http://www.shutterstock.com/de/pic-385305055/stock-vector-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart-heart.html

What a sad portfolio - perhaps 200 actual images and endless repetitions of similars - glasses, skulls, easter eggs and so on

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-318128897/stock-vector-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses-glasses.html

The titles are spammed, the keywords are spammed and visually, 9/10 of the portfolio is spam. SS must really want to bulk up the library to permit this sort of pollution.

If you change the title after approval, do they change the image page URL? If not, these URLs indicate the image was approved this way, not changed afterwards.

Shutterstock's forums have a post from an admin saying that no images were removed as part of this title spamming exercise

http://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/88687-shutterstocks-position-on-repeated-words-and-phrases-in-titles/?p=1555859

I see someone has reported other removals (Harley Davidson content was mentioned here on MSG), so perhaps they're doing other cleanup?

I received the "we apologize" e-mail this morning too. It used Jon's name and although it didn't say the magic words "I'm sorry",  it did say that any further communications would be "detailed, informative, specific, and actionable", which is good. It was a bit "mistakes were made", but they're corporate now, so I guess that's just how missives are.

Unless the total number of files in my portfolio is being mis-reported on the contributor home page, they haven't deleted anything of mine. There's the correct number of pages at 100 per page when I look at my portfolio, so I think it's intact. Not sure how those of you with missing files figure out what went away, but Are you going to contact support to complain? It might be another software snafu rather than intentional deletion, but either way, one would hope they have detailed records they could consult...

Are we sure that this email is even coming from Shutterstock. I get so many phishing emails from everyone else. This almost sounds like a hack, scam, or whatever. Besides, when did Shutterstock start using titles on their consumer side?

A Shutterstock employee posted in their forums saying people could write to support to ask for a list of images identified, effectively acknowledging the sad little e-mail with no useful details came from them.

Shutterstock takes the description field from ITPC and uses it as the title (has been doing this all along). So they call it a title, even though that's not the field it came from.

...If it is a malfunction of their current uploader, then I am still baffled why I got this POS threat. 

I don't think it is - at least not with regular (commercial as opposed to editorial) files. I've been uploading over the past several weeks and I just spot checked a few recent approvals to be sure the titles and keywords were unchanged. The ones I checked looked just as they do in the original files.

They're lazy (don't provide the list of files) and stupid (the script is apparently broken and they didn't test it adequately to see this).

That lifestyle portfolio is very nice (if a bit repetitive), but that's irrelevant to the point that some of us were making. Downloads are not decreasing - it's the money that is. Money change has nothing to do with increased competition.

On a slight tangent, some contributors are apparently getting desperate to boost sales:

I noticed something today which is either the entrepreneurial spirit in full bloom, or the sad abdication of any long term care over their library by Shutterstock: A vector contributor has started adding "Good Vector", "Best Vector Ever", "Best Seller", and "Exeptional Vector" icons to the uploaded work. And that's the contributor's spelling, not my typo.

It seems to me completely unfair to customers that they have to remove this trash from their vectors prior to using them. It's not much work, admittedly, but it's still rude behavior and I don't think SS should permit this type of stuff.

Not to mention labeling many vectors in your portfolio "Best Vector Ever" suggests you don't really understand what you've written.

I won't post a link, but if you search for "carrot flat organic ripe" in vectors, you'll see one example of a "Best Vector Ever"

And if you do a search for "camera dslr hipster flat icon photographic" in vectors, you'll see two examples of another contributor's work with the text "FREE VECTOR" at the top. In that person's portfolio, there's page after page with that label on them.

This isn't placeholder text and at the very least it's misleading buyers (who might think this vector was part of the weekly giveaway SS does).

It's pretty depressing to see SS just let itself go like that.

I'm a small part-time player, but what I see with SS is that the download numbers aren't too bad but it's the money that's decreasing. All those high value SOD sales that used to make a big difference in the earnings. That's a harder problem for a contributor to fix (without branching out to other agencies) than the download numbers tanking.

When I compare a month this year with last year I'm seeing roughly comparable downloads and about $150 less in cash

I just went to check unsplash's licensing and then the CC0 license

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

That license says you're putting your work in the public domain and waiving your copyright to it (something I can't imagine doing, even if I were to give an image away, but that's what unsplash allows).

So any site that allows public domain images to be uploaded (and not all do) would allow someone to upload your work, solo or incorporated into something that they do. Pond5 has a public domain collection, for example.

Many sites would not permit a public domain image to be uploaded as stock - they require that you have copyright in what you upload.

Creative Market has often been very fuzzy about licensing and copyright. I have a shop there, but I had to shut it after they changed the licensing to include resale of up to 500 items in a standard license. If you look at their help, they currently require that you be the "sole creator" of anything you sell. That's not a well thought through policy (you can be the copyright holder of something you didn't create and should be allowed to license such works if you choose to) but if you take it at face value, then they shouldn't allow people to resell your CC0 licensed works

https://creativemarket1.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201193604-What-am-I-allowed-to-sell-

This week I noticed that 123rf has added a similar editor to allow cropping and scaling an image to be licensed. It's marked as Beta, but I guess this indicates having such a feature is now expected as a customer convenience.

It's not uncommon to have a mix of free and paid-for things - the agency obviously has an interest in upselling you from the freebies. For example, I have downloaded free images from 123rf where they only offer the smallest size free - any of the larger sizes you have to pay for. I've managed to navigate that without a problem - you just need to look at what you're doing.

I understand it's frustrating when you make a mistake, but all over the web, not just with stock web sites, you have to watch where you click as people are always checking boxes for extras and add-ons you might not want.

If Fotolia had made the default choice the extended license, I think you'd have a case that this was tantamount to fraud, but as I understand it, that's not what happened. I don't buy from Fotolia, so I don't know if sending an invoice is what they typically do, but certainly they should have followed their standard procedures in processing the extended license order and if they didn't because of the free standard license, then I'd go back and use that mistake on their part to argue that they owe you a refund.

I'm no fan of Fotolia, but I took a look at the way their page is presented, and they've clearly segmented the two types of licenses with a headline for each. I really don't think you can fault them for your error given how the page is set up

I had a little wander through the internet archive to look at when and how 123rf had changed the submit agreement. There were announced changes (a banner at the top of the page for a little while, later unhelpfully removed so you can't tell) in February 12, 2012 and April 16, 2015.

For the 2015 change, there is now a clause 7g:

"Modification: 123RF reserves the right to modify the commission rate and/or payment processing and/or payment delivery schedule at any time and notify You by email of the change."

Did anyone get e-mail from 123rf in April last year about these changes? I keep e-mails with notices of change like this and I don't have anything (possibly I deleted it, but I don't remember getting anything).

In the prior version of the agreement, the notification was in clause 8.8:

"Pay periods are scheduled on the 3rd of each month. 123RF� reserves the right to modify the commission rate and/or payment processing and/or payment delivery schedule at any time and notify you by email of the change."

If anyone wants to look at the before 2012 and 2012-2015 versions of the agreements, they are here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111229143331/http://www.123rf.com/submit/agreement.php

https://web.archive.org/web/20120312045215/http://www.123rf.com/submit/agreement.php

It in the agreements prior to April last year, there was a defined end date by which we'd be paid in section 8.7:

"All payments are made 2 weeks in arrears to the month in which your payment limit is reached. Example, by end of February you have $100 worth of commissions, 123RF� will pay you $100 latest by the 3rd week of March."

It seems to me that they went from having a fixed payment schedule to one where we should be happy to get paid whenever without sending us notice as the agreement requires.

Does anyone have any copies of e-mails from them notifying us of these changes?

Thanks for pointing this sad little site out. I checked and although my images show up as "Advertising", I can't find any being offered free.

I think it would be better if Shutterstock exercised more control over who gets to use their API this way. Some of the sites are so sleazy it can't help SS enough to be worth looking like a low-rent flea market.