem to interested in shutting it down. Something funny going on here . . .
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NOW I know where is the catch:
this site is not scam,
this site is PP.
;D
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W/O paying to contributors, of course.
>:(
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Interestingly, that site seems to have better SEO than iStock does, as does Spider official-partner Pic. And I see that GIS my pics is at least equally likely to throw up the image in the scam site (and/or Spider*) as on iStock.
Something wrong there, Shirley.
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It's still online >:(
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Seems to be still up and running today.
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I cant believe this site is still up, I came across it again today.
Can't they do a couple of test purchases and trace how the scam is working?
This really does make IS look utterly useless (if any more proof was needed)
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I wonder if it is a scam at all. As was mentioned earlier, just another API or partner? Seems pretty unlikely that it would still be live if it were in fact some kind of scam.
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Well maybe if Getty are just interested in increasing short term profit for a sale they could be letting it run. They get the sales in the short term as the scammers build up their collection at our expense. They obviously don't care about resale value or long term volume of sales right now (they are happy to devalue our work for a short term revenue boost as demonstrated by the Google firesale).
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It looks like this site is now being sold on Flippa
https://flippa.com/2932098-pr2-photography-site-with-2-000-000-indexes-tool-to-make-3000-monthly
It also explains how the system is working.
When customer presses the Download button:
+ If this photo has been previously purchased by another (and has already been stored on the server), the code automatically resizes the original photo into the size requested by the customer (the secret account of admin on istockphoto will not have to make any more payment – Buy one time and use forever)
+ If this photo does not exist on the server yet, the code automatically orders from istockphoto and download the photo (each different photo is purchased only once with the largest size)
Obviously against the iStock Terms of Service
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I wonder if it is a scam at all. As was mentioned earlier, just another API or partner? Seems pretty unlikely that it would still be live if it were in fact some kind of scam.
Is is a scam. It's probably part of the istock-getty scam family. The fact that the site is still up is just amazing. Allover business morals miles below the lowest of low standards. People should be in prison.
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Hilarious. Since IS hasn't figured out how to stop them, maybe the details will help. Doubtful....
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Hilarious. Since IS hasn't figured out how to stop them, maybe the details will help. Doubtful....
Assuming all high tech ways of figuring out who they are fail, it would be pretty easy to buy 5 pics through their site and look on the iStock back end and see which account is purchasing those images. Or... perhaps they just don't care that this site is illegally reselling our content???
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Wouldn't matter. They just open another account.
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Wouldn't matter. They just open another account.
They'd have to do ip rerouting though and perhaps they'd run out of credit cards.. eventually?? Surely there is some way to shut the site down given the weight of the Getty Gorilla?
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So, what's the latest news on the process of stopping this scam site? Is Istock simply unable to stop them (which I can't believe) or have they stopped caring?
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So, what's the latest news on the process of stopping this scam site? Is Istock simply unable to stop them (which I can't believe) or have they stopped caring?
Both? Obviously they've been at it for a while. Two years? Don't remember. They must have a nice little stash built up.
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Flippa should not allow this auction to proceed - it violates their terms as well.
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Flippa should not allow this auction to proceed - it violates their terms as well.
Yeah, I was thinking of reporting it. Anything to pester the owner of that crap site.
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yes, we should all report it.
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Looks like iStock have given up. This is from the comment section on Flippa:
"Is this against istockphoto's terms of service? How likely is it that they will sue you?"
Reply from seller "Don't worry, it work very good if you have a hosting outside U.S. Before, iStockphoto contact me about this problems, and now all work great without any problems."
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Wouldn't matter. They just open another account.
They'd have to do ip rerouting though and perhaps they'd run out of credit cards.. eventually?? Surely there is some way to shut the site down given the weight of the Getty Gorilla?
Drop that childish myth already, getty is failing bankrupt company even these low-level internet scamsters are laughing in their face.
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Surely there is some way to shut the site down given the weight of the Getty Gorilla?
The simplest and the fastest way would be to actually buy this site and close it :)
That surely would be a great acquisition... Then Getty would also be able to use their technology and launch a "gettyreseller" platform.
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yes, we should all report it.
Another iStocker reported this sale elsewhere and said that in order to report the seller on Flippa you had to give a phone number. They didn't want to give that information out - a throwaway e-mail is one thing, but a phone number is harder.
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I reported the auction to Flippa, and they say they have now been in contact with istock about the auction and are awaiting a DMCA claim from them.
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I reported the auction to Flippa, and they say they have now been in contact with istock about the auction and are awaiting a DMCA claim from them.
I reported it too but it sounded like they weren't going to do anything unless iStock sent a DMCA. If iStock is too lazy to do anything or doesn't care then the auction won't be removed
Thanks for contacting Flippa Customer Support.
Flippa will remove a listing with contents infringing on copyright or a trademark, upon receipt of a Digital Millenium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) notice from the affected party, or a signed official document from a legal body.
More information on Flippa's policies regarding listings containing potentially copyrighted or trademarked material can be found at
https://flippa.com/help/forbidden-copyright-material
Please let us know if you need further information or clarification.
Kind Regards
Flippa Customer Support.
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I reported it too but it sounded like they weren't going to do anything unless iStock sent a DMCA. If iStock is too lazy to do anything or doesn't care then the auction won't be removed
Thanks for contacting Flippa Customer Support.
Flippa will remove a listing with contents infringing on copyright or a trademark, upon receipt of a Digital Millenium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) notice from the affected party, or a signed official document from a legal body.
More information on Flippa's policies regarding listings containing potentially copyrighted or trademarked material can be found at
https://flippa.com/help/forbidden-copyright-material
Please let us know if you need further information or clarification.
Kind Regards
Flippa Customer Support.
At least this will let us know iStock/Getty's official position on this.
After all, Lobo lurks here so word can easily get back to HQ that all they need to do is send a DMCA.
So if they don't, we get the message.
And if they do, not before time.
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well, i just saw that the site sold with 'Buy it Now'.. for $20,000
A big price to pay for something that could get shut down in a day with a take down notice.
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Have you read the comments at the bottom?
This is illegal. Read istockphoto TOS. You cannot resell the images you have bought as you don't have this right. Not to mention that you buy an image once and sell it later to several people. If you haven't been sued until now, you can bet you will be now.
http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses (http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses)
"License restrictions
Here is what you cannot do with either a Standard or Extended license:
Sub-license, give away, share or otherwise transfer stand-alone images/files"
Reply;
hoaiphong (100% | $10.3K) Date:4 hours ago
I am understand, however now we resolve all problems and you can run it without any problem about license. As I note before, istockphoto contact me and now all are ok.
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Have you read the comments at the bottom?
This is illegal. Read istockphoto TOS. You cannot resell the images you have bought as you don't have this right. Not to mention that you buy an image once and sell it later to several people. If you haven't been sued until now, you can bet you will be now.
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url])
"License restrictions
Here is what you cannot do with either a Standard or Extended license:
Sub-license, give away, share or otherwise transfer stand-alone images/files"
Reply;
hoaiphong (100% | $10.3K) Date:4 hours ago
I am understand, however now we resolve all problems and you can run it without any problem about license. As I note before, istockphoto contact me and now all are ok.
And you believe everything you read on the internet? Hrmm.
I can assure you we have a team of people working to get them removed from ISPs as soon as they change up. This latest endeavor isn't something we aren't aware of either.
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Have you read the comments at the bottom?
This is illegal. Read istockphoto TOS. You cannot resell the images you have bought as you don't have this right. Not to mention that you buy an image once and sell it later to several people. If you haven't been sued until now, you can bet you will be now.
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url])
"License restrictions
Here is what you cannot do with either a Standard or Extended license:
Sub-license, give away, share or otherwise transfer stand-alone images/files"
Reply;
hoaiphong (100% | $10.3K) Date:4 hours ago
I am understand, however now we resolve all problems and you can run it without any problem about license. As I note before, istockphoto contact me and now all are ok.
And you believe everything you read on the internet? Hrmm.
I can assure you we have a team of people working to get them removed from ISPs as soon as they change up. This latest endeavor isn't something we aren't aware of either.
No Lobo, I do NOT believe everything I read on the internet.
All I did was ask if people saw the comments.
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Oh, well that makes way more sense. So what do you image those comments mean? It behooves me to ask as it seems like you are under the impression that due to the comments left by the seller they are in discussion with iS and that we had cleared him to utilize the site in this way.
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Oh, well that makes way more sense. So what do you image those comments mean? It behooves me to ask as it seems like you are under the impression that due to the comments left by the seller they are in discussion with iS and that we had cleared him to utilize the site in this way.
Sorry if I gave the impression that I believed in those comments.
For the record, I think those comments are outrageous, false and misleading.
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Oh, well that makes way more sense. So what do you image those comments mean? It behooves me to ask as it seems like you are under the impression that due to the comments left by the seller they are in discussion with iS and that we had cleared him to utilize the site in this way.
You get a heart for using the word 'behooves' in a forum post.
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I reported the auction to Flippa, and they say they have now been in contact with istock about the auction and are awaiting a DMCA claim from them.
I reported it too but it sounded like they weren't going to do anything unless iStock sent a DMCA. If iStock is too lazy to do anything or doesn't care then the auction won't be removed
Thanks for contacting Flippa Customer Support.
Flippa will remove a listing with contents infringing on copyright or a trademark, upon receipt of a Digital Millenium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) notice from the affected party, or a signed official document from a legal body.
More information on Flippa's policies regarding listings containing potentially copyrighted or trademarked material can be found at
https://flippa.com/help/forbidden-copyright-material
Please let us know if you need further information or clarification.
Kind Regards
Flippa Customer Support.
Isn't this totally wrong from Flippa?
If you complained about one of your photos (licensed from iStock) being on that other place, they should have paid attention to your complaint.
When I complained to e.g. flickr and pinterest, I showed it was my pic from iStock, and they investigated on my sayso.
The copyright is ours, not iStock's, or am I missing something re Flippa, which I'd never heard of before this thread.
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well, i just saw that the site sold with 'Buy it Now'.. for $20,000
A big price to pay for something that could get shut down in a day with a take down notice.
Have you read the comments at the bottom?
This is illegal. Read istockphoto TOS. You cannot resell the images you have bought as you don't have this right. Not to mention that you buy an image once and sell it later to several people. If you haven't been sued until now, you can bet you will be now.
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url])
"License restrictions
Here is what you cannot do with either a Standard or Extended license:
Sub-license, give away, share or otherwise transfer stand-alone images/files"
Reply;
hoaiphong (100% | $10.3K) Date:4 hours ago
I am understand, however now we resolve all problems and you can run it without any problem about license. As I note before, istockphoto contact me and now all are ok.
And you believe everything you read on the internet? Hrmm.
I can assure you we have a team of people working to get them removed from ISPs as soon as they change up. This latest endeavor isn't something we aren't aware of either.
Isn't it counter productive to let the sale go through in the first place, now you have to worry about it popping up on ISP's all over the world.
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Have you read the comments at the bottom?
This is illegal. Read istockphoto TOS. You cannot resell the images you have bought as you don't have this right. Not to mention that you buy an image once and sell it later to several people. If you haven't been sued until now, you can bet you will be now.
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses[/url])
"License restrictions
Here is what you cannot do with either a Standard or Extended license:
Sub-license, give away, share or otherwise transfer stand-alone images/files"
Reply;
hoaiphong (100% | $10.3K) Date:4 hours ago
I am understand, however now we resolve all problems and you can run it without any problem about license. As I note before, istockphoto contact me and now all are ok.
And you believe everything you read on the internet? Hrmm.
I can assure you we have a team of people working to get them removed from ISPs as soon as they change up. This latest endeavor isn't something we aren't aware of either.
That "team of people" sure did a great job with this up to now :D
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Looks like this site is finally dead. I get the following message when I try to access the site. "It works! This is the default web page for this server. The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet."
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Looks like this site is finally dead. I get the following message when I try to access the site. "It works! This is the default web page for this server. The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet."
that's good, however, there is still some hoodlum out there that bought all our images for 20.000!! Whitchurch he can turn around and sell on a new site?!
My Very Best :)
KimsCreativeHub.com
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Sorry old tread alert....
Just realised, but, scary! Wish I new what became if all this?
My Very Best :)
KimsCreativeHub.com
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"Just realised, but, scary! Wish I new what became if all this?"
They became the 'PP' part of iStock thus explaining the over payments in October :D
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Thanks Goofy, that's a really strange result?!
My Very Best :)
KimsCreativeHub.com
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Looks like this site is finally dead. I get the following message when I try to access the site. "It works! This is the default web page for this server. The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet."
istockreseller.com is up and running?
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The site is up, but now it looks like it's just an iStock referral site that pushes you to iStock and give you a coupon code for a little discount, perhaps. Not a big deal - certainly not what it was.