But even if the card holder had not reported it stolen, that's between the card holder and the card issuer, not the retailer.

As for the thing about the police - well, that's true really, there is no reason why the police should be concerned with your brother, he has lost nothing and it's the bank that has suffered the loss, and presumably has all the details.  Unless the card was actually stolen from him perhaps.

You'd think so __ but apparently it doesn't work like that.

I'm struggling to get my head around the police's attitude though. A crime has been committed and there's plenty of information with which to persue it. I think one of the main problems is that there are 43 individual police forces in the UK and their efficiency is assessed by government statistics on things like 'clear-up rates', etc. Unfortunately a consequence of that is that they can be unwilling to record minor crime when they have little chance of solving it and they sometimes see other police forces as their competitors and so are unwilling to pass on information that will help them. That's government stat's for you __ they always seem to have unintended effects.

Ideally you do not want other photographers looking at your portfolio or knowing your numbers.

True __ that's why I'm anonymous here and rarely if ever post on forums that provide a link back to my port. Giving someone 'inspiration' could prove very expensive in the long run.

I'm a software devoloper and I manage a commercial web site that sells software products and runs credit card transactions. Every CC transaction is automatically approved before the sale completes.  If the CC processing company is successfully scammed, my company takes a hit. We don't try to pass it on to any suppliers, vendors or employees. 

I cant even imagine a retail business trying to back-charge its vendors for its credit card problems. It shows once again that to these companies "contributors" are just a mob of transients at the back door, waiting for their table scraps.     

These microstocks are like hobby businesses run by rich kids.  And Old Hippy is right, people.  Accept it.

That's a pointless and irrelevant comparison as you are not acting as the 'agent' for your suppliers, vendors or employees.

In this 'contributor/agency' relationship we are taking a share of the proceeds of a sale __ so if it turns out that there is no 'sale' then we don't get our share.

Does anyone know how this works for the trad/macro agencies? I know someone who made a dozen sales in one day on Alamy __ and then they were all withdrawn a couple of weeks later for reasons which weren't made clear at the time.

I forgot if you can edit the keywords after acceptance in DT. In case you can, just delete all keywords,descriptions and titles or change them to something nonsensical and just become exclusive with IS. If the pictures can not be found on DT they are effectively not for sale anymore.

They are aware of this tactic and will lock you out of editing if they detect it happening __ they also get very angry about it too.

you don't really have any interest in what I think. so why bother? ^

Here we go again. You keep making statements of 'fact' that are so often completely wide of the mark. Honestly, most of the time I just bite my lip and ignore the innaccuracies of your posts. However on those occasions when I do ask you to qualify your statements then then invariably you refuse to do so and hide behind accusing me (and pretty much anyone else that disagrees with you) of bullying or being nasty to you. I see you tried the same tactic with m@m ^^^.

It is laughable that earlier in this thread you state "... I'm not evangelizing my decision ..." when you appear to be the self-appointed cheerleader for the opt-in brigade. You've already posted half a dozen times in this thread and God knows how many gushing responses on the IS thread too __ way more than anyone else. If that's not 'evangelizing' then I don't know what is. I see you are complaining of being bullied by everyone over there too.

"many of us opting in are getting pretty tired of feeling pressured and borderline bullied by the opt outters via sitemail, email, forum etc. opting in seems to be grounds for lynching right ow and I don't appreciate it."

It seems to me that you always deliberately choose to side with the minority view on any given subject. Of course in doing so it provides you the opportunity to write provocative (and often factually incorrect) posts and then complain bitterly and pretend you're hurt when others respond to them (in just the way you hoped they would).

Anyway, I think you're going to be extremely disappointed when you find out how little your images will actually earn at PC/JIU. Sales are relatively few and the royalties tiny even for StockXpert contributors that have opted-in but IS files are presumably going to be seriously disadvantaged by the CV. The IS CV must surely mean that your images will simply not appear in many relevant searches. For example if you try a search on 'lamb' on PC then you will get 3500 results __ however if you search for 'lambs' then you only get 390 results. Plurals are combined with singular terms within the CV but not at PC/JIU. Same with literally thousands of other terms too. Maybe some of the buyers will work this out and widen their search criteria accordingly but that will also generate less accurate results for them.

I have no problem honouring terms of an Agreement, other agencies had no problems letting me go.

I do have a right to ask questions if you see it as complaing then that is your problem. a complaint would be me saying why in the past 2 weeks has DT taken back sales due to credit card fraud?
Another thing unique to DT....see! that's what's called complaing

Good. Actually BigStock, if you had been with them, would also have insisted on their 90-day-following-acceptance rule too.

FT take back sales from credit card fraud too __ I have had far more there than at DT. Of course DT are paying out 50% commission so it is perhaps not that surprising that they can't afford to waive fraud charges.

... reviewing iStock's history, as well as its track record in regards to implementing industry-leading changes--this leads me to a common sense-based assumption that they are once again forging a path forward for their contributors.

How many industry-leading changes would you actually attribute to Istock __ say in the last couple of years that you've been around?

Come on! Everybody talks they are going to delete portfolios, stop uploading... bla bla bla...

And reality is: never more images has been added to SS than last week, LOL. What is next? Every month, 1 more million of images. I think SS should really put some upload limit. Seriosly.

True enough. There's a lot of hot air but little actual action regarding the tax situation.

What upload limits would you suggest and for who? Yuri uploaded over 2000 new images last month for example __ would you turn his stuff down and risk the buyers of his stuff buying their subscription elsewhere?

You do ask some good questions Leaf!

I used to have insurance, primarily for travel purposes, but any policy worth having (in the UK) has become ludicrously expensive. The cost is something like 10% of the equipments' value if you are a pro, want in-vehicle and also world-wide cover.

Not only that but the policies are written in such a way that if you actually complied with all the security requirements then it is pretty unlikely that you'd get anything nicked anyway. For example if you are staying in a hotel and it has safety-deposit boxes available then you are obliged to use them or they may not pay out.

At 10% of my total equipment's value (about $2000+ per year) I figure that it's worth taking the chance. The one item that would be really painful to replace is my 1Ds MkIII but if I lost that then I'd probably just replace it with the 5D MkII.

You really don't like Shutterstock do you?

I am happy to pay taxes when they are due, and to comply with the law.
Shutterstock is trying to comply with the law of their country.

Sure, contributors will need help, especially the one's who don't speak English. I am also sure that they will be given help if they ask.

Instead of such alarmist overreaction and hysteria, why don't you calmly face the situation and deal with it?

... is the correct answer.

Fact is that Jon has managed to run his business quite successfully, and with a minimum of drama and aggravation for everyone, including buyers and submitters. 

This is the first time in years I can remember a dustup at Shutterstock, and it isn't even their doing, but something externally imposed by the IRS. 

Exactly. If my porfolio is representative of the greater collection then Jon is also paying out about $2M per month to contributors. He certainly deserves their respect if not their gratitude.

Jon isn't that smart ...

Huh? When was the last time you built a $50M+ per year business from scratch in under 5 years?

So far DT is the site that has the highest RPD for me and also the one that has always treated contributors the best, IMHO.    Since Achilles is still at the helm I am optimistic that will continue. 

I'd agree. I've always liked DT, their staff and the way they treat contributors.

However on reflection I am slightly disappointed that they haven't been able to gain or even sustain their market share against the less 'fair' (to us) competition. My guess is that they may have been over-generous to us in the past leaving not enough left over for marketing, etc and that's why they have slipped or at least not gained.

I've always felt that DT have been slightly behind the curve of what's important although with the very best of intentions. For example I think they maintained the original 50c/$1 price structure for far too long when it clearly wasn't bringing in customers wholesale from the much more expensive IS. It didn't work and it probably cost them and us.

Maybe the market is maturing and it is inevitable that one agency paying 50% commission will not be able to compete against all the others who are paying less than 40%.

The trouble is we independent contributors more or less support all the important agencies equally so there's little or no differential in the product they have to sell. If one agency has substantially less to spend on marketing then they're unlikely to be able to keep up with the others.