From what I was reading, if you supply an EIN instead of at ITIN, you will need to do a US tax return every year for the IRS (Due not later than April 15th). 

Only if your business is in the US.

If your business is outside of the US you do not have to supply them with any annual tax return because your accounts are nothing to do with the US, that's the whole point of completing a W-8BEN

Before calling I recommend doing the form ss4 at irs.gov     Otherwise you might have problem understanding some of the questions asked.  It�s simple stuff when you are prepared.  I waited 30 min for a stressed up guy that told me I needed to do this before calling.      Not all will have the luck of Anyka, who got the nice lady. 

Actually I think you may have got the 'jobs worth', when I got my EIN number it was the exact same experience as Leaf and Anyka, a quick phonecall, a few questions about my business and then my number was issued. Of course you need to have a business and give the right answers to the questions.

Go to the Support page and the link for the payout schedule is under the 'Payment request' option.

No thread about this at FT forum yet? 

Strange they're normally so open to discussions like this.

Does anyone know why IS disambiguations are not in alphabetical order?

They are in alphabetical order, you've just made the same common assumption that many others have.

A while ago iS took the alphabet as it is known to buyers & contributors the world over and they rearranged it to form their own unique alphabet, similar to what they did with the CV. 

To the OP - You've forgotten to add your iStock link 

Whatever your opinion is about the iStock deal, take my advice in that you should not rely on your photos you have on StockXpert now being featured on Photos.com/JUI in the not so distant future.

I think if we spoke off the record with some people in the microstocks, many would agree with RT and say "of course we always want new images of better quality than what we have."  But those would be the creative types, and their bean counters would be playing a different tune.

Actually I think it would be the other way round, you see the 'creative types' are only interested in the aesthetic quality of the image, whereas the 'bean counters' are the one's that realise as great as the image is it was taken four years ago on a 4mp camera and can only be sold at a small size, so somebody submitting an equally good image today which was taken on a 20mp+ camera gives the bean counters the opportunity to sell it at S-XXL and thus create more revenue for them, and this will continue because the camera manufacturers will keep making them bigger and bigger.

So you see no matter how you view it the microstock sites will always have to accept new images, because if they don't they lose their appeal to the competition, they just don't have to accept the rubbish they used to.

Makes my studio look like a shed.

Well I'll make this my last post on this matter because I don't think you get the whole point of property rights, and you're clearly against the whole thing. But I just want to point out that not having images that feature "weird stuff as trademarks" is nothing new and it certainly isn't a microstock thing, it's been like that since the dawn of stock, you've never been allowed to sell images Royalty free for commercial use featuring anything that is covered by property rights whether it be on a micro, mid or macro stock agency.

Quote from: RT on May 14, 2009, 03:40

Interesting site, what is funny is that the manufacturer made a wireless device that needs to have a power cord attached.

The manufacturer didn't had photo camera in mind They designed it for use with less portable devices such as printers or external hard drives...

Even so they've made a wireless device that needs to have a wire attached to make it work, that's the part I thought was funny. It's a bit like having a handsfree device that you have to hold 

That's something Alamy has recently added, why do you think they did that? Basically it covers them from both sides, look at the upload page, what's the second box you tick. One other thing you might be interested to know is that although Alamy have added that statement it's not on the majority of the distributor sites they use.

Royalty Free license is to do with royalties but also has no restrictions regarding how the image is used in terms of industry, a Rights Managed license on the other hand does and that's the way to go for things like this.

As for a photographer or reviewer not knowing about every trademarked subject, you're part right - a reviewer can't and thats why we as contributors tick the box to say it hasn't and thats the line of defence any site would use I'd imagine, but it is our job as photographers to take reasonable steps to find out about the content in the images we sell. You can argue till the cows come home about it being the buyers responsibility but look at it from a logical point of view, who is in the best position to know or research about what is in the image - the photographer who took the shot or the buyer?

Trademark and other right infringements happen every day and I'd wager a guess than for 99.9% of them nothing happens even when the person with the right is aware of it, it's their choice, would a well known car manufacturer invoke their rights say if they saw one of their cars featured in an ad for car polish with a slogan like 'Only to be used on the best cars in the world' probably not I'd say, but if it was used in an ad for a breakdown recovery firm with the slogan 'we'll come out each and every time you break down' I'd have thought the lawyers would be on the case. It is a 'right' and they can choose how and when they use it.

Imagine this, you're in court and the judge asks the buyer "what steps did you take to establish whether the image had any trademarks" and the buyer replies "the person who took the photo stated that there were none, and here's my proof that he did so" and they produce the contributor upload terms with the part highlighted where you've said there are no trademark subjects within the image.