There are a few (or mostly the same) who hide behind anonymity, and take their vengence out on other forum members, and thats counterproductive.
There can be other very important reasons to stay anonymous, which are not mentioned in the above poll. Think legal entities, financials and nations.

grafix
I have carefully read your post.
and will take action.

Sharpness is an illusion based on focus.

Means, there is more to sharpness than focus and DOF.
Your photos might be in fine focus, and with well placed dof, but they may lack contrast and clarity, or other things.

Therefore. It would be nice to see examples, instead of everybody sit here and agree on something on a hear say basis.

Ja, that was back in the days when all was new and things were shared. Now we sell things on the interent marketplace.

They are hoping to expand their profit from the low earners who stay, -because they are in financial trouble, or need more profit.

There is an important lesson to be learned, a lesson seen before but often overlooked or misunderstood.

The 50% people are not important, from the agencys view, because the agency can only expand the profit by means of rising sales.
When lowering commisions, they can get extra profit from their contributors.
Like earning on both buyers and sellers.
So they need not to expand their sales, or they cannot.
So the message is: falling sales and profits, the agency cannot expand their sales enough, so they begin to eat the hand that feeds them.
Seen before, at a much larger scale.
It also tells us that they feel large enough to play such a game, or maybe they are desperate enough?

So again we have a case where the agent, begins to parasite more and more and it gets annoying.
And for me, the annoy factor is important.
And Im the kind of guy that deletes instead of leave things up.
Mostly because, I wont have my port undermine me at other places and Im annoyed with the way agencies spread everything out to subcontractors by licencing collections and such.

Same old story.

Good thing, its easy to dump the site.

Thanks,

But that might be wrong. There is a market for those things. Warzones, fallen angels and not to mention gothic claire obscure art, of which the net is full.
Horror sells.
However, it is the reviewer who decides and the picture may have been lousy.
Once I had a picture of a dead (and shot to pieces) fox, rejected all over  the agencies, aestetics and such. SS took it, it didnt sell much though I thought it was a suitable for animal wellfare and the like.

I have bought a pump, so I can pump the water out of the old German bunker I have in my backyard.

It is a good thing that the water is not frozen.
And yes, true, I have a bunker in my backyard.

If I were just a bit more insane than I am, I would definately be a doomsday prepper. Its fun to collect all these guns and wolftraps and to dig holes, and armour up old schoolbusses and fill them up with raisins and maizeflour and then bury them underground.

Then it is fair use.

Very.
Laws are there to handle conflicts between interests.
Its not truth or untruth, its negotiations and balancing interests.

There are blogs out there that make money on for example critizising images, remember the 10 worst stock photos and the like, they would claim it to be fair use, because of critisism.
They are right, and its the same with news media. And at the same time, they are wrong, especially if their core product are the pictures themselves.

In the concrete case, we are missing some informations.
And I would guess that the OP sits there and calculates if he is a teacher who earns money or not.

Ne, but Vordingborg, Denmark.

Its actually fine that someone keeps photographing these general photos, so we nische photographers are left in peace.

They have listened.
We are being listened to.
I like that.