I don't buy this - I understand it, but it's just not relevant to the royalties we should be paid. The fact that you weren't up front with this arrangement suggests something less than fair, reasonable and ethical - why wasn't this all spelled out in the royalty chart and contributor agreement?

I don't want to argue the details of the costs of the two sites because I don't have the data to do so, however I do not want to participate in these operations where one company gets two bites of the buyer's money before I get any. I want to opt my images out of this deal - I'm already opted out of the API partner deals.

I would suggest that you offer an opt out in the UI so that contributors can know what's going on and choose what to do. If you can't do that, I want my images removed in whatever way you can - I can remove them, but I'd rather not do that if there's something less drastic that can be done.

Switching away from a flat 50% royalty was the first profit-fattening move 123rf made. Now this secret arrangement to bypass the partner opt out and take two chunks out of the image price before paying contributors is a second profit-fattening move. I can see why you like it, but can't you see why the people who create what you sell feel shortchanged and abused by this?

I left BigStock when they refused to let me opt out of lowball subs (I wasn't in the bridge program). Fotolia refused to have me back when I left exclusivity. I'm with PhotoDune but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone new

I received a reply from support about the 18 cent royalty for an LEL. It was a special deal - a free trial subscription-like package for one client with a limited scope of uses. Apparently both of us with those sales had them from the same client.

Given that this isn't a generally available deal and the license scope was more limited than RF, I'm OK with it. I think they need a different column for reporting "extended" licenses that are actually reduced scope licenses. Royalty Free plus something isn't the same as Royalty Free minus something.

I have opted out of distribution deals everywhere that I can - including 123rf. My images are at Inmagine in the "value" collection. I read the Google translation of your article (a bit rough but one can get the gist) - thanks for posting a link to it.

I'm going to contact 123rf support to request that either they pay me 45% (my rate) of the Inmagine sale price or remove my files from Inmagine.

This is beyond scummy and the fact that there are two corporate entities involved only gives them legal protection from this being fraud. It's despicable and immoral behavior.

They should be ashamed of themselves for (a) not notifying contributors that their work will appear on other sites owned by 123rf even if they opt out of partner sales, (b) posting information about the royalty rate sharing in the earnings chart on the site, and (c) not offering an explicit opt out in the UI

Shame on you 123rf

I'm leaving the files I have there as sales are steady, if not all that high in volume, but I don't upload there any more.

Earlier this year I submitted a batch of images (30 or so I think) and I believe only 2 or three were accepted. I've no idea what the rejection reasons were as there's no record of that on the site. It's irrelevant anyway - Shutterstock is selling them and PhotoDune isn't. Shutterstock can sell over 20x what PhotoDune does in a month, so if I were to use a yardstick as to whose reviewers to try and cater to...

Any agency is entitled to set whatever standards they want to, but if, at some point, you wonder why some people don't enter your contests or don't upload any more you might take a look at your reviewing process as one of the factors.

In Google Image Search, I have files at #3, #5, #11 and #12 for "Iceberg in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland"

All it proves is that the title and description should be relevant. It doesn't prove that their stupid story about the 'adorable' boy building a sandcastle and the dog knocking it down has done anything to improve its position.

Added: doesn't Google take into account your previous searches when serving you up results? So what I get and what someone else gets could be very different.

5, 11, 13, 28 are the positions I see for that image search - and I've never done it before - FWIW.

You will have to send the offending sites a DMCA takedown notice. There isn't anywhere to report this unless you are exclusive to one site

And I still don't have a reply - I sent a followup too, just in case the first e-mail was "lost" somehow. Nothing.

Is it some sort of extended holiday in Malaysia (which is I think where all the contributor support answers used to come from even though they have sales offices elsewhere)? I realize that the silence for lbogdan from October 3rd would mean an extremely long holiday

I used the Contact us form and selected Photographer for the type; I did get the automated e-mail when I checked the box to get an e-mail copy of my submission. Has that way of contacting them been replaced and they just didn't update the web site?

Or put another way, has any contributor sent in a support ticket in October and received an answer? If so, how did you submit your ticket?

I think the better way to approach this is to submit as editorial. Why take a risk of legal action and big hassles (I assume you don't have a model release and couldn't get one) for what earnings you might make shooting stock?

Even if you cloned out the flames (which you shouldn't do if you go the editorial route), there's a good chance the subject would recognize the workplace and their gear and get miffed about this being used without their permission. They don't have to prevail in a lawsuit to cause you expense and grief. Just not worth it, IMO.

The iStock links already give a 404 error - that was quick

Nice catch

I don't yet have a reply (except for the automated receipt notice), but in the past they've been good about replying to support tickets. I'll post here when I hear back from them - it would not be good news if they've stopped responding, so I'm hoping you have some sort of e-mail problem that's behind the apparent silence.

It would be good if sites had on-side records of open, and closed, support tickets so they could be viewed online. No one has that (iStock is close but they delete links to closed tickets from the UI)

Another LEL for only $0.18. Such a shame....

I make 0.324 cents for a subscription sale, so I wondered if it would be possible to see an 18 cent royalty on anything, but sure enough, when looking back through the LELs for this year I found one at 18 cents (the others were from 2.984 to 9.00 which seems more reasonable).

At the 45% royalty rate (which I'm at) and the prior promise that for the purpose of calculating royalties, 40 cents would be the minimum per-credit price used, 18 cents is the smallest royalty possible on a 1 credit sale. And some buyer is getting some type of extended license for that?

It's been a while since any 123rf staff stopped by here, but I think I'm going to write to support about my 18 cent royalty on an LEL because that just seems wrong.