Quote from: Stockbo on January 19, 2014, 21:14

Hey everyone! We have been caught up with the developers which has been a bit of a bottle neck which is why we were a bit quite. Thanks ruewi we are excited too!

Rinderart great to have you on board! Your art-work is incredible, it wasn't traditionally what we were going for initially but we decided to bring it forward and take that sort of work now. And thanks for your support, privileged to have someone of your experience on board.

Those changes to the terms and conditions discussed earlier are now live.

We also have to sincerely apologise regarding the email. All others we have done so far have always been protected. It's been a long, late weekend working on some last few things and I guess we just got sloppy.  Not an excuse but it definitely was not intentional and we will take extra care to make sure it never happens again. Please don't spam anyone .

Regarding the IPTC, everything now gets read except for the description. Our developers hit a bit of a roadblock with that and it's probably going to involve a lot of code revamping in the uploading. We will get it fixed but decided to go live as is because an important aspect (the title) is being read. Delaying any longer is not viable and will lose us some opportunities in the market.

Its been a long road with ups and downs but its great to have your support!

Ranjeev

I just tried a couple uploads and none o f the IPTC is being read.

If you want categories make them smart categories based on key words instead like Stocksy.

Quote from: Stockbo on December 30, 2013, 21:17

...
Also was great to meet up with Rob yesterday! If anyone else is in Perth and would like to meet up over a coffee let us know.
Happy New Year everyone
Ranjeev

Ha! for a moment I thought you meant the Fair City of Perth, rather than Perth, Oz. 

If you're taking some portion of the fees out of the payments to contributors then you have to stop saying you're paying 50% royalties because you aren't.

The costs of operating the site sit with the site owner, just as the costs of producing the images sit with the contributor. Contributors should not have to pay site owners costs out of contributor earnings."

I was going to create an account today and got to the part where I had to check the box that I agreed with the terms and conditions. Thought I should have a read

I found a couple of things that didn't seem right to me.

There were some odd wordings that puzzled me (such as if I failed to renew my registration my account would be disabled - what renewal term applies here?) but one big one jumped out that it appears Stockbo takes all merchant/PayPal fees out of the contributor's earnings. It's possible that this means that the fees are split 50/50 - I've read this a couple of times and it's not clear to me

"...the registered User ...will receive the amount of the payment less the commission and administrative charge (including credit card, PayPal and merchant fees) by Stockbo at 50% of the payment."

First, this needs to be much clearer so we know that contributors are paying 50% of the actual fees, 100% of the actual fees or either of those percentages of some "administrative charge" that is determined by Stockbo and which could include anything they want it to.

A little later on in this clause it says "Stockbo reserves the right to vary its commission and administrative charge depending on any changes in the rates imposed by PayPal or any of its third party merchant facilities on the transactions. Stockbo will notify the registered Users who have uploaded Stock Content in writing of any changes to the commission and administrative charges."

If you're taking some portion of the fees out of the payments to contributors then you have to stop saying you're paying 50% royalties because you aren't.

There's a reason that big name stars want a percentage of the gross takings from a movie, and that's because there are endless games that get played if they get a percentage of net profits - typically that profits are creatively accounted to zero.

The costs of operating the site sit with the site owner, just as the costs of producing the images sit with the contributor. Contributors should not have to pay site owners costs out of contributor earnings.

Moving on in the payments section, there's more language that raises questions (emphasis added by me):

" The balance after the deductions under clause 7.3 are made due to the relevant registered User will accrue weekly. A summary of the accrued payments will be generated and the payments will be credited to the relevant registered User�s PayPal account fortnightly on a Monday GMT+8."

This sounds as if you don't have a minimum payout threshold and that contributors have no choice about when to receive payments from you. I think that's a mistake. For various reasons, contributors may want to take their earnings more or less frequently. You don't say anything about how the timing of this weekly accrual matches with the timing of the payment schedule, but I would hope they'd match up.

Does this schedule mean that contributors will not be able to see what they've sold in real time (ideal) or daily (reasonable)?

My notion of an ideal agency is one where:

(a) you can choose to be paid automatically when the balance hits a certain amount, or at the end of the month (assuming you're over the threshold)
(b) the agency pays via masspay so the contributor doesn't get stuck with a PayPal fee to receive their earnings
(c) the threshold is low while the agency finds its feet with sales volume

None of this says anything about what sort of sales records will be available to contributors to be able to track sales and payments - I think it's worth spelling out.

The next clause is some sort of "not my fault" verbiage:

"There may be some delay in payment due to Stockbo�s payment systems. In such an event, the relevant registered User must contact Stockbo and Stockbo will take all reasonable steps to provide an estimated date of payment."

So if you're late, we're obliged to let you know that? Shouldn't it be other way around?

Section 10.1 (d) talks about contributors granting you rights to use the images in marketing for Stockbo but doesn't talk about whether that's watermarked previews or full size images, and for free or with compensation.  Given the modest cost to you, I think full size image uses should be licensed by you, even if it's for marketing

Regarding changes in the terms and conditions, there's wording about changing things whenever and they're effective immediately. Then there's this clause:

"  It is your sole responsibility to periodically check these Terms for any changes. If you do not agree with any of the changes to these Terms, it is your sole responsibility to unsubscribe from the Site and Services. Your continued use of the Site and Services will be deemed as your acceptance thereof."

I think the very least you can do - and I do mean the very least - is e-mail contributors about changes. It would also be decent and reasonable to provide some sort of notice period - alamy's is 45 days, Getty/iStock is 30.

There is no language at all (unless I missed something) about distributor deals and compensation for those. What I'd like to see is that the agreement doesn't permit you to make them and that if you were to make a change to include them there would have to be some sort of notice period. For the most part, distributor deals are not good for contributors and many of us would want to opt out - where removing our portfolios is the last resort for opting out.

I don't see any language in the agreement that says the contributor is entitled to delete their entire portfolio at any time - I know you said it in the thread here somewhere - and rules about payments to contributors who close their accounts.

I realize all of the above is moot until the agency becomes viable, but it reads like something lawyers wrote with primary focus being protecting the site owners and virtually no consideration being given to protecting the other party to this deal.

I am waiting for a reply for about six weeks now.

The account for the site is disabled (http://stockbo.com/).

And the mobile phone is not available at the moment...

Looks like Stockbo is finished before it even started. I might go around the next days and check, if the office is still there (I am living just 10kms away). Let you know.