So, essentially if an exclusive were to post images on e.g. Flickr and designate them as Creative Commons for non-commercial use, that would not be RF, therefore would be OK?

No. You should mark it as "all rights reserved". Never mind the Creative Commons "licenses", since they can't be enforced and they don't present any warranty at all.

Dan Heller has been for a while at "war" with CC, and he calls it a form of entrapment. More here and here. (CC is a semi-political action group in favor of Copyleft: a sort of sharing communist IP paradise were artists hand out the fruits of their sweat for free, since they are rich bourgeois *insult removed*). 

You can mention in your Flickr profile that your images can be licensed exclusively at iStock, but watch out with that. My paying Flickr account was set private without any comment when somebody tagged me for have portfolio links to my RF sites, then brutally terminated when I demanded an explanation. Flickr wants you to share. Since then, I call it Fuckr.

Conclusion: stay away from Flickr and CC.

• they're easy to submit to
• royalty is high
• they're pleasant to deal with
  

Sounds like my grandma 

I'm down to less than 50 images there and can't wait to get the rest off.

Why? Are you on the Road to Serfdom ? 

The idea has been brought up here before. If this would be just another stock site, it will definitively fail. There should be an USP, that would set a coop image bank aside from the existing ones and would tackle some weaker points of those.

1. Invitation only. Contributors are co-opted in based on their general karma and existing portfolio. No reviewers: those contributors are matured enough in the business to review their own work. Reviewing costs eat up the bulk of the capital of any beginning site. Buyers should be able to inspect all parts of the image at full size (watermarked and windowed).

2. Warranty: by the contributors themselves. The recent trend to warrant images by the agents induced a lot of red tape, overhead, undue rejects, and costs. The contributor warrants that all recognizable people have been released, and that he did his best to remove or avoid copyrighted elements. Based on these promises, the buyer should take his own responsibility based on the image content.

3. Freedom of content, the end of LCV rejects. The contributor decides what might have commercial value, not the site. This will bring in unique content, something that buyers have been asked for a long time.

4. Temporal content exclusivity: contributors are committed to offer all their new content exclusively on the co-op site for a reasonable period of 14days-1month, before they start uploading to the vested agents.

5. All contributors should have a confidential oversight of sales, gross income, and costs. They should decide the individual earnings percentage, based on these numbers, and all business decisions should be made by them, by majority vote.

6. The site itself should be buyer-centered, simple and very easy to use. No annoying sidebars or fields with bargains, free offerings, news. Commodity: for the pay-as-you-go purchase, no registration should be required. Prices should be higher than on existing sites. The competition should not be about price, but about content (see 3,4).

7. The heart of any site is about the search engine. Instead of addressing the search algorithm as the lowest priority (what killed YAY), it should be the highest one. There should be at least 2 options: ranked by relevance, and ranked by popularity/sales within relevance.

8. The site should not compete with our existing fine agents, rather complement them. Buyers can have a normal car for day to day commuting, and have a SUV for occasional weekend fun. The non-competition intent is further clear by the higher prices.

Perhaps we are talking about the next generation stock? But are we ready?

After losing too much time on their crappy programming and then confronted with the very low subscription prices, not to mention the unworkable MRF pages and the many rejects, I canceled my account too.
Notwithstanding that, I also got that email, and I even was able to change my password on the site (in IE of course, they still didn't discover how to get that part working in FF).
I can't login though. Another glitch?

Quote from: Stu on December 23, 2009, 11:39

Quote from: FD-amateur on December 23, 2009, 11:34

Serfdom.

That fits !  

Well not totally. A serf was allowed a little yard to grow stuff for himself in his (rare) spare time. An iStock contributor isn't allowed even that.  
On the other hand, the Lord owed the serf protection (against the evil Heroturkos and the infringing Hanoi food joints) while the freemen were left in the cold.
Sign a pact with the devil to sell your soul and you will reap the rewards in front of the best match, but once in Hell, you will get a stiff neck looking up to the independents making stitched panos of Heaven.  

How can Istock legally control an image that they rejected?

Serfdom.

So did I, FD.  So much so that my post was deleted and my discussion with Achilles wound up in the Private Comments. 
My point is that none of this is "by accident." 

Like banks and bond emitters, DT plays on the "dead" money. About 2% of the bonds money is never collected since old Auntie kept the shares under the bed and the ants or the dog ate it when she got Alzheimer.

I repeat ... what has happened to the images of RJMIZ.  I doubt that he gets emails ... He died.  Does he default to FREE?

Yes, unless his heirs read the email. As far as I understood, he had none. There was a friend that inherited his PC with all his tutorials but that friend had no clue how to save those, as was found out when he posted on some forums (this one?) under RJMIZ nick.
DT does the same as all banks and bond emitters. What should they do then? Burn the money or the images? They will keep RJMIZ earnings too, unless somebody shows up with conclusive proof that he is an heir.

Where is the hand???

the new yet to be named site

Somebody (Suljo?) suggested GettySubscription. I suggest GettyConscription. 

 I  had  one  that   was  accepted  /  put  in  a  collection  /  started  to  get  more  views  /  then  was  told  it  was  acccepted  by  accident  /had   a  fellow  poster  make  a  discrimatory  remark  about  it  /that  left  me  with  2  accepted  and  1  sale  /  dt  said  it  wasn't  discrimination  /  i  quit  their  site  in  a  hurry  /  i  was  treated  fairly  at  the  beginning  but  they  ticked  me  off  /  i  don't   need  them  to  be  successful  at  stock.

Oh, you are that one? I remember the thread full of melodrama, and Achilles pointed the original thread out too. It was about a reject.

Komar: I remember the photo. It would get a lot of views for sure, because of it's unusual nature. It really wasn't pleasant to look at though.
You: Komar - it's on 8 other sites so your opion don't count
You: type in "cheating at golf" and you'lll see 15 simular pics
Komar: Yes similar, but yours was also quite different, unique shall we say. Unique enough for me to remember it after seeing it months ago. Anyway, the opinions of the 8 other sites which accepted it are of course more important than mine. However, I don't disagree with Dt's opinion on this one. I hope the image does well for u elsewhere.
Niseyb: Can't imagine??? I couldn't find it on the "eight other sites" either!
You: Komar - keep your opions to yourself.
Nisey - you didn't look hard enough
DT - please keep these two away!!!

It was a great read, and DT must be in deep mourning to see your port of 2 go.  
Lesson: if you can't stand the heath, stay out of the kitchen.  
Achilles:

You may dislike other users' opinions, but once you post on a public forum, you should expect some of the comments to be different than your opinions. And everyone to post, that is the rationale of a public forum.
As long as they are polite, you should respect other opinions and avoid replying like you did: "keep your opions to yourself." or "your opion don't count ".
Furthermore you asked admin afterwards to ban those users because of their remarks, none of which was derogatory. How fair is that?

How do you stop someone takeing a screenshot and using that?

In that case it's a breach of terms if you mark your images as "totally copyrighted".

Not that I feel any urge to go exclusive on iStock right now. I just resubmitted two rejects from my latest upload in September. Reject because the country was missing somewhere on the MRF. It was re-rejected for (1) bad keywords (I shouldn't mention "copyspace" on an image with copyspace) - (2) isolation too feathered or too rough (using the same procedure as always - mostly accepted) - (3) I added "country" on the MRF and re-shot it 1600pix high - they couldn't read it - (4) the inevitable artifacts.

Too much hassle for an image that will collect dust soon at the far end of the best match. Viva la indepencia !  

To buy Getty.