January has been a very bad month for me everywhere so far: microstock, video, POD.
Especially POD is a big disappointment this month. I was thinking of buying 5DMk3 but I think I will postpone it.

iStock you say...
I remember them.
Are these guys still in the business of selling images?
I've heard they do clown shows these days.

I expect that quite many artists will not want to cooperate with scammers.
Some people will deactivate their portfolios on Getty-owned sites.

How about setting up a website showcasing the work of artists and designers not cooperating with Getty? Getty-free network?

Here is what I have in mind:

1. The landing page would describe the current scam as the background for this initiative. The main argument why the buyers / designers should not buy from Getty is that their client may find the nice image for which they charged  him $150 in some stupid free collection. For some people this may be deadly.

2. Three kinds of members:

- Contributors not submitting to Getty sites

- Buyers / design agencies not buying from Getty sites

- Stock agencies not entering any distribution deals with Getty sites. Stock agencies would pay small fees to be listed which would cover the setup, domain and hosting costs for the maintainer.

3. Each member�s entry there would take the full width of the screen and be let�s say 150-200 pixels high. The contributor would shortly present their niche (lifestyle, travel, illustrations, etc.), thumbnails of 3-5 popular images with links to where they can be bought.  Also one featured image which on mouseover would display a higher resolution with a watermark saying: �This image is not available at Getty, iStock, Thinkstock etc. Buy from fair agencies instead�. There would be a link to the member�s website or their portfolio on recommended sites. The member would also list top 5 or top 10 keywords relevant to their portfolio.

4. The space alloted for designers' and agencies' entries would be similar to contributors.

5. The list should be filterable (by specialty, location, keywords, etc.) and searchable. The keywords should be clickable leading to a page displaying all members specializing in that keyword.

It might not impress Getty, but that would be one good place with a link to your business and with contact information.
Google might kill its page rank but they cannot ever kill the links leading to it. Until they notice it, their algorithm might actually place it higher in the search results for �Getty� than Getty Images  itself.
To some extent it could also connect buyers directly with sellers creating a real Getty-clean network. The website should earn for itself with fees from the agencies advertizing there who want to be perceived as fair.

What do you think about it? Anyone with skills and time wanting to set it up?

I do not think that they are trying to kill iStock. It is my considered opinion that they are only too stupid to run it.

Somebody wrote here that the annual turnover of Getty Images is or rather once was about $ 950 mln, including ca. 500 mln from iStock. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If these figures are correct and the macro business is really declining they cannot afford to destroy or weaken iStock. At least it would seem so.

An average dog has enough intelligence not to bite the hand that feeds.

I firmly believe that if they had replaced Getty's top management with a dog around 2009, they would be in a much better shape now and their turnover would be significantly higher than it is now. A dog could never have taken so many stupid decisions. As a matter of fact, a dog might not have taken too many decisions at all. I am convinced that if they had appointed a dachshund as CEO in 2009, iStock would still be the No. 1 microstock agency.

"Changes in the way we communicate" = we are *%!#-scared, we don't know what's going on, the way things are going, we will soon sink

OK, let�s face the facts: the game is pretty much over for ALL contributors at iStock. Even before the Getty scam, iStock sales had been nosediving.
If people continue to deactivate images (which seems a reasonable thing to do), buyers won�t be able to buy images that they have in their lightboxes, even more buyers will leave, there will be a stink, sales will continue to plunge and the trend will probably accelerate. iStock, once Getty�s jewel may crumble like a house of cards in mid-term or at least their position will be much worse than it is today.

I have never been exclusive and never intented to become one, but I must say that in 2008/09 I really liked iStock. When i started they had the most professional reviewers who sometimes took their time to write a note about what should be improved in an image, they were truly a community. Also the balance of power between Shutterstock and Istock was very healthy for the market and the contributors.

iStock�s identity and part of its success was that it WAS NOT Getty, that it was cool.
Obviously this has not been the case anymore for some time.
But even the iStock as we know it from 2008-11 is gone. It is no more, it�s ceased to be, it's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!

The main issues are:
-   Plunging sales
-   Significant risk that our portfolios suddenly become worthless due to a new scam
-   Getty has a serious problem with contributors making any money whatsover.
If you make 1 cent per year, they will hire a lawyer who is able to round it down to 0.

Normally a person proposing a new agency or a co-operative gets stoned here but I believe the latest scam is a game-changer.
I am not even going to propose any co-op, I am just going to write what I think is possible.

I believe an iStock replacement site founded by about 10 respected exclusives from the Top 50 would have significant chances for success. I don�t mean  a co-op or anything similar. I mean a commercial enterprise. The founders would invest their time and money so they should reap the rewards in the future. I suppose the top exclusives would have enough financial resources to survive at least some time without iStock earnings.

I believe around 10 respected exclusives would be able to achieve a snowball effect. Build a good site, offer 60-70 % for exclusives, 30-35% for non-exclusives and hundreds of contributors will follow.
Use your networks, build a community of buyers and sellers around the site, as it was on iStock before. Try to convince Rob Sylvan to moderate the forums, call rogermexico. iStock is dead, but the iStock community is not dead yet, it�s just bleeding itself to death. Time to move on and start again. You have enough talent and great content to succeed.

Why should exclusives should create an iStock replacement site? I�m afraid you don�t have a choice, at least if you  still want to make money in this business. Face the music. If you do nothing, soon you will be earning a very small fraction of what you earned before.

For me the reason is simple: there might be more scams already in the pipeline.
Feb 2nd gives them too much time. They should have reacted on Friday. Well, they reacted, but that was the wrong kind of reaction.

I am afraid Feb 2nd is quite late. They might have other, possibly even bigger scams in the pipeline, and might speed them up. I am continuing to deactivate.

There is no statement they could make that would impress me. They would have to compensate the scammed artists with $ 5.000-20.000 per image, which will not happen.

This is nothing else but a scam, contributors are made to believe something but in the end they lose their property which is grabbed by the other party.

As a sort of middle ground aggressive retaliation we could all remove 10 images a day til our portfolio's were depleted.  That might send iStock (and other agencies) a message. 

Yesterday I deactivated around 20 images. I will continue to do so because the risk is too high.
I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my complete portfolio is suddenly worthless.
I don't think they can be trusted anymore.

The earnings at iStock are shrinking fast anyway. The potential of future earnings doesn't outweigh the risk of losing everything.

Recently I was invited to contribute to the Getty-Flickr collection, they were interested to have more than 10% of the images in my photostream. I didn't sign the Getty contract yet, but now I know that they are fishing for idiots.

Instead of the media, I was thinking about something else.
I am not from the US, but a very significant number of contributors are and Getty is a major US corporation. The number of US contributors doing stock full-time or part-time must be quite a few thousands. AFAIK the current situation on the job market in the US is not rosy. Stock royalties must be an important source of supplemental income for thousands of American families in tough times. For some it is the sole income. This source of income can be very seriously endangered in mid-term.
Also, many other agencies are based in the US and this and similar deals create unfair competition.
The losses to the American economy may be significant.

How about asking a congressman to look into this?
I presume this would create a really big stink and there would be no legal costs for the contributors, right?

I think it would be good to investigate if there was some additional payment from Google for this deal, apart from the image royalties. Should this be the case, should it be shared among the affected contributors or not?

I think people are being very naive here. iStock are happy with their side of this deal, they have said so in the forums......

How old are you? 10? 15?
No company would ever say that they are not happy with a deal that they just made, especially in a public forum.  That's ridiculous, they would admit that they are a bunch of complete losers (which they probably are).
And WOW, you believe what iStock say in the forums 

OK, Shutterstock is the volume leader, but they play only in the lower end of the market.
There is much more money to be made in stock photography. If they want stay a leader in the long term, they must play in all segments of the market as Getty does. There are buyers with projects that require photos with a higher production value and they are ready to pay for this.
I don't understand why they don't start a macro agency or buy an existing one.
Shutterstock has a very large customer base and among these buyers certainly there are some who also have projects requiring photos that are not available all over the internet.

Shutterstock could have a separate macro site with a different brand name. The search results from the macro site could be displayed on the main Shutterstock site e.g in a sidebar. The subscriber should have the option to deactivate the macro sidebar, so there is no confusion like on iStock and no need for filters.

There are many disappointed Getty contributors, so now would be a good time to step in. I don't understand why they are so complacent or play with some strange sites like the tutorials site, when they probably have the resources to challenge Getty in all segments.

Also, they need a fine-art site to compete with (Getty-owned?) art.com and allposters.com.
There is much more money in photography than selling low-cost tomatoes and handshakes.