Unsplash is an image sharing website where photographers share high quality/res work and it is 100% royalty free. It seems, for all intents and purposes, like the 'race to the bottom' that is plaguing the stock photo industry has gotten Zack unhinged. Zack nails it and very briefly mentions iStock:

http://youtu.be/6M_OZWtpokc

There's already a thread on this but.... statements like "100% royalty free" when referring to free images on the Creative Commons licence do not help. It goes towards confusing inexperienced image buyers to think, "Royalty Free" means the images are free when they are most certainly not.

Agree the Royalty Free term is confusing to many. Would be great to get rid of it and change it for something more self explanatory.

DPreview isn't helping:

https://www.dpreview.com/videos/1694624230/zack-arias-on-unsplash-and-the-race-to-the-bottom

Even more important than the race to the bottom is the fact, as Zack mentions in his video, the total ignorance of (amateur) photographers about model releases and the possible legal problems arising from the commercial use of those not-model-released pictures.

Yes. I could see in the future (after some nasty legal cases) that companies will move away from crowd sourcing imagery from people who don't know/understand that releases are required for people and property. As Zack says, how free is that free image when later on your company is sued for �1m's. It'll only take a couple of high profile cases before CEO's order all marketing teams to avoid any unreleased imagery from non professional sources.

I didn't know such a terrible place existed. Work for free for exposure and all rights except to compile from unsplash are irrevocable and unrestricted. Who would upload for not even a promise of exposure, which is worthless in itself. Credits appreciated but not required.  Are people that desperate for attention that they will upload for free? What happened to the social media sites that offer the same?

If you think that's bad just google free food photos.