Quote from: sjlocke on November 03, 2010, 14:23

Sorry, I meant the lowest price they can buy them _automated_ is $.95.  Apparently, they can work out deals.

I think a lot of people are seeing the results of a lot of worked out deals.

Yup, especially with ELs. Isn't that weird?
IF the 'exclusive content' was such a great 'pull' you'd think they wouldn't have to cut such deals.

Quote from: ShadySue on November 03, 2010, 11:00

Quote from: whatalife on November 03, 2010, 09:16

Aren't we supposed to get paid for the download in addition to the EL?

I'm pretty sure we don't. It's just the EL, which is a 'download with special uses'.

You do, otherwise we wouldn't see all these Legal Guarantee EL questions like "I just got $3.50 for an EL, what's up?".  They got paid for the regular size DL in addition to the EL, so it works that way on the rest too.  Or it should.

That confusion is because the download fee shows up as an orange EL bar in your stats, which it clearly shouldn't.

if istock is not doing an honest business, isn't it breaking law? can we sue them? 

You'd have to prove beyond doubt it was deliberate and not 'genuine error'. (IF)

Quote from: azurelaroux on November 03, 2010, 08:54

Not that promises mean much to IS but the last time credit prices were discussed we were promised that no matter what credits were sold for, the calculation minimum was 95 cents. So even in the buyer paid 70 cents, independents would still get 20% of 95 cents. This was said to soothe concerns about the minimum per credit package pricing dropping below a dollar, and contributors wondering about sales on credit packages and such.

I'm not sure this was ever said, except for the subs credits (disregarding that quoted post from Kelly from 2008).  PAYG can be anything, with the sales discounts, although the lowest they can buy them for in bulk is $.95.

In the EL thread in the Help forum (locked) this was said:

"I just got off the phone with istock and I'm even more confused/frustrated now.
Apparently what happened with our (at least my) really small EL download royalties is that they were purchased from a buyer who bought credits in huge bulk to the tune of 70�/credit. I wasn't aware that you were able to get credits that cheap as on the "Buy Stock" page it says credits as low as 95�/credit. I was told that this is a standard practice with huge corporate buyers. It's a little frustrating that we have been mislead about this. I also did not realize that subscription credits go as low as 24�/credit. Did Kelly make mistake when he wrote "we are adjusting the minimum value of the subscription credit from $0.95 to $0.65"? Did he mean to say "pay-as-you-go credits"? In which case it is already almost that low."

if one can't get sale on big agencies, i don't see a reason one can get sale on small agencies.

Unless they're specialists, but of course that wouldn't be micro.
FWIW, until the end of August I'd have said go straight for iStock then, if you've got time, look around if you want to try others.
But now all bets are off on the iStock front.

Oh yes, and every other country and its people are perfect.

Not at all. My imperfection would have been reading that Greene stuff and laughing, assuming it was meant to be funny.

its changed now, you keep the copyright, although they can still do anything they wish with it, forever and you cant say no (Just like many other competitions).

interesting that it also applies to "entrant's name, member name, address, image, voice, likeness, statements, biographical material and entry in any and all media now known or hereafter developed throughout the world for any purpose, without limitation, and without additional review, compensation, notice to, permission or approval from the entrant or any other party, unless prohibited by law.

not likely to happen but just for intellectual debate does this mea.  they can use any pics of you, your voice? and likeness, financial info etc,  forever? "here's a pic of him when he was five..." . If the winner became a famous actor etc they could keep using images of them to promote getty

Yup. Exactly the things that we always advise people not to accept on competitions from elsewhere. My poor Dad is always giving me cuttings of competitions he'd love me to enter, and I have to try to explain why I wouldn't accept these conditions.

It was just posted that the clause should not have been in the contest rules and they are now fixing that.

Same old, same old.  
Maybe they keep hoping no-one will notice.
Wonder what they're getting away with that no-one has noticed (yet).

No, I'm sure it isn't intentional (again).  These kinds of rules can easily be written so that granted future usage is contained to things to do with the contest - promotional releases, etc.  No need for a wide sweeping rights grab type statement.

It's not that different to the Promotional Use Clause:
http://www.istockphoto.com/popup_promotional_optout.php

"The iStockphoto Artist Supply Agreements (both exclusive and non-exclusive) allow us to use any Content uploaded to our site for our own marketing and promotional purposes and marketing and promotional purposes of our distribution partners without compensation to you. We use your images, video, flash and illustrations to promote the site, bring in traffic, drive people to portfolios, and ultimately sell more images. Examples of this promotional use include Content for:

   1. magazine and on-line advertising for iStockphoto and distribution partners.
   2. promotional post-cards and brochures for iStockphoto and distribution partners.
   3. co-marketing arrangements where we supply limited free Content to a strategic partner in exchange for our partner directing traffic to our site and/or promoting iStock and distribution partners on their site.
   4. tutorial books with accompanying CDs or on-line materials for software such as Photoshop. In these cases, low-res images, videos or illustrations would be available on the CD or for download on the author's or publisher's website. You would get credit something like: "Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, John Smith, Image #99999."
   5. free download for use in the steel cage.

We will only use your images for promotional purposes when we think it will benefit us and you. We do everything we can to get your images, video and illustrations in front of the most potential buyers.

Sometimes people have their own reasons for not wanting their Content used. While we would love to be able to use the entire iStock collection for promotion, we will allow members to opt-out from marketing consideration. Please be aware that this is an all or nothing, blanket opt-out. If you opt-out we will not use your images, videos, flash or illustrations for any promotional purposes, internally or externally. The decision is up to you, and we want you to feel secure."

I can't remember for sure, but I suspect by the wording above that this is an opt-out scenario, i.e. the default is that you are opted in. I opted out when they reneged on my contracted terms of %age increase by canister, back in September.
Might be worthwhile everyone checking that they're opted out (if you want to be opted out, that is)
My Account > Preferences > my Uploads.

That Walmart story is dreadful...

It is, but it it really news to people? This has been happening in the UK for many years, and has been well aired in the media here, even in a broadcast I showed my classes in high school. (It was about battery farmed poultry. The exact quote was, "The supermarket goes to the supplier and says, 'the selling price will be xpence per pound' and it's up to them to keep their costs within this, no matter what it takes."
It's also well known that many small farmers, orchard keepers etc can't survive by supplying the supermarkets, hence the growth of Farmers Markets.

This came up in relation to that EL fiasco, but it's worth a new thread.
In that EL fiasco thread¹, a contributer got this in a reply from Contributer Support:

"Apparently what happened with our (at least my) really small EL download royalties is that they were purchased from a buyer who bought credits in huge bulk to the tune of 70�/credit. I wasn't aware that you were able to get credits that cheap as on the "Buy Stock" page it says credits as low as 95�/credit. I was told that this is a standard practice with huge corporate buyers. It's a little frustrating that we have been mislead about this. I also did not realize that subscription credits go as low as 24�/credit. Did Kelly make mistake when he wrote "we are adjusting the minimum value of the subscription credit from $0.95 to $0.65"? Did he mean to say "pay-as-you-go credits"? In which case it is already almost that low."
Clearly, that would mean that an XS image bought by one of these Huge Buyers would net a non-exclusive as much as 14c, and even a (Black) Diamond would earn 28p.

Surely that is totally unsustainable for contributers and iStock. No wonder they keep it a 'dirty little secret'.

¹ Reference: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=269152&page=1, about half-way down page 2.

Istock exclusive.
October 2010 well down on October 2009, which was a huge drop down from 2008. Exactly 5/8 the $$$ I got in Oct 08.
Acceptances getting fewer and fewer _ I've gone from over 90% to below 50%.
Files accepted in the past two years are hardly moving. My sales are mostly from old images I wouldn't even dream of submitting now.
The theft of our EL money is the last straw.

Maybe the reason people are buying the Vettas and E+ files is that they appear higher up in the search, as we see best match is populated almost exclusively by Vetta and Agency these days? So people never see the cheaper priced images in the same series unless they really go looking for them. Dunno. As a really low budget buyer, though I look. Well, I used to look. I only have one credit left at iStock with no plans to buy more.

I've got a Vetta which has sold a few times, but is really low for its main keyword. I can't actually find it at the moment on that keyword, but at one point it was on the last page of a 2000+ image search. However, I did check out another of my Vettas and there are non-exclusive images with no sales ahead of it in a best match search. I found another Vetta with the same main keyword, which has sold >30 times, on the last page of that search.
Actually, I can't work out the current best match at all - except that new uploads drop like stones after about 24 hours (maybe even before that, but not much more after that first slump).
I don't believe all this stuff about buyers only looking at a page or two. On Alamy, I can see that buyers can easily search over 4000 files on the more popular search terms. I guess some Micro buyers might just buy the 'most popular', weird as that seems to me.
However, I do agree that the high prices being rammed to the front might scare off buyers, especially as so many of the brought-in Agency files in particular are 'very average'. (I'm glad I don't compete in the lifestyle sector.