...But given that Shutterstock is primarily a subscription company...

I think that's an outdated view of them, especially when you consider revenue breakdown over the last year or so. About 40% of the revenue is coming from subs. I think you're seeing a transition into something other than just a low price subs agency.

I'm not concerned about unwatermarked comps as long as SS is keeping a watchful eye out for abuses of the system.

This made me smile :  what if I made a list of my 10 crappiest, out of focus, noisiest photos on DP, and listed them here on MSG, so people with some free time could buy them, and ask their money back     Childish?  yeah, I know, but fun!

Fun, but given the company in question, risky.

Given their track record of being - how to put it politely - economical with the truth, who's to say that the money back guarantee is any more solid than the hand picked curated collection of high quality noise free images?

...i will not support subscription sites of any sort. i am in this for the long term, not a quick buck. where do you stand?

So do you only sell direct? Even Getty Images forced contract changes on its contributors that included work being sent - at Getty's discretion - to Thinkstock (i.e. subscription sales).

I would have agreed with you in 2008 and that was in part behind my decision to go exclusive at iStock but Getty's wretched behavior in removing so many contributor controls - culminating in the terrible deal with Google - rendered that a non-option for me.

If those of you who sell via niche outlets want subscriptions to stop, then perhaps coming up with some alternative that works for those of us currently "supporting" the subscription model would be in your best interests?

Generally you decry what the rest of us are doing without offering any real alternatives. Which is why I think people interpret what you're saying to mean we should all just stop selling so you can go back to the way things were.

...The only reason I uploaded to them in the first place was that, like many others, was asked privately by them to join in return for "favored" positioning.

And that was where they lost me. We can't all be favored - everyone's above average!

That promise was a negative on two fronts from my perspective - one was that it was truly unsustainable (versus the unfortunate use of that term by the Getty fabrication machine); the other was that it was anti-buyer. A search should be delivering the most useful results to the buyer if the site is to do well long term.

I had given some thoughts to reconsidering my position - given the ever changing landscape of one flavor of turmoil or another - but DP's response to this situation, even more than the scummy deal itself, has led me to conclude that this is an outfit I could not give my content to.

We always worry about trusting agencies, but DP has scored an own goal in showing their ethics very plainly for us to see. At this point even if they offered an opt out for all off-site sales I'm not sure I'd trust them to abide by that - Sean's content is still on Shotshop this morning...

Cool video. About the only thing I didn't like at all from 2013 was the BigStock subscriptions (or rather that they didn't let contributors opt out given the crappy royalties paid). I don't know what I think of offset and skillfeed because I have no clue how they're doing - anyone who contributes to either of them have a view on that?

Other than a slight nervousness at how big and dominant SS is becoming (because that often leads to treating suppliers badly) I'm very happy with how they are operating and growing.

So =http://www.jupiterimages.com/Jupiter Images and Punchstock are also closing - May 30th - but they're transferring to Getty Images mother ship, not Thinkstock. Starting March 4th users can log in to Getty and their lightboxes will be transferred

There used to be a higher-end subscription service (versus photos.com) called JupiterImagesUnlimited, but the links to subscriptions just go straight to Thinkstock, so I guess that went away a while back.

As the FAQ on both sites says that the sites will be shutting down March 4, I don't know what the May 30th date on the home page is about.

And then clipart.com just keeps rolling along. Why they don't shut that place is a mystery. The front page says it works with ImageReady - discontinued in 2007 and the testimonials page has comments that reference ArtToday (the prior name that changed in 2002!). The help section is full of outdated instructions for systems that no longer work that way - looks as if nothing is updated there.

So Getty Images, iStock, Thinkstock and clipart.com will be the new Getty lineup? Is there anything else? The stockxpert site is still there for former contributors to log in - no notes about that going away.

http://inventures.eu/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-and-100m

and a number of BBB complaints

http://www.bbb.org/south-east-florida/business-reviews/photo-processing-centers/depositphotos-in-fort-lauderdale-fl-90028035/complaints

I have 2 photos added to this collection. Let's see how this goes.

I do hope this brings you lots of new sales - as the old saying goes, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good"

Well, it sounds like most people who are complaining are being opted out.  Is it a case of just screwing up, over malevolence?

Obviously I don't have any information on how this came about, but when you are so careless and haphazard with your operations that this sort of thing can happen, plus, when it's first noticed, instead of expressing dismay over the screw up and apologizing profusely, you send out weasel worded, cut and paste e-mails, it looks to me as if ethical practices are an afterthought at best. What you do when you're caught and face consequences.

If you set up shop as a stock image agency, you have a number of obligations towards your contributors that you could reasonably be expected to fulfill. As an example, that you didn't leave full size images easily accessible and thus available to download for free; not allowing employees to use the images without paying for them, and so on. Even if you do not act as the contributor's agent (in the legal sense) in these transactions, the disregard for contributor interests is pretty despicable, even if it was thoughtless. At some point, enough thoughtlessness becomes de facto malevolence in my book

Let me be clear on the outrage...  DP has a 'partner' or 'reseller' API like many other sites.  Getty, DT, etc.  People are angry because when their image gets licensed at X site for whatever price, DP is only paying the contributor a subscription sale?

Is there actually anything in the legal somewhere that clarifies what images sold through re distributors is supposed to net?  Like, at Getty, you have no idea what the content is sold for on a partner, but still you only get 20% of what Getty gets, which could be $.10....

I can only offer virtual outrage, but I think it's unethical to offer a partner opt out and then claim the reseller API isn't the same and that's why images were included; I think it's also unethical to tell a new contributor (you) the images would only be on deposit photos own site and then they're elsewhere (and they still are today, BTW); I think it's highly unethical to play silly buggers with how the contributor is compensated for a reseller API sale - if it's sold as an individual item, not as a subscription, then that's how the contributor should be paid

I think that every site should offer an opt out - where no means no - for contributors who do not want to participate in these money-skimming schemes.

Not sure if it's old news, but I looked at the DT partners list and a number of them are gonzo now - plus I didn't see http://www.ibudgetphoto.com/ on the list, but they are currently a partner.

Gonzo (not operating as agencies; some have random links to stuff):

boombucket.com
http://supprint.com/
http://www.brightqube.com/

Around, but doesn't actually sell - just lists and sale takes place at DT

http://www.morguefile.com/
http://www.picfindr.com/ (if you do a search, all the paid DT pics link to a free DT image - nothing to do with the image you actually clicked on or the terms you searched for. Really useless)

Around, but no DT images

http://picturesandbox.com/ (Flickr and Fotolia)
http://www.imagetrail.net/ (Pixmac and Deposit Photos; lots of broken links and messed up behavior)

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interesting agency as well, how much is DP paying us from those big credit sales?

just noticed DT is there as well, even more expensive, XS for 588 credits

LOL - those are Indian rupees, it's not as expensive as you might think

A DT test sale got correctly reported as a credit sale, in the end I got 20% of the sale price at ibudget.

Thank you for bringing this up.

I checked ibudgetphoto and my images were there. I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the details at Dreasmtime - they separate out the choice to enroll in partner sales under a button labeled "Alliances" in the management area (I expect I just ignored that as I thought it was about generating referral income).

I opted out - not because there's anything specific wrong with ibudgetphoto but because I think all these deals are a really bad idea and I'm tired of not knowing who has my images on any given day. I guess I don't trust the agencies much at this point so it's no longer "if the agency thinks the partner is OK, I'm sure they've checked them out thoroughly".

The connection with DT must be live because when I clicked on search results including some of my images (search generated before I opted out) I got a largely blank screen with no image details beyond the number.  I'm guessing in a day the images won't even show up in searches any more. So kudos to DT that opting out was immediate.