Now how do the photos come off thinkstock and photos.com?  About 20% are gone.  Was hoping to cash out in Feb, but looks like there will still be partener sales coming through in March.

Mine are moving at a snail's pace, but they are going down - just checked and it's 1846 (down from 1869 first thing this morning - and 2486 on Jan 28)

...Don't forget that Getty has started uploading thousands of their clipart.com images to Istock in order to get them through to Thinkstock.

Not thousands; 40 a week (according to Jenn Borton; total is now 80)

Mine was

   I'm opting out of special "licensing" deals the only way you've left open to me

I am taking a wild guess that iStock would step in if there were misuse. I'm also less worried that I'd be sued for misuse than I am that I'd be furious if my home or kids were used in some way I didn't like (but wasn't actionable).

I'm sure if something were actionable, the model would come after the photographer as well as iStock. I'm just guessing that this is the least likely of the "bad" outcomes of files getting into the wild via Google Drive

I have a few times done free image of the week at various sites (iStock never took me up on my offer) but it's always been to benefit the site - part of being a team player. Even if there were a promise that the metadata (and thus the link back to the source of the image) would stay in place, I can't see how this would benefit a stock agency, so I'd probably not participate.

If I could be persuaded that there was a benefit to the agency, and if that were an agency that were not actively pulling the rug out from its contributors' feet, I'd donate one image as long as I had a choice about which one.

I can't either. It's probably saving me from noticing that my balance hasn't changed since I checked yesterday

As an FYI, I see my Thinkstock numbers slowly going down. I'll check again in the morning to see how they did

I added a blog post about leaving iStock and tweeted/posted to Facebook as part of geting the word out about what we're doing.

I don't know, but it made sense to record what was actually done - versus the commitments, which is what the other thread was covering. So I followed up the OP with my actuals.

Hi all. I need help please.
I wanted to start to delete my files but somehow I am to blind to find a delete button.
An advice on how to delete would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Happy deactivation day to you all. 

The interface iStock provides is very painful. If you have the ability to use a greasemonkey script (it's javascript; you can use as is in Chrome or install greasemonkey in Firefox) Sean Locke wrote a wonderful one that lets you do the deactivations from the my_uploads page which is much faster. See here for a link to the script

To use the iStock interface, bring up an image's page and at the bottom is an Administration link. Deactivate is there (you can't delete; only deactivate). You need to put in a reason so have something to paste.

My reason is I'm opting out of special "licensing" deals the only way you've left open to me

January was pretty decent. I'm estimating the PP totals.

For me, there is always a big dip after December (with a reasonable crop of Christmas images, it's generally the 3rd or 4th best month of the year). This year was no exception - compared to December, $$ down 30% and DLs down 25%

Over January 2012, my $$ are up 54% and downloads up 65%. That isn't as good as it looks Last January I was still climbing out of the hole of switching back to independence; virtually nothing was in the PP (busted connector); nothing on Alamy except for the old RM stuff.

I added GL Stock and Fine Art America this month and each of them made one sale. For GL that was $2.60, but a start's a start! For FAA that was $32.60, so even if I can manage only one or two sales a month it'll be like a low performing stock agency. FAA beat PhotoDune which had a very disappointing January (down 68% from December)

SS was up 45% on January 2012 but the ELs and S/OD were lower than for the last few months, so iStock beat it for $$ (2 ELs there helped boost the totals as did the fact that I was getting 18% royalty vs. 17% last January)

DT was flat with Jan 2012 and down 18% on Dec (i.e. less than the overall drop which is good, sort of). 123rf downloads were flat with January 2012 but $$ down because I dropped to 45%

If it weren't for the Getty Gloom hanging over me (think ominous thundercloud), things would be looking pretty good

I just went to check my January 2012 total and it's the amount shown in the e-mail they sent out for Jan 2013

As long as the money is right in a week or so, I can cope

Quote from: stockastic on February 01, 2013, 11:05

They've had plenty of time to make a serious response to the contributor kickback.  They've now turned on the fog machines and are teasing some sort of announcement for next week, because they want to blunt the impact of the bad publicity generated by D-Day by spreading out the deactivations.   The hope is that many contributors will at least delay pulling out for another week in hopes of some miracle; that will reduce the raw number of deactivations on D-Day itself, which is the only thing the trade press might report.

I sincerely believe that the reason any response is delayed is because their response will be contingent on how big a response they get to D-Day.  If people who said they were going to pull images don't do it, or if there is less response than anticipated, they will NOT CHANGE ANYTHING of any significance.

I'm borrowing Lisa's fence again (can't find the post where she posted a picture), but it's about indecisiion about getting my whole portfolio (minus a token few old images to keep the account open) off vs. just the 1,000 I pledged.

They may need some time to amend the Google deal, but they could make commitments about future deals any time - they don't need Google to help them do that. That tells me they plan to keep right on running roughshod over contributors in pursuit of cash - no opt out, no access to the details of these arrangements, no notification or inclusion of contributors in this process whatsoever.

With the Microsoft deal, they said in the first thread that they wouldn't do a deal of that sort today. They haven't even hinted that they wouldn't repeat the Google deal - the reverse in fact. They talked about new business models and new places to sell our content.

As I don't have any images on Google Drive, my worry is about more of these deals. Hanging around until they do actually scr3w me seems pretty daft to me. They've basically signalled as clearly as they can how they intend to do business going forward.

The indecision is just that it's tough to walk away.

What a depressing theme - once companies become successful and dominant they ignore, or abuse, the people who create the content that made them big and successful.

Getty or Google: at some level - biting the hand that feeds them - they're so similar. Without any content to search, Google wouldn't be able to sell ads and make a packet. Without any contributor copyright audio, video, illustrations & images, Getty'd be out of business.

Except that we (contributors) might get hurt, it'd be fun to see those two try and be partners so we can watch Google crush Getty (Google makes nice now, but once they've cornered whatever it is they want, Getty'll get kicked to the curb). Greedy baskets both of them