"Dublin Castle" and "Port of Dublin" are in fact both sub-categories of "Dublin - Ireland (County Dublin)" - along with quite a few other places - if you enter "Dublin" when uploading, you'll get the three options of Ireland, California and Texas - click on the "+" beside Ireland and you'll get the others.

Indeed they are, but they are separate when searching.

I'd hate to find I'm being forced to put stuff where I don't want it. 

That's what I took it as meaning. :-(

Oh, you beat me by six minutes!
For us, however, the interesting,exciting/or scary bit is probably the as-ever ambiguous:
"Jonathan Klein wisely told us some time ago that as we hit the 5 million images mark, there would be many great images that simply would not be seen--and it's especially true as we near 10 million. We're looking at ways to resurface those images to get them selling again--even if it means moving them between sites. I'll be looking for your support as we roll out these exciting new options."

Official reply from James West:

I'd like to clarify some facts behind a couple of reports that are out there that have caused some to comment on our (and other) forums. Someone has posted an email from one of our sales agents to a customer.

Here's the bit of the email that is causing all the trouble:

"Regarding photo rates we're working on a new package called the Alamy Premium Account, the benefits are:

* $49 (US) per image
* Unlimited repeat below the line use over 10 years, worldwide*
* Un-watermarked "try before you buy" downloads
* No print run/impression limitations
* Unrestricted file size (typically 50MB)
* 22 million images available on www.alamy.com/bespoke and growing
* No credits, subscriptions or volume commitments
* Unlimited shared access to your library of purchases
* No differentiation between Royalty-free and Rights Managed images

*definition of below the line: direct mail and collateral, email and PDF, corporate websites and intranet, presentations, public relations, event programmes, sales giveaways, annual reports, office d�cor, company handbooks, training docs."

There have been some misinformed comments about this as unfortunately a number of people published it before checking with us first - and this has not been helped by someone using my name making comments that I would never have made.

This particular deal says use it for anything you like, within your industry, as often as you like, for ten years, but not for advertising (because you have to pay more for that).

This is just one example of a number of deals we are testing the market with. Some deals are priced at $49, some at $99, some at $199, some in the high thousands.

We have control over every aspect of each offer. Unwatermarked 'try before you buy' downloads, for example, are only available for customers we can trust with such a feature. We hand pick the customers who have this feature enabled and we keep a close eye on their download activity.

"No differentiation between Royalty-free and Rights Managed images" - this is salespersonspeak for the same terms apply to all the images on Alamy, regardless of their normal license designation. A Royalty Free image bought under this scheme is only useable for the terms set out in the deal.

These deals narrow the usage rights available under a traditional RF license in exchange for simplifying the purchasing experience for the customer. It is not, contrary to some reports out there, rebadging RM as RF. These are Rights Managed licenses, no different from any other kind of broad license we've been selling for years to educational publishers, to name just one example, to cover multiple editions, languages, etc.

The price on offer in each case depends on our analysis of the following:

� The scope and range of usages the customer requires
� The likelihood of those usages being used to maximum capacity
� The impact of microstock in the sector the customer belongs to

In practically all cases, unless the entry-level price is already high enough, we are withholding high value advertising rights from these deals. These are usually negotiated separately or built into a high all-encompassing price.

We have found examples of large consumers of photography who are limiting themselves to mircrostock sites because a. they can't deal with the headache of policing the usage of Rights Managed images across a large distributed marketing teams and b. they are buying such large volumes of imagery (thanks to the explosion of digital platforms) that even conventionally priced royalty free imagery is deemed too expensive.

Our trials have shown that we can cannibalise microstock market share at a much higher price point. Too good to be true? It gets better - some of these customers have been upgrading their premium account purchases for expensive advertising usages.

To put the significance of this trial in perspective - we are working on dozens of news ideas at the moment but only one of them, Premium Accounts, is about pricing. Everything else we're working on is about making searching on Alamy better and faster for picture buyers. Premium Accounts make up less than 1% of our revenues.

There is no opt in/opt out available for this. You can, of course, opt out of Alamy whenever you like. We provide the marketplace and set the ground rules, but it is entirely your decision as to whether you want to participate or not.

I want to sell as many of your pictures as possible for the highest price possible. By giving us your pictures you are entrusting us to make a judgement over what price the market will bear. We have been licensing content for 10 years. We are really good at it. If you are unhappy with what we are doing and you don't like our explanation, I completely respect your judgement if you decide your pictures will do better someplace else.

For an independent view of this issue you might also want to check out the article here. Here's an extract from the author and stock industry veteran, Jim Pickerell:

'RM pricing is not a way to protect the value of images. All RM means is that the price is negotiable. It doesn�t necessarily mean that the seller will receive a high price for his work. When you have a negotiable price it can be set at any level on which a willing seller and a willing buyer agree. The buyer sets the price if there is no price so low that the seller will walk away. However, if the seller takes a stand, walks away, and the majority of buyers are unwilling to pay the seller�s price the seller may be quickly driven out of business.' (You'll need to pay a small fee to read the whole article but good content, as we all know, is worth paying for.)

Best wishes
James West

So definitely a wide-ranging RM licence, not RF. Glad he explained 'below the line', a term I hadn't heard.

In other words, does best match make certain images disappear for a certain period of time?
I don't think it targets anyone in particular, if it is true. It may cause some seasonal images unsellable in that season, or a bad day during a high volumn weekday. Possible?

I'd surely hope it isn't deliberate. A few months back, I happened to notice that none of my six or so pics with a certain keyword weren't seen in a search on that keyword, which was in the CV. I SMd Kelvin after a couple of weeks, and he, Ducksandwich and Keywords checked it out and couldn't work out what was going wrong. They passed it on to the techie guys and after some time, I noticed they were in the search again. It wasn't so much these files, which are low demand, which worried me, but the thought that that could be happening on and off all the time, and we wouldn't know about it unless we 'happened' to look. (Sometimes I check to see if low-selling files are just low demand, or to see what more popular pics people have in that search. In that case, it was just 'low demand'.)
I'm pretty sure it's a bug rather than a policy. It wouldn't be serving anyone, especially the buyers, to rotate pics out. But what do I know?

Quote from: ShadySue on August 03, 2011, 07:11

LOL, that must be the first time anyone's ever said that, even with a winky.

Apparently, Lobo doesn't like the truth being delivered in one-liners.

Last warning: At the time of the Tokyolypse, someone asked who paid for the 'lypse. That was the one where participants didn't have to pay for tickets, so I answered, "Participants pay for their own flights and accommodation/food, we pay for the rest", which was deleted. Truth hurts.
Final straw: Someone asked how you could do something (forget what) which you 'used to could' do on the site. I replied that you couldn't, it was one of the 'improvements' of F5.
Now actually that turned out not to be strictly 'true', as apparently Sean had written a script to enable that functionality, but it wasn't exactly 'untrue', as it had been stopped with the F5 change, and you couldn't do it natively inside the site.

Wow that's a bit harsh.  I've seen far worse things written without any ban!!

Apparently, it wasn't what I said, but the fact that I said them in such a 'short' manner. H*ck, usually people would have the right to complain that I rabbit on too much, so I thought that hilariously ironic.
He'd had me on his radar since years earlier when there was some sort of thread about Kew Gardens and he made some categorial statement that all photos taken in Kew Gardens would be removed. At that time there were many photos with iconic Kew Gardens buildings, many with the keyword 'Kew Gardens' in the collection. However, I did wonder how someone would know that a particular tree or plant had been taken in Kew Gardens in order to remove it and posted my 'wonder'. Lobo somehow decided I was trolling and reiterated that 'all' photos taken in Kew Gardens would be removed. True, the 'obvious' ones which were actually keyworded 'Kew Gardens' were removed about 15 months or so later.
As of now, there are 91 photos keyworded "Kew Gardens", only one of them editorial. So, who was telling the truth back then?

Quote from: Cogent Marketing on August 02, 2011, 15:47

It now appears 'someone' has decided to deactivate existing (and high selling) files of playing cards, poker cards etc due to copyright issues on the design on the King, Queen, Jack etc and also the fonts used for Ace, 2,3,4, etc. Once again a new policy that hits contributors hard with no 'real' explanation of why files are being deactivated. I am truly amazed that anyone is staying with these bunch of clowns. I'm not affected fortunately, although believe it or not, I did as shoot only this afternoon for a client with a stack of cards based on the Queen Of Hearts theme but as it was a commissioned project I would not be uploading them to iSP anyhow. Is there any limit that iSP won't go to to totally pi** o** their contributors?

I don't think IS is doing this to totally piss off their contributors, I would guess they feel the risk of litigation is not worth it.

And to play devil's advocate, the info is in the technical wiki and there have been threads about it.
That said, what is and isn't allowed is a mystery to me. I had some pics, which had sold a few in early days, which is unusual for me, deactivated. This year, I uploaded them as editorial, and half were refused for my usual - lighting. But as I was uploading them, I noticed at least two of the same thing in the main collection, uploaded after mine. It's all to do with inspector judgement, and I certainly wouldn't like the job.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 03, 2011, 05:58

Quote from: lagereek on August 03, 2011, 04:39

Quote from: ShadySue on August 03, 2011, 04:29

...at night, and I'm banned, ...

You are banned?!  heck I didnt know that.

Since November. Where have you been?

HI!

What on earth did you do?  I mean you seem to be a very pleasant person

LOL, that must be the first time anyone's ever said that, even with a winky.

Apparently, Lobo doesn't like the truth being delivered in one-liners.

Last warning: At the time of the Tokyolypse, someone asked who paid for the 'lypse. That was the one where participants didn't have to pay for tickets, so I answered, "Participants pay for their own flights and accommodation/food, we pay for the rest", which was deleted. Truth hurts.
Final straw: Someone asked how you could do something (forget what) which you 'used to could' do on the site. I replied that you couldn't, it was one of the 'improvements' of F5.
Now actually that turned out not to be strictly 'true', as apparently Sean had written a script to enable that functionality, but it wasn't exactly 'untrue', as it had been stopped with the F5 change, and you couldn't do it natively inside the site.

On Monday night I happened to think that an old slow-but-steady image hadn't sold for a while, so I wondered what supadupa photo had usurped it. So I did a search on the main keyword (the very specific location). There are two DAs, and my file is correctly keyworded with both DAs. So I chose one, and the search threw up: 0 results. Hmmm, I have a few for that search and I know of several others. So I tried the other DA: 0 results. Logged out and tried both DAs when logged out - 0 results. Fired up IE and tried again, logged out then logged in, each DA in turn: 0 results. Other random searches were throwing up the selection you would expect.
As it was late at night, and I'm banned, I wrote it on my to-do list for yesterday, and as usual didn't consult my to-do list until bedtime (!). Checked again and my file, and all the others, are showing up. I don't think there's a usurper, mine is still top by downloads, but low-ish by best match.
I wonder how often files just 'disappear', and for how long. As that is a specific location search, a buyer would obviously start looking elsewhere - there is no substitute.

Any iStock exclusive who also sells RM at Alamy might be interested in a recent development at Alamy which might compromise your position. I feel it's more an Alamy issue, so posted the details there rather than here.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/alamy-premium-rm-as-rf/msg212264/?topicseen#new
and humbly suggest discussion, if any, should be there to keep just one thread.
Added: I now see that the proposed new license is not RF, but a very wide RM license - use within the purchasing company, 10 year time limit, no advertising. So that shouldn't impact on IS exclusivity.

You've gotta keep your sense of humour - congrats.
This 'inconsistency' has been going on for far longer than microl.

I would say if you don't need the income so much go to Alamy.

I laughed out loud at that one, but it was a rueful laugh.