Just happened to glance over to the right and noticed 123 took a spot on the Big 6. When did they knock BigStock out of place?

Those poll results are hugely skewed towards the smaller agencies with less stringent contributor requirements by newbies and/or those with small portfolios. For example a newbie with just a few images and who cannot get accepted by IS has the same voting weight as someone with a huge portfolio and several hundred thousand sales. Newbies are probably more likely to vote too. I'd take those 'results' with a fairly hefty pinch of salt.

Some of the images have gone from StockXpert, but not all (one of the three of mine is still up; several of the lady liberty shots are even though one or two have gone). I've contacted IS again about this to let them know and urge them again to work to get StockXpert to pull the whole portfolio.

Submitters who repeatedly and willfully violate the terms of the upload agreement should not be allowed to be submitters, even for the images to which they do own the copyright. Otherwise how to discourage anyone from doing this, taking the money and running when caught?

Well, I guess you could always go on a date with him __ he certainly owes you a good meal and a drink from the money he's made from your stuff;

http://www.matchmaker.com/ComposeMail.do?to=fritzkocher&no_user=rso

I think it is perfectly valid to upload a vertical and horizontal view of an object (in this case plates of food).  However, as Alias points out, when something is isolated on white vertical or horizontal is irrelevant because the buyer can easily crop or add white space to get any orientation they want.

Jonathan's suggestion posted in another thread, about creating a square image that can be cropped either way, would be an ideal solution for a lot of these pictures.

Trouble is some buyers don't think that way. I've got a buddy who buys images, usually from FT, and before he does the search he decides whether he needs a vertical or horizontal image to fit the slot he wants to drop it into. He then clicks the appropriate Horizontal or Vertical button to exclude all others. Square images won't appear on either search option btw. It doesn't even occur to him that he could buy a larger image and simply crop it.

He hates spending time searching (he's a printer and is working to a client's rough brief) as he thinks it is a waste of his valuable time. He's never really considered charging a 'search fee' as often the projects are very small.

Looks like Fotolia have shut down fritzkocher's account too now. Good.

What an idiot. He describes himself as a designer so should have known much better and it's bizarre that he thought he could get away with it. Mind you he did manage to sell over 14K licenses at SS as well as having several other microstock accounts so he did make a few thousand $'s before he got caught.

Here he is on the SS forums;

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/search.php?search_author=fritzkocher%40hotmail.

You already are halfway there- what about  Leaf creating a forum section on MSG specifically for reporting possible infringements, with a nice big legal disclaimer on top that any "outings" are purely opinions of MSG members.  I would only worry about people who have been caught out focusing on MSG for revenge - but if you are going to be naming ports and giving links here anyhow, it might as well be organized.  If implemented effectively then it may get enough publicity to act as a deterrent - I think the thiefs rely on the lack on cohesion between agencies and a community report system (like the Vegas card counter system mentioned) would have a real effect.  

Keep it in a simple format - one legit version of the image, and one link to hacked/appropriated version, and a short bit of evidence as to how you know which is the legit version.

With enough momentum maybe it could be turned into a subscription service that the agencies can pay for access too.     This kind of problem is currently not able to be solved by image recognition technology alone, the artist's brain can process their entire portfolio in a second with much more intuitive results - and you are the bees buzzing between agencies so you see a broader perspective of images than an individual agency business unit.

That's a very good idea Zymm. Take a Heart!

Please name and shame both the thief and the agency in question (especially the latter). Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

I'd be interested to see which agencies are using his services because personally I can't see any of the big one's letting the reviewing go 'out of house', I can see this would be an advantage to a start up or some of the minor players though.

Hmm __ it might not be entirely coincidental that they happen to be 'just down the street' from DT!

I can see advantages in reviewers being trained and monitored from one place and also consistency in the numbers of images being reviewed per day/week. That must be difficult to control with maybe up to 100 individuals dotted around the globe. If SS are approving up to 90K images per week then it is feasible that nearly double that figure might actually be being submitted. That's about 250 man-days per week reviewing at the speed discussed above. It is way bigger than the 'cottage industry' it was 3-4 years ago.

Taking the median of the figures you quoted, say 800 images per day, would require the reviewer to inspect an image every 35 secs throughout an 8-hour day. Every day. I don't envy them.

For me they are simply the best.

You appear to have lots of things to moan about every agency, PedroV. May I suggest a different hobby?

... is the right answer.

Not a chance in that time-scale. I'm more concerned for SS to maintain their earnings to be honest, in comparison BigStock are almost an irrelevance.

Even if SS were to work miracles with BigStock it is unlikely to be all 'new' money __ most of it will be trying to grab market-share from the others.

I'm unsure whether it is actually in our interests for BigStock to succeed anyway as, with their commission as low as 20%, they are about the worst deal in the industry. I'd like to see their commissions raised to a minimum of 35% before anything else.

With answers like these it becomes clear why photos sell for pennies, photography is devaluated as it is and so many consider themselves "professional photographers" ... 

Maybe you could help us by defining what you mean by "professional photographer"?

Not to mention, IS/Getty getting rid of JIU and photo.com subs via StockXpert at 30 cents (already too low) and giving us the opportunity to sell them at those places for 25 cents. 

That's not actually happened yet, although it was announced months ago, and not even a firm date when it will. Clearly there are more issues or difficulties (or maybe it will contribute less to the bottom-line) than originally planned. Keep 'em crossed.