Galastock - your contact details say you are owned by Fotki SAI.  Are you owned/associated with ww.fotki.com.  If not, why have you using the same name as a large US company which also runs a photo website (photosharing rather than microstock).

I honestly don't think we should trust your definition of "theft."  The reason I never joined your site is that parts of your user agreement were lifted verbatim from CanStock.  Whenever you plagiarize another person's work, as your site did with that user agreement, it is theft.

You have no credibility with me.

Quote from: GalaStock on September 29, 2006, 09:48

This his action � posting stolen images on Fotolia � of course is theft! But as result of this awful situation � we revise our staff, we have fired this stupid whipper-snapper who do not understand what is internet, what is serious business there!
We apologise  to all victims of it! And I would like to assure you that such awful situation is not possible for us in future!

I think this is the clincher for me... and makes me not want to upload to galastock.  Rather ironic as well.
The site which had a  problem with one of it's employees stealing images, has itself stolen a contract from another stock site..  Both actions seem sort of similar.

What bothers me isn't so much that it happened, but the response to what happened.

Tyler, your concern that we treat the Galastock site fairly--and your general ethical stance (obvious from how you post to the site) do you credit.  You and the others here are the reason I've stayed, while largely abandoning other sites.  I prize honesty and ethics above all else.

BUT while I agree that the site could be a victim, I remain concerned and suggest that everyone separate themselves from Galastock.  If the employee could steal the photos, why couldn't another employee steal more sensitive information?  And, given the site's track record with stolen photographer agreements, there's no reason to trust anyone there.

I agree with others--no more startups for me.  Only established sites.  The fewer sites I have to track, the easier and more fruitful this job will be.  And, I will be less worried about theft of my hard work.

giving galastock the benefit of the doubt, i think any site could be victim of the same situation.  An employee seeing a basket full of images, and deciding to take a few and try to make a few bucks.  I don't think that alone makes them fraudulent.  However it doesn't encourage me to upload images either.

Just tried the link to Deniss Kolesnikovs' page on Fotolia--turns up empty. Guess Fotolia France finally removed the images. Good riddance.

P__

The more I think about this situation, I believe we have all been witness to a remarkable event. Together, as a community, we have managed to expose a thief and a suspect microstock site. It is a tribute to the Internet, Tyler (leaf) as host of this forum, and all the contributers to the link that we have been able to do this. Good detective work by searching the net and ferreting out the culprit have accomplished a valuable result. It may be a link that should be preserved for historical reference. Kuddos to us all.

JMHO.

Pat

More thought, and I may be wading in deep **** here, but maybe taking this thread to the broadcast media might result in the culprit and GalaStock becoming accountable in a legal and/or monetary form. Could save a lot of individual lawsuits for those inclined to take it that far. I just think it's a totally newsworthy event that we have participated in--or, am I living in fantasy land?

P__

Probably fantasy land... 

I'm not sure of the laws in Latvia, but I doubt that an international lawsuit would come about from all of this.  Who would have the money to hire a lawyer for something like this?  How much would be gained from the lawsuit (probably nothing)?  How does Latvia treat copyright law?

On top of all of that, the photos were submitted to a French site.  So in which country does the case reside?

Fotolia's reputation was put at risk because of this Galastock employee (I suppose that he was an employee since GS admin said that this thief was fired).  It seems that Fotolia's headquarters are in New York.  I did a search, here is the link:

http://www.fotolia.com/info/privacy_policy.php
Fotolia LLC
41 East 11th St
11th Floor
New York, NY 10003

I wish and I hope that Fotolia will pursue this thoroughly via a legal avenue, and ask for some compensation, not only for their site, but for the photographers whose pictures were stolen - no compensation for me BTW...by the way 

Note to Leaf:  the 'image theft' in the fotolia category may be misleading.  I am relieved that you took out GS from the stock links.

TYVVM Tyler  
http://www.acronymfinder.com/

A couple of observations.

I don't think off-shore gambling, money laundering, and internet crime migrated to Latvia due to the stellar legal system there. I'd say legal repurcussions, voluntary or otherwise is not happening.

Also, the original Fotolia link went to the French site, but all their sites are mirrored. If you entered the ID on the US or UK site, you'd get the same site in English. I don't think we know where he originally uploaded. I link to the UK site because that was the first one I found, but I could go to the US site and log in and get the same info and views. So I don't think we know where he originally uploaded

Quote from: pelmof on September 29, 2006, 15:45

The more I think about this situation, I believe we have all been witness to a remarkable event. Together, as a community, we have managed to expose a thief and a suspect microstock site. It is a tribute to the Internet, Tyler (leaf) as host of this forum, and all the contributers to the link that we have been able to do this. Good detective work by searching the net and ferreting out the culprit have accomplished a valuable result. It may be a link that should be preserved for historical reference. Kuddos to us all.

JMHO.

Pat

Kuddos to ALL of us??? Let's see what happened really:

1. Somebody, Deniss Whoteverhisname, was hired as a image reviewer.
2. He, as most reviewers have to do, depending on the system, had to download the pics on his computer to see them at 100%
3. And decided to keep them and resubmit them, under his name, to another site.
4. And now we blame the site he was working for, even if we have no proof that the management of this site was involved...

Justice, I don't know...
SY

PD It was NOT the first time, I know of at least two previous times more... It didn't end up in a witch hunt like this time because, perhaps, the sites involved were all "established" and none of them a newcomer...

Wether he was a reviewer or was employed in some other manner we don't know, but that isn't really relevant.

I don't think many people are considering Galastock as the criminal here.  I think what Pelmof was saying however is that galastock has done some things in the past that make a person 'question' their motives.  Since they are new, they don't have much as far as reputation to back them up to start with.  The few things that make ME question galastock are

- when they started their site out, they lifted canstock's user agreement and used it as their own (even forgetting to  take out the name 'canstock' in the wording
- their site looks fairly simple and template-ish
- they are new
- their employee was untrustworthy.

I agree it is not enough to conclude anything definate about the site itself, but it is enough to conclude that I don't want to upload there.  there are so many microstock sites to submit to, I don't need many reasons to choose one away.