I just sent a tweet to Jon Oringer pointing to this thread:

@jonoringer You see the furor over Getty's deal with GoogleDrive for free stock? Bad news IMO http://bit.ly/W0AhD4

I think they might take the wrong route and try to do the same as Getty, but it's not as if info about this fiasco is currently private, so if he were so inclined he'd figure this out on his own anyway. We need some sort of heavyweight to help fight back.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350491&page=1

'Mr Erin':
"There have been copyright concerns raised specifically around the right click functionality and lack of embedded metadata within the Google platform, although not ideal from some perspectives this is fairly standard practice for this type of product placement. "
So in a huge deal of this sort, Getty couldn't have made some demands in return for such a selling of the family silver? I don't believe that for one minute. They probably didn't even think of it until it came up on the forum.

Someone in the iStock thread pointed out that the DMCA makes it a separate and specific violation to remove the copyright information from an image and provided a link to a lawyer's web site talking about this

So I don't know why Mr. Erin thinks it's standard, but it isn't. I do believe that some agencies (123rf, I think) strip all the metadata from the images as part of trying to compress them as much as possible. I know they used to - when I signed up in 2005 I was concerned about how small the JPEGs were and asked for a sample to look at. They provided me with 5 of my images and from a quality point of view they looked reasonable.

I'm not sending current work to iStock anyway - not wanting to give Thinkstock current files to ensure that SS and other sites got first crack at them. Holding off a while longer doesn't hurt me and I will.

In mulling over the longer term, I considered waiting until the first of my images shows up in one of these deals and then deleting my portfolio entirely. The chances are I'd only lose control of one or two images that way and possibly with a DMCA takedown notice might be able to salvage those.

I wonder what the threat to SS is from Google making images free - Getty's idea might be that this is a better way to beat SS than by making their own subscription site to compete with them. Businesses stop buying subscriptions because they get free images with Google Docs/Drive - and businesses pay Google for the use of that even though it's free to end users.

Given that thought about what Getty's up to, it makes the threat to our business outside of iStock more pressing - render it hard for other places to sell image subscriptions and through their control of supply, "force" contributors to accept a tiny share of the money Getty is making when it licenses these deals.

I can personally consider the option of foregoing the income by leaving iStock as I'm not dependent on my stock earnings to eat. I just need to think about whether that move will make any difference before cutting off so much of my income...

...  I'm deactivating as fast as I can.  Luckily I don't have a large portfolio, and things have been so crappy for the last few months that I'm not really giving up much $$$.

I have to stay that's very tempting, but I need to calm down before making such a huge (financial) decision. I'd be dropping a huge chunk of my monthly income (when you include PP + istock) so I need to think my options through.

I notice that there's been no response from the admin who posted the update - a Friday night dump and run as rimglow said it would be.

It appears not to be locked but no one's commenting.

I can't understand the silence.

He has explained details of the deal that should have taken a few hours to put together yesterday (and the images were obtained at the end of October last year, so this isn't just happening). He hasn't explained anything about the tough issues. There's nowhere that I see the license terms as a user of Google Drive. I can and have downloaded some images to my computer - I'm not going to do anything with them but real users might. Other than some general words saying you have to be sure you have the rights to do the things you plan to do with them, how has Google alerted the end user that these images are copyrighted?

And then there's the compensation? $12 royalty for giving up a huge portion of the value of an image?

And how long is this time limited deal for - nothing on that

As I see it Getty wants to make nice with Google and as they consider microstock contributors insignificant, it seemed like a no brainer to curry favor with Google by tossing in iStock files.

No promises that they won't do this sort of thing again. They think they can do this and contributors don't even have to be asked about this "bespoke" deal.

...Let's not forget that they are owned by another in a succession of vulture venture capital firms whose only intention is to pump and dump them.  Long term planning is not part of the equation anymore.

I would in general not lump venture capital in with private equity. Most of the time, venture capitalists are investing in new businesses and getting out when the company goes public. Most of the time they're investing to build the company - that's how the company can raise funds to grow. In general I see venture capital as on balance good.

Private equity is almost always parasitic and not about growing anything. They try to suck money out of troubled businesses and couldn't care less what state they're in after they leave. They don't invest for the future because they don't want to cut into their profits and they aim for 3 years and out.

H&F and Carlyle - and Bain Capital - are private equity companies. Insight Venture Partners does both - they own 21% of Shutterstock. Here's an article about the difference.

I like a quote from this article:

"Private equity firms buy companies, and through financial engineering and a dose of operational and management restructuring make investor profits.

There is a real debate over whether private equity firms even create value. It may be that private equity makes money by operating companies more efficiently, but some instead argue that private equity�s success is attributable to the ability to borrow heavily and reap value through leverage and tax deductions. Regardless, private equity is commonly viewed as the world of New York finance.

Venture capital is adamantly not about financial engineering. It is about ideas and creativity, where people build next-generation companies. Sure, venture capital firms are good at finance, but the community is really about creating value from the �new new thing,� as Michael Lewis put it."

I just searched for Luis Santos and counted 80...and I still had many pages to go.

I only see 10 of Luis Santos' images in Sean's list - is there perhaps something repeated in what you pasted?

I would encourage anyone who recognizes names on Sean's list to let those people know what is going on if they don't already know.

Funnily enough I've been doing just that. More angry contributors perhaps means some/more action from the wretches who dreamed this up.

So far I found 2 from Thinkstock, 6 from Tetra collection, 1 Photographer's Choice. 9 in total.

Not exactly a contest you want to win though, sadly. I guess you're currently the bronze silver medalist

It'd be nice if Tetra was able to kick up a stink with Getty, but they may be like so many others - ill able to afford losing Getty's business and thus unwilling to do more than complain politely.

Modified as I did a couple of checks for names I know and Andrew Rich - RichVintage has 11, so he's "beating" Yuri in this horrible sweepstakes

I only found six of mine - the copyright info is missing on a few.  If you were adding up all the times my name showed up, that would be why you got ten.

I already fixed my post as I realized that mistake

It's lunchtime at HQ and still nothing from them. Did you ever find the $72 in Premium Access Licenses from your GI statements?

I don't deal with the uploader with Flickr violations. If it's just one image and it's an oversight or they didn't understand the rules, they won't lose their account or suffer in any way and the fastest route to removing the image is sending the DMCA takedown notice to Yahoo.

If it's someone who has uploaded a ton of stuff (in the past I found my images among a large group of iStock images in someone's photostream) they deserve to be handled severely so they don't repeat the offense. In that case I contacted iStock's compliance enforcement (although now, I'm not sure it would do any good as I think lots of things have changed in the interim; I hear lots of reports that nothing gets done - including the istockreseller site still being there months after they got the information on it)

I don't submit there because they are all about special deals and promises of special search placement. They contacted me about uploading. I said their prices and royalties were too low to consider it. They replied with an offer of an artificial bump to a higher royalty rate and special search placement.

The special placement (a) isn't in buyer's interests and (b) won't last beyond the next sucker they make the same promise too. Felt to me too much like being propositioned by a lecherous drunk in a bar - all sweet talk up front, but it's not a good deal in the long run

I think you're underestimating just how idiotic some companies can be.

I think it's most likely that they are increasingly desperate as things "aren't working" and continue to try new ways to try and wring more cash out of what used to be a healthy business.

The fact that this may hurt a lot of talented contributors is very sad, but this is private equity doing what it does best - grabbing the money and not worrying about the future of the business. It'd look better in the annual report if there was a happy ending, but they'll just blame it on the business, not their own actions, if it fails.

I have the same error - and I looked earlier today and things were correct then.

I sent a tart note to support. It is just pathetic that having caught iStock-itis (i.e. naked greed) they've also caught iStock's incompetence at software development too and have messed up the implementation in a way iStock would be proud of.

There's no RC counter with individual sales. There's no information about the royalty percentage used for each month. There's apparently no permanent connection between sales over the last 12 month and current royalties either.

Incompetent and greedy - such a lovely combination.

I took screen shots of what I see and I guess I'll have to check a bit more regularly on what they're doing - I was just looking for abnormally low royalty amounts to be sure these "mistakes" that have happened in the last month or two don't recur.