It's not possible to buy exclusive rights to the character if any of the images containing the character has already been sold, and trying to sell the character exclusively "subject to the previous RF licenses" is fraught with peril. I'd tell them sorry but no, and maybe offer to create a variation of the character.

I think it is common knowledge that IS puts both non-exclusive and exclusive images in the first few hits on a customer's search. After those first few, IS packs the search results with the images of exclusives.

I don't think it is common knowledge, I think it is a commonly mistaken belief. People keep putting up single search results as, at most, anecdotal evidence, but the truth is that they don't "pack" search results with images of exclusives. You see slightly, and I mean slightly, more exclusive images in search results because, as the admins at IS have stated, the exclusives generate the majority of the images (myself excluded).

Granted I�ve only been in the stock business for a few months but I still don�t understand the business model for IS...You mark my word on this.  I�ve been in the photography business for over 30 years and I have never seen anything like IS make it for very long as a driving force.

This gets my vote for funny post of the week. If you can't understand the business model, perhaps a basic business class is in order. And given your probable photo acceptance rate, maybe a digital photography class too.

Sincerely,
your friendly butt kissing istocker 

Have you tried pressing F5?  Also, might I suggest, decaf?

Sorry, egg on face, but it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. As for decaf, I've tried and failed. Also your website seems abnormally slow to load today.

Quote from: leaf on April 10, 2008, 11:09

well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html

So it does.....

How are people jumping from "change in format" to adding a number of tiers. All they did was take the commission terms out of the TOS and put them in a table which they then incorporate by reference into the contract. The only change I see is that they made their TOS and rate tables look more like other agencies.

Leaf, how are you jumping from a simple change in format of a contract to a huge change in the way they do business? I agree with Vonkara on this one, it looks like the lawyers just wanted to make it easier to change commissions without changing the contract itself. "It's all about billable hours baby".

Quote from: mjp on April 10, 2008, 01:09

Is there way a write DMCA take down notice to his/her domain host company?

I wrote an email to GoDaddy, asking them to consider reviewing the site and disabling it. But who knows if that will do anything.

I know hosts do shut down sites sometimes for copyright issues, but I don't know the proper way of requesting such action be taken.

If he's actually selling YOUR photos/vectors then yes a DMCA Take Down Notice is what you would use. Here is how to do it at GoDaddy:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/legal_agreements/show_doc.asp?pageid=TRADMARK%5FCOPY

I'm not so sure... I asked about that in their forum, and this is what I got from Rogermexico:

Quote

Your subscription gets you a daily credit limit - x number to use for x number of days at x dollars.

So it seems one will not be required to subscribe for a month.  Ok, maybe just one day won't be allowed either, but am I wrong in my interpretation?

Yes I think you're reading too much into his basic statement. They came out and said specifically that there will be no 1 day subscriptions. They didn't say weekly subscriptions were out the window, but I highly doubt that will be an option.

Consider it this way. 1 day subscriptions would destroy the profits for iStock. They're going to be making their money from the unused credits on days like Saturday and Sunday. People that would want 1 day subscriptions are the type of buyers that would use most or all of the credits, which would cause iStock to actually lose money on the deal.  It is in iStock's best interest to have longer subscription lengths, not shorter ones.

Roger was giving you the basic formula. I think you're reading too much into it.

I'd venture a guess that this was a bit of a publicity stunt for Corbis - if so, it worked.

For Corbis? How so? Corbis said that day they weren't going to sue. The article was outdated before it was written.

Or any site for that matter. Is there some legal restriction preventing someone from getting their own cards made up with a microstock company logo on them? Vector versions of the logos can be found or easily reproduced, and promo codes are easy to get. Just design your own.

Yes it's called copyright and trademark infringement. Moo would be crazy to produce unauthorized cards and risk losing such a profitable contract, nor are you likely to have another legitimate printer willing to reproduce a corporate logo without authorization from that corporation.

Yingyang, kkthompson has already indicated/confirmed that credits will be priced at less than 38c.

Where?

Update:
Here is what kkthompson said: "Yes. We'll guarantee the same minimum payout as we do today on the Pay-as-you-go side. So right now, the lowest priced (non-sale) credit is 96�. You receive 20 to 40% of that. Clear canisters will receive a minimum 19� and Diamonds will receive a minimum 38�. And yes, this means that sometimes iStock will be paying out more than we take in per credit...."


Very interesting. SS must be making a much larger profit than I realized if iStock is willing to price below 38c, and I suspect they would have to have some actual hard data on usage rates.

then how did those passed:

The first one is shot at an angle and couldn't be used to create fake currency. The second one had 1/3 of the bills cut off and couldn't be used to create fake currency.

Your photo only has a little of the fringe covered by the clothes pin, and is is a flat/head-on photo of a $100 bill. The clothes pin doesn't cover enough, obviously, to satisfy them.

Black and White won't help you because you don't meet the size requirements.

I don't make the laws, I just follow them. If I were you I'd shoot it again. This time at an angle and with a much larger clothes pin.

Under subscription sales, photographers get a fixed 19c minimum payment per credit spent.  This means that all the 26c payments disappear.

Because subscriptions are going to be so much more attractive to buyers than 'per credit' packages, I am going to have to assume that all my present 26c payments will drop to 19c payments.

This is incorrect and fails to consider the very nature of the subscription model. Aren't you the one that points out Yuri's SS analysis all the time? 19c is the minimum, 26c payments will not disappear, and much larger ones are more likely. Most of the time subscribers don't use their full subscriptions, and in those cases the payments are likely to be much higher than 19c.

iStock's new subscription model is a much different take on how the other agencies do it, so I know the analysis will take some getting use to (it caught me very off guard) . I've been running some numbers, because of an angry client phone call (pm me if you don't understand this part) and it actually looks very advantageous to the photographers. Time will tell, but perhaps more thought is need before making such conclusions as "all present 26c payments will drop to 19c payments", because the financial analysis doesn't appear to support this.

Quote from: CofkoCof on April 04, 2008, 17:56

... and the contributors get 20-40% of it, where at other sites they get nothing of this surplus.

If a subscription sales won't generate less per credit than I'm making now, I don't see how my per image sales will be "cannibalized", plus each subscription sale comes with a "virtual lottery ticket" that may increase the royalty unexpectedly if the customer does not max out that day.   

Exactly what I said on pg. 2 of this thread. It will cannibalize, but for the better. The "cannibalized" downloads will earn the same or more than they would have before.

Dan doesn't yet seem to understand how different this program is from the other subscription sites. I know it shocked . out of me.