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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
3601
« on: March 07, 2014, 14:06 »
I took a look on GettyImages to get an idea of which third of their images they're allowing users to embed (35 million of about 105 million was what one article stated). It now seems to me that being embeddable means Getty considers you the "low rent district" - if you look at the hover previews for an image you will see the </> icon at the end of the row for images that are embeddable, so you can quickly scan results to see what is. Having noticed that things like National Geographic were excluded and Flickr included, I started with their Collections page http://www.gettyimages.com/creativeimages/imagecollectionAnd saw that huge chunks of the creative stuff is not embeddable - Rubber Ball, Digital Vision, Tetra, Images Bazaar, Dorling Kindersley, Yuri Arcurs, Blend Images, Ingram, But Vetta, E+, Flickr are embeddable. Photodisc is interesting in that only a portion are embeddable and it appears that the search (not for a term but browsing the collection) puts all the embeddable images up front - half way through page 4 the images are no longer embeddable (I only spot checked a few pages after that, so there could be something I missed) http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?p=image&family=creative&contractUrl=1&b=PDI#4My assumption is that they're only taking a risk (offering for free) with things they don't value very much anyway...
3602
« on: March 07, 2014, 11:01 »
this is on the front page of CNN right now-
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/06/tech/social-media/getty-free-pictures/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Love all the comments under the article. Backlash!
Some gems! I love the one that begins "Getty is legal organized crime..." And there's a tale that if accurate shows them in a most unflattering light - Getty sent a demand letter for use of images that a thief had uploaded to Getty; even after the photographer won his lawsuit against Getty they haven't paid him: "Getty is also one of the largest bringer of lawsuits against websites. Charging individuals or businesses with such that the images they're using may or may not be legal property of Getty. A client I did some photography work for wanted images for her site in 04. Since I designed the site, creating all the images and graphics for the site said images and graphics were intellectual property between the client and I. In 2009, Getty sent my company a letter threatening a lawsuit if we did not pay them for using said work. They said the images they were referring to were a client of theirs they were representing. After a year of legal roundabout we proved the work was ours. It seems someone had copied some of our work and presented it as their own. We sued Getty in late 09 and the lawsuit is still pending because of Getty refusing to pay up. Since they brought the original lawsuit they are liable for every single penny we spent fighting them. So in late early 2012 we sued Getty for theft of our work. For some odd reason they still had our work listed in their catalog. We won the lawsuit last year and Getty has yet to pay."
3603
« on: March 07, 2014, 10:10 »
Lovely!
3604
« on: March 07, 2014, 01:17 »
Shutterstock responds:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/shutterstock-ceo-on-deals-getty-house-of-cards-cyB75o52SvOE2B8lFo4GlQ.html
Among some other things, after being asked about Getty near the end he says:
"Committed to making sure...our contributors continue to get paid." 
He sidestepped the Getty Free Image topic like a seasoned politician.
I noticed that Like so many US TV interviewers, there's no follow up or push back to try and get the guest to answer the question, which is a bit disappointing. It would be so nice to see someone take a swing at Getty over this scheme, but I can see why it's probably wiser for Shutterstock's CEO not to do that.
3605
« on: March 06, 2014, 20:49 »
I enquired about the right click problem in Getty's own forums and received a reply that right click will shortly be disabled.
That's largely pointless. Anyone with more than two seconds experience in putting together web pages (i.e. bloggers) will likely know how to find the image by looking at the browser source.
3606
« on: March 06, 2014, 18:50 »
Trust is earned. If you violate a person's trust - as Getty has just done - they won't get it back because they say that we're overreacting - or that we should wait and see.
Emphasis mine. This isn't the first time Getty has messed around with contributors and violated trust. About the only difference this time is that they announced it versus with the Getty Google deal it was kept quiet until contributors uncovered it. Anyone who takes Getty at their word today is willfully ignoring years of outrageous behavior, including the Getty Google deal, the 2011 contract changes for Getty Images contributors where if folks didn't like it they were told they could quit Getty entirely, the royalty cuts at just about everywhere - including those at PumpAudio where they wrote to contributors and said they'd now be getting 35% instead of 50% because they needed money for marketing. And let's not forget the 2009/2010 grandfathering of cannister-based royalty levels plus the program to entice folks to become exclusive - and giving them 6 months past the deadline so those at DT could let their waiting period expire. That was up in August 2010 and in September they announced the train wreck that was the RC system where royalties were no longer tied to lifetime downloads. Getty will say or do anything to get what it wants and change whatever it feels it needs to regardless of who gets hurt or left in the lurch. Take a risk and continue to supply them if it suits you, but for heavens sake don't ignore their sad track record and be surprised when things change (not to photographers' benefit) down the road.
3608
« on: March 06, 2014, 14:10 »
Very true Mike, Alamy clawed back 10% royalties to fun their New York office.
The bigger sin is that they apparently weren't able to boost their business in the US or creative all that much (compare their Alexa rankings to Shutterstock's) with the money they appropriated. If they had succeeded, I'd have said good for Alamy
3609
« on: March 06, 2014, 12:18 »
3610
« on: March 06, 2014, 10:30 »
The negatives about this - assuming they can find buyers who aren't purchasing elsewhere already - would be if contributors have no opt out. You'd then be forced to compete with yourself if you sell elsewhere (where it's highly likely you'd make more money than you'd make via Getty).
As the only images iStock has of mine are those I can't sell elsewhere anyway, I'm not fussed. But if I were an exclusive who had a thriving print presence elsewhere already, I'd be pretty miffed I think
3611
« on: March 05, 2014, 23:09 »
Getty should be ashamed of the 'free to use' posts that are proliferating across twitter.
I have to stop looking at Twitter - it makes me feel sick And I hope Getty gets badly burned by this shameful giveaway of what's not theirs to give away. I just hope they don't take us all down with them
3612
« on: March 05, 2014, 21:15 »
I don't pay for the Chrome Browser but it's not free either And I read my newspaper online but I pay for it - because I want to keep reading the New York Times which means somehow journalists need to be paid. The big issue here is that (a) Getty doesn't own what it's giving away and (b) that it's not clear that the people who do own it will actually see other sales to replace the ones they lose - and yes, I've found many of my images used - paid for - on blogs
3614
« on: March 05, 2014, 19:45 »
...But IMHO - SS, being the most technically advanced of these agencies, will come up with the slipperiest ways to monetize our images while making only token royalty payments.
I've been fussing about the lack of transparency in the SOD licenses since they started it - they will not tell us what the buyer is getting or paying for the amount we receive. It could be a great deal or a crappy one, but we have no way to judge. It is definitely a concern. When Shutterstock first introduced extended licenses we received $20 of $40 and they have since decreased our share of totals even though the royalty is now $28. They clearly have an interest in increasing their share of the gross wherever possible http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/shutterstock-pricing/msg47584/#msg47584(I was jsnover in an earlier life here). A number of people have raised questions about the Facebook deal and whether there were fees paid to SS that contributors saw no part of. The big difference thus far is that Getty has shafted its contributors over and over again whereas there's just a worry about Shutterstock doing the same if it gets big and powerful enough
3615
« on: March 05, 2014, 19:35 »
Naw, encouraging people to freely use content with no cost is just dumb.
Think about the chess game from Getty's point of view. They see their "real" business as the high end images at high prices. Microstock was an irritant that they hoped would go away, then they hoped they could buy into. Having totally mismanaged their acquisition - and the only worse management of microstock by an old-line agency is Corbis with SnapVillage (to me always known as CrapHamlet, a moniker I wish I'd thought up). Other competitors who they thought they could push out of the way innovated while Getty just tried to hold on to the old line businesses and minimize the impact of microstock on their earnings. So now having failed to put Shutterstock on the ropes with Thinkstock, they're looking for another way to demolish the competition. If Getty (erroneously) thinks that the bread and butter of their competitors is bloggers and small non commercial uses in high volumes, they could imagine that by giving away what the competitor sells they can deliver a real blow to earnings while leaving their own high-end uses untouched. Think of all the other cases where a deep-pocketed company has tried to undo competition by giving away what the competitor used to charge for http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/browserwars.htmlI think Getty misunderstands its competition, particularly Shutterstock, so I'm not sure this tactic would work even if it become popular - Shutterstock's going after Getty's bread and butter and I would imagine is now big enough not to fold under a little pressure. I also think it's highly unlikely that Getty will make this embedding process easy and appealing for bloggers to use and that's a must if this initiative is to succeed. If past is prologue, their existing software doesn't bode well for simplicity and ease of use for bloggers.
3617
« on: March 05, 2014, 18:38 »
Not sure if what they say is the real reason or if they're just trying to cut off a the knees all the licenses sold via other agencies for blog and other editorial use.
And the lack of an opt out shows they know that the people who created the images won't be happy with this.
And if there are any fees paid, I'll bet it will be for use of their embed player meaning Getty gets all the money and photographers zip.
The are such slime.
Our best hope is that the embed player is a pain in the butt to use and people don't want to deal with it and keep licensing blog sizes from other agencies.
I do agree that it's a problem when one user licenses an image and then their blog is picked up by others who also get the image with the story and it's never paid for on the additional uses. I don't think this embed player is the right solution though
3618
« on: March 05, 2014, 16:57 »
CanStockPhoto noob question - does one need to apply to be included in the fotosearch results?
I see that some of you claim that they get high royalties from fotosearch, so I went to their site (thinking they are the partner/owner of CanStockPhoto) and searched for my images, but none came up.
I don't think you need to do anything. On fotosearch you are the "Value Images", not "Premium"; I think they update every so often, not in real time (but I don't know how often). Your CanStock image number with a k prefix appears to be the coding and you can search by number so you might try that?
3619
« on: March 05, 2014, 15:51 »
If I had a time machine, then I'd probably go back and build an agency. It would have been a lot easier to build a fair paying competitor back then.
I'd hold up CanStock as a counter example - they just limp along at the bottom but they started in 2004 with a great idea about being fair to photographers.
But Canstock was sold long ago, wasn't it? And that's where you make your money. Start an agency and sell it with six noughts on the price a few years later.
It was sold to Fotosearch in 2008:: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/11/prweb1603934.htmBut Fotosearch is a bigger limper than Canstock! Alexa ranking of 15,183 / 7,882 versus Canstock's 3,636 / 2,027. Unlike Getty's acquisition of iStock, I can't see how Fotosearch wrecked a rising star - they just haven't helped them in any obvious way. Other than some illustrators doing well there (I suspect because vectors are dirt cheap), I don't think anyone makes much at CanStock
3620
« on: March 05, 2014, 14:11 »
The downside of submitting very widely is that you then have to track the antics of so many sites - and read the threads about abusive partnership deals at various agencies, most recently Deposit Photos, but that's by far not the only one.
When you consider very small income and the possibility that they could hurt your income at sites where you actually earn something decent, I leave the proven bottom feeders off. It is good to try a new site once in a while - but even there one can get burned (go look at Albumo for a case study, for just one example).
Specifically, I'd stay away from any site where you can't delete your own images any time you want - that way you know you can bail if it turns out they're not the nice folks you thought they were. Low payers need to have simple uploading, reasonable prices, prompt payment, low payout threshold, named owners, preferably with an address that isn't a PO Box, no special requirements (I recall some new sites trying to say files should have certain naming conventions and such) and a web site that isn't an embarrassment to your work (we've seen cheap copies of existing sites, English that would embarrass a kindergartner and search that looks like random image delivery).
3621
« on: March 05, 2014, 13:56 »
If I had a time machine, then I'd probably go back and build an agency. It would have been a lot easier to build a fair paying competitor back then.
I'd hold up CanStock as a counter example - they just limp along at the bottom but they started in 2004 with a great idea about being fair to photographers. Higher prices and a 50/50 split. Problem was that in spite of building a good site and being innovative with features - they were the first to have image zoom and had a great stacking feature to group images from a series in search results (user controllable) - they never got the marketing right and have been beaten by just about everyone else. Duncan (who started CanStock) is a great guy; but being fair and being in the game early hasn't done CanStock any good at all. And back to the original question, I'd say that 2010 was a great year (I've been doing this since the fall of 2004). On the other hand I don't much care to look back as I don't see it helping me earn income in 2014. But if I had a time machine, I'd go back to 2006 and stop Bruce Livingstone from selling iStock to Getty Images. Have a read of how things looked to Bruce in early 2006 and think about how Getty has since destroyed everything he hoped to build up: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=159Not quite sure how I'd talk him out of it, but if I've built a time machine, I'm sure I could figure that part out
3622
« on: March 04, 2014, 17:33 »
It was Getty that decided they wanted Sean as a competitor ... rather than one of their most successful contributors. Now they are reaping what they sowed.
Can you imagine iStock repeatedly tweeting something similar to what Sean tweeted if Stocksy were to experience downtime?
It's hard, right?
If they had something to offer customers - like a coupon for your first purchase on iStock - I don't see how that's different from competitive upgrades which are offered all the time. You get the upgrade price on Adobe Illustrator if you're a Corel Draw user. Netflix ran an ad recently mocking Amazon's drone prototype, and then there are all the I'm a Mac I'm a PC ads - it's not at all out of line to use a competitor's misfortune or idiotic eff ups to step in and swipe a customer or two It's not as if Sean gate crashed a private party or started telling everyone that iStock's IT was among the worst on the planet, or Lobo.....
3623
« on: March 04, 2014, 16:23 »
Somehow hashtags in French seem cuter - from a customer via Twitter "iStock est down. #joie"
3625
« on: March 04, 2014, 16:09 »
... but StockXpert is still around? What's the point?
I think it is only for the back end function of paying contributors. They don't want to/can't/are afraid to try to come up with some sort of connector to track and pay for the Hemera (StockXpert) content that's on Thinkstock. Clunky as it is, they can use the old code to avoid breaking things introducing new code. For those who weren't around then, StockXpert was acquired by Jupiter Images and StockXpert content was later included in subscriptions on photos.com and JIunlimited. SockXpert contributors were paid via their StockXpert account. When Getty acquired Jupiter and then decided to start Thinkstock, all the Jupiter properties contributed to Thinkstock. Then Getty closed StockXpert as a sales site or way to contribute, but left all the files there to keep them on Thinkstock.
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