RT, I think you're incorrect.  It is the responsibility of the buyer, from what I've read.

Quote

All royalty free sites insist on this because if you sell the image as RF you are declaring under the license terms that the image can be used commercially, but this doesn't just apply to RF sites,

THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED �AS IS� WITHOUT REPESENTATION, WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. ISTOCKPHOTO DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE CONTENT WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS

... from the iStock license.  Nothing about copyrights or anything.

That's the site protecting itself, and all sites will have something similar, it would be impossible for any stock site to say that every image is totally free from any branding, copyright, trademark, patent etc no matter how thorough their review process for obvious reasons, the same applies to a potential buyer, I'll give you an example, say you submit an image of a model wearing a wedding dress you purchased on eBay that from the lamens point of view appears to be an odinary looking dress, a buyer in all good faith purchases that image to use for an advert that appears in a fashion magazine, then the dress designer spots the advert and takes legal action, who do you think will be the one who will ultimately be responsible, it will be you the photographer which is why iStock have this in their contributor agreement:


The Supplier acknowledges that iStockphoto prohibits any Content or any other material that infringes on any patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, right to privacy, right to publicity, or any other applicable law or proprietary right to be uploaded to the Site.

By uploading Content, you are warranting that you own all proprietary rights, including copyright, in and to the Content. In addition, to the extent that the Content contains images of people or persons, you represent and warrant that you have obtained a valid and binding model release from all required parties in substantially the same form as http://www.istockphoto.com/docs/modelrelease.pdf that will permit the uses for such Content contemplated in the Content License Agreement. You also warrant that where required by applicable law, you have also obtained a valid and binding release in substantially the same form as [property release] relating to any identifiable property contained in the Content that might sensibly lead to the identity of or be required by the owner of such property to permit the uses under the Content License Agreement.

The Supplier agrees that neither iStockphoto nor any of its directors, officers, employees, partners, affiliates or agents shall be liable for any damages, whether direct, indirect, consequential or incidental, arising out of the use of, or the inability to use any Content.


You'll notice on the artist supply agreement they've specifically mentioned our (meaning contributors) responsibility concerning property rights, whereas on the part you've quoted they've just stated they don't give any guarantees, no mention of any buyers responsibilities.

Also don't forget that microsites in particular are not aimed at professional picture buyers, so some buyers could use the 'any person' defence, contributors whether part time or full time would be expected to fully understand the legalities.

I have never understood why they let the certain people on those boards use it to troll for paying customers.  I can not even go to the critique forum any more it is painful to watch new comers being stalked

Very well put.

Workbook, Photographers Direct, and several others explicitly state that if you contribute to micros then they will not accept you as a contributor.

Neither of these are stock agencies.

The main traditional stock agencies Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, Alamy, Inmagine etc etc do not have policies like the one you're suggesting, and IMO if you're looking to sell RM work you will have much better success selling on these sites and not one's like Workbook or Photographers direct.

As for what others do, don't let it concern you what they do, there are some people that are very experienced in selling and understanding the stock industry and the different licensing price levels, what appears to you to be wrong may not actually be the case, now even though I personally don't mix RF and RM across different sites some do and they can within that license.

Back to your original post, it may interest you that my last RM license I sold via a macro was for $39, had the buyer bought an image license on a microstock site for the same usage terms it would have cost them in excess of $100, so you see macro (traditional) sites are not always more expensive, professional picture buyers are fully aware of the different licenses and the pricing levels available at different stock agencies so I suggest you don't get overly concerned about it yourself.

Good luck wherever you decide to sell your stuff.

Also I have made around 800 posts on Microstockgroup and never had a sale. I'm a poor writer

I've had more sales through this site than I have or most probably will get on Yaymicro 

I always saw the micro v macro as more of an integrity issue. As a buyer I would be ticked to discover that my competitor was using the same image that I was for a campaign when I just spent quite a bit of money for an RM license. It would add salt to the wound to discover that my competitor spent $5 for the image license when I spent hundreds.

This is why I won't upload any of my Microstock to places like Alamy or PS as RM images. If discovered it just hurts my reputation as a photographer. Not to mention that many RM sites are now requiring that you not be a member of any micro site before they will let you apply.

Microstock don't sell RM images only RF.

Also if you were a buyer and you didn't want your competitor using the same image RM wouldn't be the correct license, you would want a RP license.

And for the record I know of no traditional RM sites that stipulate you can't sell via microstock, the only one that had a policy along those lines was Photoshelter and what a success they turned out to be. However a lot of traditional RM sites require image exclusivity, but it's always been like that.

I have been microstocking for just couple months and two agencies closed down.

So it's your fault then, quit now before the others fold.

- in every business people that do some job are individual competitors - but, there is also something called "loyalty to the profession"
 every good change in the history was done when there was a critical mass of individuals who were willing to make these changes. - and  yes - "everyone told them it's impossible" .

I've highlighted the very point I was trying to make, and therefore I think you're arguing with yourself.

We are all individuals, we may at times have a collective understanding but we all make our own decisions based on our individual and independant situations and as such your suggestion:

"some kind of syndicate, or something like that? with some strict rules.
 on example - one of basic rules would be - if agency blackmails some of members, or all the contributors for various reasons - whole organization to give-back -either with "no, we do not agree with this - we'll delete all of our images" ? -and to be ready to act that way?"

will never ever happen, do you honestly think anyone will delete all their images based on the decision of the syndicate! of course they won't.

Not me, I'm in this business for myself and I will make my own business decisions, I'll also decide what action I choose to support at the appropriate time.

And IMHO if anybody does sign up to your idea now, when the time came they would do exactly what I've described above.

All these sort of suggestions sound good on paper but remember one thing, we are all independant competing against each other in the same industry, the union theory could not, would not and has not worked.

A short while ago I uploaded a shot to iStock of a building with a large Closing down sale banner on it, it got rejected with the reason 'text could blend in better', not my fault I thought so I uploaded it again, you guessed it, rejected again for the same reason with a comment from the reviewer about using the resubmit option so I presume it was the same person as the first time.
And I thought they liked the shots straight from the camera, or maybe I should find the and blame the sign writer!
Sometimes you just can't win

Original that they rejected:


And here's the version I played with that they accepted:

Quote from: RT on September 04, 2008, 06:16

One thing this thread has proved is that iStock is different for everybody, for me personally if iStock introduced an image exclusivity arrangement they would be the only microstock site I'd upload too.

Wouldn't that be the same as being exclusive anyway? Or am I missing your point?

No, image exclusivity means just that, you could upload an individual image to iStock and nobody else, but it means I could still sell other RF images at macro sites, their deal at the moment prohibits that.
Other sites like DT and FT offer image exclusivity but personally their sales figures don't warrant me doing so, however I think iStock are in a different league and I'd certainly upload images on an exclusive basis for some sort of extra reward.

- In inmagine policies, it's written : "Under this contract the Contributor has the right to: control whether each Image they submit is sold under a Royalty Free or Rights Managed License (with or without Rights Protection)." I think there is also no problem there, since you can control Rights protection.

You can place your non-exclusive images with inmagine that are also on Alamy and Photoshelter.

Featurepics however is a microstock site (even though you can price your RM images how you want they are still a microstock site in the eyes of the macro agencies because people sell images there for $1) and both Photoshelter and inmagine don't allow that.

I'm not sure you can change your username.

Wouldn't it be best if you emailed this question to them?