Quote from: JaenStock on April 15, 2021, 17:31
Why don't you pay us a monthly salary? The commissions thing no longer makes sense. Give me a salary for every x photos and sell them however you want.

I had a private speaking few years ago. Yes, some agencies tried to have photographers on a payroll. I don't know the further evolution, but these people were like "contributors".

Here works the same - "partners", "distributors" etc - all types of intermediates as in any business. Exist a business and exist a parasite.

Quote from: Minsc on March 04, 2021, 05:21
I signed up earlier today. I heard they are very selective. They only seem to accept artists with a strong presence in social media... and I don't have a strong presence in social media. We'll see what happens.

This is a general trend last years. Not the main subject is the main criteria, but what is around. In the world out of the artists environment a social profile (not social media presence of course, but everything what 'cannot' be updated by a person) is more important than skills.

SS tries to fill in all holes, even the smelling ones.

Quote from: zsooofija on January 28, 2021, 12:22

Quote from: changingsky on January 28, 2021, 11:21
I have closed my account with Yay years ago.
Courage, guys.

Thanks!
Me too.
Did you make sure they deleted your work from all partners? According to their non-existing contributor contract it is YOUR responsibility.

Partially. Didn't find my images.

I have closed my account with Yay years ago.
Courage, guys.

There are a lot of illustrators on Instagram. Many of them are really great. But it is not clear about the destiny of the materials published: social networks can use them in their favor for free. What then?

Ok it is real. But they didn't arrange it correctly. There are so many ways to use external platforms and avoid such troubles and negative waves on the net. They don't care.

Report it to Envato and to the specialized authorities in your country

Quote from: sharpshot on December 18, 2020, 08:53
As this portfolio is still up, does that mean that Shutterstock is fine with anyone using another persons images and blurring them? Seems like a crazy policy but as they haven't banned this person, that's what they're telling us.

As it was mentioned above, this should be a "special" person or not a person at all.

Mes plus sincères condoléances, Martha

Quote from: kiankhoon on March 02, 2020, 23:10

Quote from: f9photos on March 02, 2020, 18:58
they are certainly not dead. Not yet 

I submitted a support request on last Tuesday and wrote an email, both were answered on Wednesday.

My question was about the keyword rejections, the answer was "We do indeed discourage locations in the keywords, unless the image shows a landmark or something that's iconic for the country or region. If it's for instance a photo of the Eiffel Tower, please add "Paris", it it's an image of a generic building, then don't add the location."

So almost all my travel images were rejected for locations in keywords. Of course, I am not going to delete keywords for a half-dead non selling agency.

On the other hand my support request from October has not been answered till now. So either their support system is not working well, or they are just selective.

Then you guys need to be think twice before upload to canstockphoto, they can selectively answer the email which means they can selectively pay the commission, and you may end up like me which can not get any payment and can not cancel accout.

This policy is most probably from a new cheap "young potential" or management job hopper hired. They will see the results of this not thinked decision. This devalues the library. And contributors are again the guinea pigs of an agency.

Hello all. I have a question. Does Zazzle ask for W8-BEN every year then delays payment for at least one month after sending?

Quote from: steheap on March 06, 2020, 16:24
Here is my final list of 1099-Misc forms received as of 6 March.

Creative Markets - they provide a gross statement that includes their fees
Shutterstock (this includes Bigstock)
Adobe - under the name of Fotolia
Getty/iStock
Zazzle (I finally requested payment of several years of earnings of $219 and got a 1099)
Pixels - this is Fine Art America for $623
Dreamstime
Deposit Photos
Pond5
123RF - still waiting and no response to my email to them

Steve

Hello Steve.
Do they request now W8-BEN for every payment? Or every year?

Don't. Once your friend will be requested to pay tax instead of you.

OK, Juha, but please read all the thread. Yes agencies think about their interests, we think about us, to not loose the crumbs the agencies have left for us.

I already left one comment about technical possibilities to police portfolios and about policies of thiefs removal "on paper" and in reality. I would like just to remind: please ask at least 5 questions "Why?" Agencies which slow down or apply breakes to the deletion of portfolios with at least 1 found stolen file act as accomplices of thiefs. One of questions also can be: are ALL such portfolios uploaded by a real physical person-thief?

Quote from: WendyT on October 30, 2020, 23:30
wow .... I get rejections because something is not 100% in focus and if I submit a deliberate blurred image that also get rejected for not having the main subject in focus ... how do these get accepted, regardless of how they come by the images.

They can be accepted, only with the support of responsable employees of SS. I don't believe that "employees games" could last so long and repeat not being noticed, then .... Do you remember discussed here multiple cases when one thief was removed immediately and to remove others the process takes months? Ask why? Who is interested? Who earns? Can we check if those ports were not heavily promoted by SS in general or per customer?

Quote from: Lev on October 29, 2020, 17:27
Thief makes screenshots from stock videos, blurs them and sells on Shutterstock

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Didik+yulianto

Check if yours are also there.

Screen name does not correspond the url
Didik+yulianto  vs Musashi akira - so definetely it is not "Im nippon freelancer journalist" how he (or she - Yulia, then you can guess) wrote. Keyword "japanese" on this port returns Malaysia-Indonesia stuff.
But SS does not care even the fraud is evident.

Quote from: marthamarks on October 22, 2020, 00:51

Quote from: obj owl on October 22, 2020, 00:45

Quote from: MatHayward on October 21, 2020, 23:14

Quote from: gnirtS on October 21, 2020, 19:32
I wonder how many people will take these free images the reupload them to this and other sites as their own to try to sell them.
This is going on at "another major agency" quite a bit at the moment.

What controls/checks are there the images and licences arent being misued?

Our license terms make it clear that this isn't allowed. If any contributor believes his content was misused and submitted by someone else we call out in our Contributor ToU, section 4 that we ask to notify us. https://wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/cc/en/legal/servicetou/Adobe_Stock_Contributor_Agreement_Addl_Terms_en_US_20200416.pdf

thanks,

Mat

So it's down to us to police adobestock .

But... of course! Isn't that always the way it is?

Major agencies have the technical means to "police" similars. Then the answer is : they are not interested to do the same in the interest of contributors.

Quote from: marthamarks on October 21, 2020, 00:36

Quote from: ShadySue on October 21, 2020, 00:27
There is no knight in shining armour. The one which might, or might not, be is like a Secret Society, complete with fancy handshakes.

Sounds like you might be talking about Stocksy???

lool :-)
Anyway i see here a lot of brainstorming made for independent commercial companies, full of themselves. This is repeating during years. Always with the same result. May be they have used some ideas generated here. It didn't affect positively the contributors, it just helped these companies to grow or to prolong their life. It was useful for them only. They care about their incomes, not ours. Their actions often reflect a conflict of interest between wholesale/retail and manufacturers.

It is already saturated market, the same by media proposals and by clients, existing and potential. Not a big field is left for the "niches". Only big financial resources will allow to analyse the requests and proposals on the market and react very, very quickly. I think it is naive to trust that AS or somebody else with comparable resources will resist to not flood the market with free content just to shut down the competitors. It is clear that it will request less efforts if it is done by category - the same like supermarkets do. The biggest will do agreements, the smaller ones will disappear. All automated, AI to act.

May be somebody can identify the source, i don't remember the exact wording too. The statement which i find very correct, was the following: a manager which proposes to give away own product to increase sales, will never solve the compnay's problems. He will just move to next after this company death.

Quote from: Digital on October 16, 2020, 09:43
Interesting move. I'm wondering why Adobe didn't do this some 15-20 years ago. Then none of the other micro companies like iS and SS would have even existed.

Adobe as a company has other products and always was in more secure situation. They just decided that this is the moment.
Other thing - amount of people which think that creatives by their nature are happy to work for "references and recognition" instead of money will continue to grow. Reflecting this currently paying clients will follow the motto "nothing personal, only business"

I remember there was an old thread titled "exciting news" from agencies. Now we got another portion of that. Starts always with the same promises and the result is predictable.