That's a very "tasty" picture indeed. I think that finding a high-quality photo on the Internet is kind of risky especially due to copyrights complaints. I'm also looking for a stock photo service for my blog, with legal nice looking images, at affordable price. Recently I found YAYimages.com with an incredible streaming feature too. What do you guys think?

Yay's streaming isn't going to be much of a hit with those of us who sell

Out of curiosity, what do you think is an affordable blog image price?

Thanks for posting the response you received.

I think it's 100% inadequate and I don't think Fiverr has to prove anything. At a very minimum, just as a start, they might try doing the things Envato did a while back - writing detailed instructions for contributors on what is and isn't OK.

I haven't signed up with Fiverr, but I looked around the site, forums and help and they don't seem to have anything that tells people posting gigs that they must own the rights to the things they sell and warning them about account closures if they violate the rules.

Fiverr is making ZERO effort to educate the sellers about copyright, resale rights, etc. for images and illustrations. I'm betting that there is nothing like the "I own the copyright" statement that stock contributors have to agree to with all uploads for gig posters to agree to.

If Fiverr wants to be a legitimate market place for stock images and illustrations, they need to make an effort to make it very clear to contributors of gigs that they have a zero tolerance policy for offering items the gig poster has no right to sell, and that anything obtained from any stock agency NEVER has resale rights and so must not be posted in any gig.

I saw a lot of media coverage listed on the Fiverr web site. I wonder if we could get some of those outlets to be interested in a "great idea headed for oblivion because they won't tackle the thieves on the streetcorners of their virtual neighborhood" story?

If Fiverr put half the effort into dealing with this that they do into making excuses as to why nothing can be done we might get somewhere.

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/449273561086435328

So this morning's find was this scumbucket who's offering three different artist's work in his samples:

gig

http://www.fiverr.com/mazgiti/provide-a-killer-30-healthcare-stock-photos

Photos on Shutterstock (the dentist one isn't right but it's the same artist and models)

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-137658929/stock-photo-smiling-asian-medical-doctor-and-senior-woman.html
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-131366687/stock-photo-two-young-sporty-women-run-on-machine-in-the-gym-centre.html
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-163217636/stock-photo-little-girl-sitting-in-the-dentists-office.html

Two Russian and one Japanese photographer and the gig guy is in Morocco - offering other 30 for $5 deals

http://www.fiverr.com/mazgiti

There is no way he's legit - this crap about it could the gig owners own work doesn't fly. I can't file DMCA as none of it's my work.

But I tweeted again this morning

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/449229625801990144

Sergey Nivens' work is on a ton of sites. Even though I know these works aren't the product of the sleeze who's selling them, who can force  a takedown? If the agency can't show the works came from them, perhaps they can't even do it?

I don't know any of these folks to have a quick way to contact them - as the copyright holder they don't have to prove where they came from for a DMCA notice.

I guess just trying to persuade buyers to stay away from Fiverr is the best bet...

...Copyright makes sense for a limited time, but it shouldn't be a perpetual/in perpetuity source of income for an entire family line. 10 years, maybe 20, great. Whatever we have now is more than enough, it should be less.

If an artist wants to release their work as public domain they always have that option. But during an artist's lifetime to say that they no longer have ownership and control over their work seems completely crazy to me. No one would ever be able to sustain themselves making art if that were the case?

You could possibly argue about extension of copyright after the artist's death.

If you don't believe in any type of property ownership - land or buildings or anything else, then saying artists can't own their created works would fit in nicely. But if you don't want me to come and take bits of your home and pull up flowers from your garden, think about how that is different from suggesting that people who write, paint, take pictures, etc. should not own the rights in what they make?

When I went to bed last night (West Coast US) I had no sales for yesterday (March 25th) which seemed very odd. This morning I see a credit sale that supposedly happened Mar 25 at 9:15 am and I'm almost certain that my balance went up from what I saw last night. So they are much more behind in reports than the usual minutes or an hour or two.

For those of you on the fence over whether or not to participate at Macrografiks I can tell you that FA is the best agency owner I have ever dealt with....very open to suggestions, very respective of contributors, and very fair in submission selections. ...
Time for us to migrate away from the corporate greed of the likes of iStock and others and support the 'little' guy.

I agree in principle but I looked at the Pinterest board. Looks just like Stocksy and I can guarantee that if that's what they really want, they'll hate my work. So then they'll go after those people who produce Stocksy work - which might be hard 'cause anyone who can do that will be with Stocksy.

I am still with GL Stock - small outfit and fair royalties - although the sales have been very anemic, at least for me. I'm in the process of dropping Veer (crappy partner situation with no opt out). I would put my images on a torrent site before I'd give them to Deposit Photos.

I'm very open to a serious new site - if Stockbo finally gets their metadata reading problems fixed I'll give them a shot perhaps. I can't see my work fitting in with Micrografiks view of their future though.

Just got mail from Fiverr, how nice to promote "Bank of shutterstock" by logovala.

That's a doozy isn't it - it's one of the gigs I mentioned in my blog as it was so flagrant. When I reported a different gig to Shutterstock I mentioned that there were others, so I hope their compliance department will shut this doofus down soon.

It really does make it hard to take Fiverr seriously as an ethical business - when they're promoting one of these image thieves.

With all of the rampant copyright violations on FAA why would any one sell digital files though their licensing program?

It would be like throwing raw meat to a pack of wild dogs!

I'm not for one second defending all the bad behavior that goes on at FAA, but you could say the same about most of the stock agencies.

We have had numerous examples of thieves uploading work that wasn't theirs or was a composite of a little bit of theirs and something they bought from another contributor and then used in violation of the license terms. I continue to sell my work in spite of the imperfections in handling thieves.

I haven't always been thrilled with the rather low energy or slow response the agencies have made to reports about violations, but for the most part they do at least acknowledge their responsibilities. The concern about FAA is that, like Fiverr, they want to suggest that these violations aren't their issue.

http://www.fiverr.com/clickadv/send-you-10-high-quality-stock-photos-or-illustration

This "gig" actually uses a screen grab of SS in the listing - how much more clear can someone be that they don't own the images and yet Fiverr needs someone to report them?

I'm going to report this one to Shutterstock - possibly they can turn up the heat on this outfit.

And this guy doesn't mention Shutterstock, but uses their home page to make his purpose clear

http://www.fiverr.com/vlad56/sent-you-20-stock-photos-you-pick-at-stock-photos-website

Perhaps we need a bumper sticker like the one this blogger uses to express his loathing for bike thieves

http://www.plattyjo.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-bike-thieves-and-what-to-do-if-your-bicycle-is-stolen/

So I was thinking about this - including the sad sack response from Fiverr - and it reminded me most of a fence. The stock in trade of a fence is to claim ignorance of where the goods came from and obviously, to stay in business, the fence has to have willing buyers - people who will turn a blind eye to the below market prices and buy anyway.

I did some searches to see what I could find about how law enforcement dealt with fences and if there had been any attempts to publicly shame the purchasers who are part of the reason the market exists. Couple of interesting thoughts came out of these articles I found.

One is that as a seller, being offered goods at a ridiculously low price was sufficient to impute knowledge that the goods were stolen:

http://www.lacriminaldefenseattorney.com/Legal-Dictionary/F/FA-FIRE/Fence.aspx

When someone offers 50 stock images for $5, that's a ridiculously low price even by subscription standards (and you have to sign up for a $249 subscription at SS to get images at 33 cents each which would still put the 50 images at over $16)

Places like Fiveerr that want to hide behind the "user generated content" smokescreen seem to suggest that they have no responsibility at all for what their marketplace participants do - beyond taking down items if anyone can prove they're not legit. But again, that seems to be an issue in the fencing of physical goods too - trying to conceal origins of items and mix legitimate goods in with the stolen stuff:

http://www.popcenter.org/problems/stolen_goods/

http://www.academia.edu/465485/How_Prolific_Thieves_Sell_Stolen_Goods_Describing_Understanding_and_Tackling_the

And with respect to the eventual buyers being responsible for the continuation of thefts, there's this quote from the first article above

"Generally, the demand for stolen goods increases the incidence of theft. This makes sense because, for the most part, thieves won't steal goods unless they first know or believe other people will buy or trade for them. General awareness that many business owners and members of the wider public are willing to buy stolen goods motivates thieves to start and continue stealing"

So I guess that a campaign to highlight that:

* too-good-to-be-true-prices probably mean the work is stolen
* buying from an established agency or the artist him/her self is the safe route
* don't buy anything else from marketplaces that allow probably-stolen work to be sold because you're supporting an e-fence

I think EmberMike's idea is the right one, but I'm not sure the graphic goes far enough. It's not just about being fair to artists - that's the fight with Getty and other agencies that are legit but don't pay us reasonably for our work. It's a pitch to buyers that it's wrong to turn a blind eye to impossibly low prices when it's likely stolen work.

Sue, Yes i have read all that but the ASA does not clearly state what they summarize in the above. 

Please extract from the ASA where it clearly states a submitter cannot shoot RF for other agencies.

The restrictions are in section 1c, where you appoint iStock your exclusive agent for content defined in section 2, Provision of Exclusive Content, section a. Except for the excluded types of work listed in section 2a(1) through 2a(5). The wiggle room would be if you could get them to make an agreement on content that wouldn't be exclusive (2a(5)) - I assume that's how Yuri and the other non-exclusive exclusives got their deal.

Yes, if you're selling the image as RF. You are exclusive for that medium (photos, for example) for all RF sales.