If he's not listed as exclusive with the other sites then they won't really care where else he posts images to.

I had a series of children playing with a water hose rejected because of the children's swimsuits.

http://www.dreamstime.com/ready-to-race-image7257570

Another image was rejected because the word "Digital" was on the strap of a camera. I could probably write a book between the silly rejections and the Keyword wiki "corrections".

I don't think this is a stolen CC type of Fraud. I'm new to BigStock, still waiting for my first batch of 20 to get approved. Looking around I noticed that I do not have the option to convert commissions to credits until after I've been a member for 60 days. I think the fraud, in part, is people signing up friends and family (like your 3 year old kid or 98 year old mother who can't see the monitor let alone be interested in purchasing images) or non-existent people in order to earn the referral commission. This is why several of the big players require that the referral purchase credits or upload images before they will honor the referral with a payment. On other sites these fake accounts are used to rate images in the main account or down rate images in competitors account, view images to change their rankings or to purchase small images in order to boost search results.

Once the account is discovered to be fraudulent anything that was done on that account is deemed as fraudulent. Ratings are removed, purchases are voided, and credits are forfeited.

Other sites have fewer issues with this because they require proof of Identification, have extensive contracts that must be signed or have a reputation for coming after you if you violate the policies.

As far as the wait time I've seen everything from 24 hours to 10 days. A lot depends on the site and how their accounting system is set up.

Me. I'm the one that is confused. I saw 11 and read it as 11 pm. No more posting for me until I get more sleep. LOL

Sorry guys. Let's try this again.

Did anyone see that IS is having a new contest? 

Win your visual addiction contest
alibrace  Dec 11/08, 16:11
Every customer who downloads a large photo or bigger, 10-credit-vector or bigger or 40-credit-video or bigger between 6 p.m. MST  � more Every customer who downloads a large photo or bigger, 10-credit-vector or bigger or 40-credit-video or bigger between 6 p.m. MST Dec. 11 and midnight MST Dec. 31, 2008 will have their name automatically entered into a draw:
- to win 1,000 Pay-as-you-go credits or a 30 credits/day 3-month Subscription plan.

The more you download files, the more chances you have to win, because your name will be entered once for each download of the above mentioned file sizes. The winner will be announced in the new year.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Notice they "advertised" the contest 2 hours before it started. I wonder how many entries they got.

This paragraph was changed.

We'll start tagging content in January for inclusion into this collection. Exclusives will have the ability to nominate their files they'd like to see included. And again, we'll be looking to put about 200,000 images in the collection by the end of the second quarter.

It used to state that Independants would have to be invited to have images in the premiere collection. Later it was clarified that the premiere status is only open to exclusives.

I signed up with CC tonight and uploaded my images via FTP. However when I click the "process" button I get a 404 error and now the site won't come up at all. Was there a schedule down time that I don't know about?

Is announced that it was starting a new procedure for dealing with spammers. They were giving everyone an undisclosed amount of time to clean up their portfolios before they started dropping the hammer. After that any serial spammers would be given a personal invitation through sitemail to clean up their stuff. If they didn't clean it up then their ability to edit and/or upload images would be suspended until they cleaned up their act. I think they mentioned that the images would be removed from searches as well but I'm not sure.

The announcement was made a month or so ago. I don't know that any attempt to clean up the spam will help. First the reviewers and wiki editors are well known for removing relevant keywords from images. Secondly, there are several important contributors over there with seriously spammed portfolios.

I gave up on worrying about trying to wiki files after I realized that without a serious consequence the spamming would never stop. It's not that big of an inconvenience to add the removed words back in and that is really the only current consequence of getting caught.

Refusing to honor your contract 4 times and openly stating that you intended to never honor that contract? Yes that is grounds to stop doing business with someone.

You will need to check to your facts about Bobby's termination. I have not seen anything from FT stating that his contract was terminated solely because of a post made here. There was mention by FT that Bobby had been name calling for some time, and that is evidenced in this forum. Bobby has posted that he was never banned from the FT forums (yahoo group) so I'm not sure where you are getting that info from.  Chad has posted that Bobby was warned about the name calling.

Unless you have seen the written contract termination notice from FT to Bobby you have no real knowledge of why they choose to terminate the contract.

You can't find the words here because of the automatic censor. See page 4 of this thread were Leaf asks about "E". The actual cursing aside, Bobby posts in page 3 that he was hadn't uploaded in 3 months as a protest against subs. He also posts that FT has a greedy management team and that he will stop uploading to FT permanently. On page 4 he mentions that he has boycotted FT by not uploading 3 previous times. He then goes on to say that Chad called him and told him that FT  has decided to remove his account. Also on page 4 Bobby posts that email Oleg (?) personally and told them that FT was greedy and was participating in a "Bait and Switch" scheme. In another post he states that he "always had an earful for them" and goes on to say:

"I am also sure that they expect that the news of me getting tossed will have a cowering effect on the masses but personally I am hoping that the masses in this industry are smart enough to realize that if they continue to lay down and take this type of treatment from AGENTS that WORK FOR THEM then it will not be long before the masses are so downtrodden by these greed driven tyrants that the masses will be little more then indentured servants to the masters in the eyes of the agents. Hell they are already treating us as such as it is."

This statement erroneous in that FT is not an agent and they do not work for contributors. The comments about FT being "greed driven tryants" and referring them to them as "Masters" and contributors as "indutured servants" could be considered libel. He further encourages a libel charge in his next post were he states:

"This was not about keeping up with competition it was about keeping up with an executives high standard of living. Nothing more nothing less. It was motivated purely by greed."

His next post on page states the comment again, after bragging about having the home phone numbers of several MS CEO's, about how this was only done to line the pockets of FT's admin. He also refers to FT as unethical and continues to refer to them as a agency, which they are not.

He follows this up by claiming that he spearheaded the fight against subscriptions and another fight at StockXpert. He goes on to say:

"What I love is that Oleg and Chad think they have silenced me but the truth is that they have actually given me voice. They have already done the worst to me thay can do, as long as I play by the rules from here forward there is really nothing else they can hit me with.

I wonder how they are going to respond to my request for an Audit?
or to my demands for continuation of payments for referral sales from Emerald level photographers I referred to them that they are still obligated to pay me for the next 2 years? Yea the referral program had no mandatory tie to a contributor account I do believe that regardless of their desire to cease doing business with me they have no legal ground on which they can wiothold those earnings."

Was he accusing FT of mishandling his royalties? This could be considered a libelous and defamatory statement by FT as well.  

In other forums Bobby has used the terms "greedy *insult removed*" and stated that FT was "raping" their contributors.

FT is not beholding to their contributors and free speech comes with responsibility. Regardless of if the curse words were used or not the statements by Bobby listed above are enough for me to determine that his removal from FT was over more than just one post in an open forum. When you go back and read all of his posts in this thread you'll see that he refers to himself as being in the "top 50" and having a direct line to all the micros CEO's. In my opinion Bobby felt that he was to important to the micros for them to remove him so he would threaten to stop uploading anytime he wasn't happy with something. FT got tired of the game after the 4th threat to stop uploading and decided that they were done playing.

Several others have made comments in this forum, the yahoo group and on FT's forums that were critical of the rank change. But only Bobby, as far as I know, has been removed from the site. I know of no one who was banned from their forums over a single post. As I said before I believe that this particular case goes far past a single post and is based on a history of behaviour.

Please do not take what I am about to say as being in any way supportive of FT recent decision to change their ranking system. I do feel that this was not handled as well as it should have been but FT 's Terms and Conditions do cover this situation. If you don't agree with it the T&C clearly states how to proceed.

I will not sign the petition. First of all FT clearly stated that anyone speaking out against them may be removed from their forums and / or their website. They have not hidden this fact and it is actually listed in the T&C under section 4. Secondly, the petition clearly states that Bobby was "fired". For Bobby to have been fired he would have to be an employee of FT. He is not. He is a supplier and independent contractor. Lastly, I will not sign a petition that the petition writer will not or can not sign. How much will FT really care about a letter that is written by someone who is not a contributor to FT?

I doubt that anyone is happy about the ranking changes, but creating petitions without thinking them through is not going to solve any problems. When you signed up you agreed to play by their rules.

The official word from Matt at FT is that the new ranks are correct. They've decided to change them. If you already earned the rank then you will keep it because you met the requirements at the time that you earned it.

So no one will be going backwards but it will take more to go forward.