Was there a case when name of a thief on SS become public and he was prosecuted? Most of thieves accounts look like generated AI personas

"Reset" of search results will happen. For many of portfolio holders it is not physically possible to rename and re-keyword their photos and videos. SS of course will promote the "correct" ones.

Somebody wrote that because of low pricing there is no benefit for SS to keep the thieves online. The real life shows the opposite. Otherwise they just investigate quickly and take them down. There is enough money flowing in with such accounts and all are kept by SS, no need to share a fraction to contributors. Not sure which is the real % of such accounts found by the contributors, it can be very small compare to not discovered ones.

Comments in this thread can be qualified as a brainstorming for a company which puts efforts to pay less for us. Especially when it is, indeed, possible to separate a background info noise from the value data.

The market is saturated. Digits of the company can have fluctuations. This is not surprizing. What is clearly negative for contributors - the structure of SS revenue, SS rev/dl growing, but revenues of contributors are lower and lower during years.
AI itself is beneficial, but the devil is in the details. It can be manipulated in favour of promoted collections. Officially or not.

There is nothing good to expect from agencies. Period.
In the threads on this forum there were some naive or desperate hopes. But just hopes. It will not go further to win-win with any entity monopolizing communication with a client. Stock imagery business is not an exclusion. Please secure yourself with other activities. The pendulum may not swing the other way, but the spiral will turn down. Sorry for the pessimistic notes, but please think.

It is just another exciting news, nothing else, so usual already. Many of us have already an "exciting news blindness", the same effect like "banner blind".

Quote from: Uncle Pete on July 17, 2021, 15:58

Quote from: vectorsforall on July 16, 2021, 17:19
11 days later still nothing and I found another thief's portfolio and again I send another DMCA notice.
Shitter is a thieves factory.
Not only they made big cut in our commissions without shame but also they are a heaven for thieves.
I'm starting considering closing my account even if I'm still doing some numbers there. Enough is enough

I have to ask, because this comes up fairly often, but how does closing your account and losing the income, change anything about the thieves or make SS more proactive in removing thieves? All it does is hurt you?

The crooks come from all agencies, steal from all kinds of places, and spread their copied images in many places. This isn't just a SS issue.

I don't know why they move so slowly, but at least, when a valid complaint is filed, we have seen the accounts removed.

Good work finding and reporting them! 

Thieves are very beneficial for agencies, they are really so much not proactive removing them that questions come - are most of thieves real people? Very beneficial workflows for agencies anyway.

Quote from: gemmy12 on July 10, 2021, 07:05
But their support team said it was deleted due to some error and when they try to recover it, it comes with error so unfortunately you have to create a new account with the same email. Soas I understand my account was not purposely deleted but it was due to some error...

Yes you told this. You cooperate with their support team and hope it will be solved.. Only if they decide to abandon and not pay for the files sold then you can decide on another way. Try to follow instructions of their support first. It is not a beauty solution what they proposed, but try.

Yes agencies can delete an account. They have explained why it is happen in your case.
But: they should take an action if you prove that they continue to have your files on sale after that. Probably one by one. They have to do a choice. This depends from the country where you are and the laws. Or they restore an account or they are liable for IP. I saw a thread with contacts of specialized organizations. You need to evaluate probably with one of them. Good luck.

Looks like India participated in the agreements.
https://copyright.gov.in

Quote from: MatHayward on June 08, 2021, 00:06

Quote from: Zero Talent on June 07, 2021, 23:36
Maybe @MatHayward can clarify the Extended License is grating Etsy sellers the right to sell prints.

Please refer to the license details page here for allowable use with an Extended license: https://stock.adobe.com/license-terms#extendedLicenses

thank you,

Mat

What is this? Why Adobe forced to use a language which they want? Why i cannot use English? Please stop with this stupid policy, let people select languages which they need! Why i was redirected to your russian site? No button to change the language. If i am chinese i cannot use English? Edit: quick fix for this - use another browser.
Matt, this is not good - if something doesn't work, there is no normal way to change the language. Should be an old style dropdown list. It is not first time happening at Adobe. Accidental cookies, maybe but this is not an excuse for such policy.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on May 28, 2021, 20:14
They say they have relationships with some top agencies and one of the options is selling a portfolio. What's the bet that the one agency they have a relationship with is freepik, which is run by the same people, allowing them to pocket back a nice chunk of the price they pay for images?

Portfolios will circulate on the secondary market. Then creation for sale will become again less reasonable because profits will be on the large package sale. And yes, if they position freepic as a top agency...

Good thing - no my phoots, but looking at the portfolio i had non-stop deja-vu feeling... 

Quote from: falantus on May 12, 2021, 19:29

Quote from: Morphart on May 12, 2021, 13:04
This is the email I sent to them (to Depositphotos), should make them move in the right direction (delete that portfolio):

QuoteNo they are not... I sent you 2 reference images. There are THOUSANDS of my images there. There are also many other contributors who reports the same thing in a forum. You should close this portfolio altogether. The Yayimages agency also reports that this portfolio is no theirs, so this is clearly stolen work that no contributors are getting paid for.

You do not seem to take this seriously. I do. It seems you are looking to protect the thieves AND let them have our money, for years! I give 7 days to REMOVE the Yayimages thief portfolio before I engage legal actions. I also request that you return the earnings that have been stolen to the right contributors. I have reports of other contributors also contacting you about their stolen work, and you seem to be hand in hand with the thief by protecting them. If so then you will face the same legal actions.

Shutterstock would have done legal action AGAISNT the thief, Adobe Stock, iStock... all other agencies also.

Do you really want me to send a list of at least 20 000 of my stolen images in this email... It's pretty easy. Click my images in their portfolio, then my image is in the Similar Royalty-free vectors section... Here we go...:

- https://depositphotos.com/344546324/stock-illustration-macon-heart-georgia-georgia-1890s.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6751266/stock-illustration-macon-or-heart-of-georgia.html )
- https://depositphotos.com/344542590/stock-illustration-manx-vintage-engraving-old-engraved.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6723024/stock-illustration-manx-vintage-engraving.html )
- https://depositphotos.com/344545616/stock-illustration-green-tailed-jacamar-galbula-galbula.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6748106/stock-illustration-green-tailed-jacamar-or-galbula.html )
- https://depositphotos.com/344547068/stock-illustration-garden-sorrel-rumex-acetosa-common.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6755814/stock-illustration-garden-sorrel-or-rumex-acetosa.html)
- https://depositphotos.com/344546392/stock-illustration-purple-mangosteen-garcinia-mangostana-mangosteen.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6751888/stock-illustration-purple-mangosteen-or-garcinia-mangostana.html )
- https://depositphotos.com/344541792/stock-illustration-banyan-ficus-benghalensis-vintage-engraving.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6717070/stock-illustration-banyan-or-ficus-benghalensis-vintage.html )
- https://depositphotos.com/344542902/stock-illustration-coconut-coconut-palm-cocos-nucifera.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/6726212/stock-illustration-coconut-or-coconut-palm-or.html )

And the list goes on and on. Same with my color vectors:
-   https://depositphotos.com/347650818/stock-illustration-man-pain-tibia-vector-illustration.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/16907979/stock-illustration-man-in-pain-illustration.html )
-   https://depositphotos.com/347654230/stock-illustration-mine-worker-using-chisel-hammer.html (my image is here: https://depositphotos.com/16202051/stock-illustration-mine-worker-illustration.html )
And thousand more there also!

If you want me to send the exact list of all my stolen images I can ask a programmer to scrape your site and send you the list of all the COPY/DUPLICATE files with the same title/filename but since you have millions the scrape will work long. I will charge you 500$USD for this work to be done, plus my time to work on protecting my images when that is supposed to be the agencies work.

Waiting for a serious response this time.

Your e-mail is spectacular Morphart. I mean you explained everything with all following-actions as if you explain to a kid I hope they take this seriously after this pressure. And really funny that they only delete the individual images after being asked. What kind of logic is this doh!

They will pull the cat's tail as long as possible because they earn money from these files.

We already saw examples of portfolios, photo and vectors with high rate of upload (there are threads about spam ports). SS could do many choices, anyway they are not in favor of commodity who actually are the contributors. Only in favor of itself, SS. It will be naive to expect any changes or a good will. Just look at the ancient threads. Insider version is highly probable.

GDPR is a bluff mostly. The data sold and resold and real privacy is a fiction. But - who has a juridical education - please comment - can we employ these laws to ensure deletion of our content? The content, names and copyright are related.

Roscoe, "Clicks coming from the same account, PC, IP address or region should be discarded." -
They will react only when sales can be affected. It is not a problem to forge many attributes, for example, Yahoo is not able to stop bitcoin ads spam, everytime it is coming from different addresses etc.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 29, 2021, 17:56

How sick would that be if anyone could raise their level and visibility just by having many more views? 

Kind of DDOS?

Looks like another avalanch started to move down.

Huge thank you to people who can dedicate a part of their time for such research. Stock photographers and other creatives are much less protected category than other businesses.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 26, 2021, 09:14

Quote from: Firn on April 25, 2021, 20:11
...
Interesting theory, but since he has real accounts on various stock agencies, I doubt that's what's going on here.

Yeah, thanks, so not an SS owned portfolio

Cannot be a final conclusion. Nothing stops one agency to (ab)use another one, no matter under which sauce - AI persona or a real person, and still all other versions are too alive to be eliminated :-)

Quote from: Evaristo tenscadisto on January 26, 2021, 23:02
The way i see it:

1) first we actually don't need to buy to many 3d models because we use photogrammetry to create models. Its better and more realistic. I have been doing this for at least 2 years for simple models and it works fine.

2)  2nd because artists use AI sw too so no need to use mstock services. For example, Nowadays you don't need real people you can use some GAN Ai services and create a face that doesn't exist. Photo shoots are much more easier and cheap than rent studio, hire people and real models.  We can do it almost everything in a Pc with a 3d environment.

So they can eventually do what contributors done in past but in future we eventually don't need at some point microstock services too. But i also think that in terms of Photography there is always space to fulfill for documentary and news. No AI can do this.

Ah, Big Brother will then select suitable news images from his 100% covering...

Quote from: Roscoe on April 23, 2021, 12:36

Quote from: changingsky on April 23, 2021, 11:59
Many years ago i tried to collaborate with one photographers search utility and stopped after several hours. Any search for any location in the world brought results list with photographers located in India on first positions followed by the photographers from the selected location.

The question is: why. Some contributors claim that the algorithms of agencies favor contributors from certain area's or countries, e.g. India or Eastern Europe. Not saying that's not true, but I never believed that agencies are programming their algorithm in a way that it promotes content from contributors in a certain area in the world. Because... why would they?

Maybe some contributors have better connections to dubious service companies that are involved in internet promotion and black hat SEO techniques. Or less shame to contact those companies. Have a network of Shutterstock subscription plan owners and make them all buy the same image so it rises up in the ranking. Pay them some money, and meanwhile get the earnings of being on the front page. Once you're on the front page, and the image is "useful enough" for buyers, commissions should start rolling in.

So far my theory. All the other ones (having someone on the "inside" for instance) all sound way too complicated or even impossible.

Company as a business doesn't care till the income grows. Fail of the security of the company's workflow and games of the personnel (or contractor providing the software part) is what happened in that company. I don't look for the analogy, this needs the proof, but there is no miracle in the software.

Many years ago i tried to collaborate with one photographers search utility and stopped after several hours. Any search for any location in the world brought results list with photographers located in India on first positions followed by the photographers from the selected location.