This is a change to forum guidelines - they don't talk about banning you from the forums, just closing your account if you don't follow the forum guidelines - and I assume that means you contributor account.

"Forum Guidelines

You agree to follow Shutterstock's Forum Guidelines. Any activity by you on Shutterstock's forum (please see "Forum for Contributors") which does not adhere to Shutterstock's Forum Guidelines may result in the termination of your Shutterstock account. The terms of Shutterstock's Forum Guidelines are deemed incorporated into and made a part of the TOS by this reference."

It used to say something that talked about forum bans with a possibility of losing your account - which seemed less heavy handed:

"15. b. You agree not to post any material that is abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or that may violate any applicable laws. Violating these terms of use shall be deemed a material breach of the TOS and may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned from the forums and your service provider being informed. Shutterstock may also terminate your Contributor Account.?

On the copyright infringement claims clause, I'm not thrilled with the idea that if Shutterstock decides to do nothing, we would have to get their permission do pursue the case on our own. And as independents, we might have to contact a potential infringer up front to find out where the downloaded the content from - in the past, SS is always quick to point out that the license might not have come from them.

It seems to me that if SS chooses to do nothing, we should be able to go ahead on our own. If a very large customer of theirs were involved in something inappropriate, I can imagine they'd rather keep the customer happy and leave us out of the picture. Seems a bit dog in the manger to me if they aren't interested in taking action that we're unable to do so without risking our account getting closed by them.

"13. Copyright Infringement Claims

You hereby grant Shutterstock the right and authority to take such steps as Shutterstock deems commercially reasonable to protect Shutterstock's rights in the Content.

In the event that you believe Content has been misused, you shall take no action without providing notice of such misuse to Shutterstock and receiving Shutterstock's prior written consent to such action.
While Shutterstock takes commercially reasonable steps to ensure that the rights of its Contributors are not violated by customers or other parties, Shutterstock has no obligation to pursue legal action against any alleged infringer of any of your rights in and to any Content."

In section 17, Miscellaneous, there is a new clause that talks about violating this "or any other" agreement with SS - and your account can be terminated. What other agreement?

"e. In the event that you breach any of the terms of this or any other agreement with Shutterstock, Shutterstock shall have the right to terminate your account without further notice, in addition to Shutterstock's other rights at law and/or equity."

And the May 29 date suggests they delayed putting this out but forgot to edit their draft. The document says an announcement on our login page is how we get notice of changes. And I don't think we get prior notice at SS.

As I see the site, the full terms of service are still the Sept 17 2013 version (and I cleared Chrome's browser data to be sure). So the "see the full terms of service" from the blog doesn't really mean much yet.

I don't see anything bad there with two possible exceptions.

1. If the lowered payout is indicating that some big change in earnings (i.e. the BigStock royalty schedule) is coming soon. I think that's unlikely and that it's more likely that new contributors are discouraged and walk away and they're clearly looking to boost their contributor base. I suspect that's an insurance policy for them if they p*ss off existing contributors.

2. Using editorial as commercial with no additional liability to the photographer. If they promise to defend any lawsuit filed against us, then it's good, but saying we're not incurring any new liability doesn't stop someone from suing us and then we have to defend ourselves if SS doesn't step in (the way an insurer would). I would look at the details of the Terms of Service except that they haven't posted them.

I think the idea is extremely interesting, however I found the site currently very confusing (and I did watch the video first, but that didn't really explain enough, for me anyway, of what was going on).

I did a search for picnic basket and although I did get some picnic baskets in the center area, I had models posing lower left, bottles of milk, nesting russian dolls, grass, statues of elephants and all sorts of seemingly unrelated items.

As best I can figure out, the window on the left lets me seed the display if I click on the thumbs underneath. I don't really understand how the star map larger part of the window helps me navigate - what clues do I have other than getting a thumbnail if I hover what sorts of things are where?

I have no idea what to do with the layered pyramid with the top cut off on lower right - it doesn't let me click on a different layer.

I think if your video had some explanations of what was going on it might be easier to follow - there are many areas to look at and I think that while I'm watching one part of the screen in the video, you're doing something elsewhere that actually I should be looking at instead.

I recently discovered my images being sold as $100 posters on art.com etc - they said they had 'licensed' them from bigstock.  BS says this is ok, as they just sell one print at a time, even though bigstock's licensing specifically says images cannot be resold as prints, posters, etc

They used to have an opt out (and I opted out as soon as I saw what royalty I received for one of these print sales). The real issue for me was that I sell  via FAA and make much more than the pittance BigStock was paying, so why undercut myself?

I left BigStock when they wouldn't let us opt out of their lowball subscription scheme, so my information may no longer be current. I think anyone who sells via any print on demand site directly would want to insist on an opt out from these deals.

"P"ixart just got some in the last hour, maybe "S"helma will follow alphabetically?

But "S"nover has had 8 today after a long patch where there were very few of the 38 cent SODs (not one in May) - I I think "S"helma's real last name doesn't begin with S either

Ss has said many many times that they don't want to do exclusivity. Image exclusivity is easier than artist exclusivity (iStock does only the latter, DT and FT do both)

I was an iStock exclusive for a while (2008-2011) and it's not a trivial thing to leave and build things back up again. Given the rise and fall of empires, I don't think I'd ever do artist exclusive again - and given the agency behavior over the last couple of years, I don't trust any of them to have contributor interests in their sights.

Image exclusivity is something I'd consider depending on the agency (and the market they sell to) and the terms. If the agency can't move the exclusive items, you have higher theoretical earnings and zero actual cash.

iStock - and I thought SS had recently said effectively the same thing - says that if you have a reference image used for a vector, you need to provide the reference art and you need to own the copyright to it (or it's in the public domain).

If you're tracing a copyrighted map, I think you have a problem. If you can find something public domain to trace, you should be OK

And what's about Alamy? Is it same there too?

For Royalty Free yes - you can submit those images anywhere you want to. If you submit Rights Managed it's more complicated but you can't have a rights managed image one place that you sell royalty free elsewhere (because you'll have no idea who, where, how or how long the RF images are in use and thus can't provide many of the desired options to an RM buyer).

Some agencies - Fotolia and Dreamstime are two examples - let you submit exclusive images. If you take that option, then those particular images should not be submitted anywhere else.

Thanks, I wouldn't have found that on my own... I don't know if any of mine have been deleted, but I have a baseline now.

Just tack your user name (the selling one) onto the site URL - for me www.canva.com/joannsnover - to see the total portfolio for sale. I've dropped another 3 since yesterday...

On Canva I often get two sales of the same image at the same time...

Canva is micro rights managed. Each design someone uses your work in requires a separate payment. They are introducing a RF license, but for the moment, if they need the image for brochure, web site and an annual report, that's three sales, not one.

They're still trimming existing portfolios - some time in the last few days 2 items (no idea which ones) disappeared from my active portfolio (i.e. I'm not counting any of those items in the limbo of wait for cutout).

I was always wondering how that works. How can "other" people upload songs of famous artists to Youtube and get away with that?

I once filmed a university graduation and when I wanted to publish it, Youtube refused it because during the closing ceremony they played a famous song in the background.

So I have no clue how all these different versions of famous songs were even possible to be uploaded to Youtube in the first place?

Does anyone know how this is possible?

http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/08/youtube-now-tells-you-how-copyrighted-music-will-affect-your-video-before-you-upload-it/

Testing with only a part of your images is NOT working !!!
If coca cola would sell in just one small city with just 20 bottles..
That`s not working.

It depends on whether you have a portfolio that's already established at other sites. If you do, then you know what sells and what doesn't (after the fact; I'm not saying I could ever know for sure up front).

A long time ago, another stock photographer shared the idea that for a new site, give them 300 of your known sellers. If they can't move those in a few months, then you know enough not to bother giving them more.

Clearly there are exceptions - primarily for specialty sites or new ideas (like Creative Market selling PSDs and more complex things).

Regarding the original question, Pond5 has a low payout and it's automatic once you get to the threshold, but I found the low (and not growing) photo sales and painful upload process a deterrent to further uploads.