If so many contributors will go down why nobody is asking to lower the RC targets?
I can't see any discussion of this issue on iStock's forums.

I believe someone started a thread on RC targets on istock and it was taken out. We still have two months until the year's total so I'm thinking people will be waiting till then to really discuss it. You usually find people are still "hopeful" that they can meet their targets at the last minute. I don't believe the wind has gone out of people's sails on this. If at years end a majority of people are going to be down a percentage and istock/Getty wants to hold firm on those targets ("sorry folks but rules is rules") then there will be a s***storm. The real problem is that istock isn't keeping up it's part of the contract with exclusives. As an exclusive, I expect fair representation of my work and a fully functioning website to sell it on. Well, take a good look at the list of "bugs" we've had month after month. You think this doesn't cause us to loose sales and customers? Along with a slow website, Klein himself admitted that people were having problems with the functionality of the istock site trying to purchase images. That's why they hired the design group. Here's a screen shot I took in July from a search in istock.

This "bug" lasted till Oct. Does somebody want to tell me this site is running fine and we aren't loosing sales? We also have the problem of transparency - how do I know my images are being pulled up in searches in the best possible way? Do other contributors have "special deals" to ensure optimum search results? I can't tell you about search results, but I can tell you certain contributors have gotten some pretty good exposure on the istock website. Case in point - CSA images. Take a look at the istock website home page (if you log out) and you'll find a CSA image of a black cat promoting Halloween in the bottom right corner. And guess what illustration is used to promote their "Christmas Cheer" - why surprise folks! It's another CSA image! An istock exclusive should expect the company to step up to it's obligations. I'm keeping my part of the contract with istock, they need to keep theirs by having a website that works. It's as simple as that.

http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=1586

The whole "free the creative" thing makes me laugh.  "Warning, Will Robinson, Creativity Under Fire!!!"

Yeah, the whole "Creativity Under Threat!" is just weird. Like a Weekly World News Headline "Bat Boy Seen With Bill Clinton!" The whole campaign is just wrong. White lettering on a big black square... great idea for an IMAGE company. And I've never heard anyone in the business use the word "creative" anyway. It's like a group of old businessmen sat around and said "You know what we need to focus on? The Creatives! Those creatives are our market you know!" Cue old man in pinstripe suit - "Yes... What are the creatives doing?" And then he leans forward and says "And why are we are paying these people so much in royalties? We need to cut that back!"
It's like talking to someone from the animation world and saying "I love toons!" No, it's not toons, it's cartoons or animation. No one says "toons" in the industry. 

My two cents: Yes Getty is responsible since it doesn't have a MR and misused the image. The woman claims that "New York photographer, Jena Cumbo, snapped the shot years ago but “had no written release or authorization” to use or sell it." So the photographer may also be responsible. Apparently she is also suing the state as well. And yes, she can claim damages. This infringes on her privacy as well as affect her social life. It's also known that HIV positive people have difficulty getting health coverage and employment. So it you can also make a claim that it could affect her career. I don't see why it won't be settled soon.

Well, I guess this is their answer for the "search problems" they had with their 13 test subjects. My guess is they said enough is enough and pull the website from the hands of IT in Calgary and told them to adapt to this new design. Interesting who they hired to do this: "Build tasked with the logo design and campaign ethos, Steel developing the digital advertising campaign, Kepler Group handling media buying, Graphiti Associates on digital creative and the London and New York offices of Weber Shandwick developing the campaign concept, PR, social media, survey and infographic." That's five business working on this thing. Must of took a good chunk out of the $150 million credit Getty has to play with...

PS - I'm gonna guess that some of the "Getty 13" test subjects tried searching for images on istock and wound up reading the forums there instead. I wonder if they will change as well.

I’m late to this party, but I love playing the speculation game. Here’s my uneducated guess.

First,  go back to what happened after the Getty Images/istock fiasco with Google Drive. Contributors pulled their images (some their entire portfolios),  and it raised so much of a stink that the Carlyle Group suddenly took notice. In a single day istock lost thousands of images and each of those images has a value on the istock books. My rough guess is about $700,000 worth. And suddenly with blogs, articles and voices talking about “istock and Google Drive” it was one ugly mark that was raised. Not to mention Mr. Sean Locke was forced out of istock as a result, which I’m guessing was a Carlyle decision. (and a dumb one at that) Um, did I mention the creation of Stocksy by former istock founder Bruce? He’s appearing with open arms to exiting contributors. Now people from the Carlyle Group are taking a closer look at things, istock has fallen to number two compared to Shutterstock, and Shutterstock has many more images in it’s inventory - 25 million compared to 13 million. Since Shutterstock has placed a value of about $18 per image, you can all do the math. For the spring of 2013 was a swift kick to the nads for istock.

And Yuri was also making news, creating his own website, peopleimages.com.  It takes millions of dollars to get that up and running, dedicate people full time to the enterprise, not to mention marketing dollars. Unfortunately, Yuri was now between a rock and a hard place - devote yourself full-time to your own website and make 100% royalties? Or continue to supply the mircostock sites who in the long run are eroding your industry with the sub model? What Yuri needs now is “insurance”, a way to get a special locked in royalty rate from one or more mirocstock sites. I’m sure several one on one meetings took place with all the CEO’s/owners of the micro sites. There was no way Shutterstock could do any deals, their margins are too tight and they’d have to make the details public to shareholders. But Getty? Oh yes, they were interested.... madam, may I have this dance?

Remember, after the spring of 2013, istockphoto lost value by losing those images. Which is why upload limits were removed as well as restrictions. They needed contributors to submit more and lots. As well as Getty Images importing more content. Sales might be falling but if you can get more images added to your books (value) it will please your corporate owners. So Getty made Yuri “a deal he couldn’t refuse.” Yuri would become an istock exclusive in exchange for: A lump sum cash payment (well over six figures) as a “signing bonus”, a locked in royalty rate, a preferred “bump up” in search engine results, and many promotional deals with istock in the future. (look for articles on Yuri in the istock website as well as see his images on every istock homepage and promotions-use CSA images as your clue)

For istock, it means they acquire one of the leaders of microstock and guarantee of more new content. What istock has been loosing in sales they can make up with adding more images (and value) to the website. I wouldn’t be surprised if Getty uses a baseball reference when doing the annual report with Carlyle “We just signed the Mickey Mantel of microstock!” Cheers all around.

And Yuri gets a nice cash infusion, keeps his website (and his images) to himself and has a dedicated worldwide distributor of those images at a set royalty rate. That’s market insurance right there. As well as promise not to raise a stink about the Google Drive deal. For him it’s the best of both worlds. Apparently, Yuri is now invested a million+ in Scoopshot.com. And why not? If you had the ability to get in on the ground floor of an “instangram” start-up business, it would make sense to do a little gambling. Congrats to you sir!

Unfortunately Yuri’s public statement does have a lot of spin to it. To state that the fall in Shutterstock’s share price occurred on July 16 because of Yuri’s decisions is just silly.  Adobe and IMAX also have some big dips on July 16, I guess Yuri had a big impact on the world market that day. It’s just spin folks, and there’s more to come...

sit n spin

Interesting discussion. Since we are talking about buying Shutterstock shares as a possible investment, I’ll just add my two cents. Originally during the IPO I thought about jumping in, but looking at the numbers, I think Shutterstock is way over valued. Here is an easy test to see if you would like to purchase shares in any company:

Take the number of shares that are outstanding on the market and multiply by the current share price. So for Shutterstock:32,838,281 shares X $56.00 current share price = about 1.9 BILLION dollars. Now if you just won the powerball lottery and had 1.9 billion dollars in your hands, would you invest it all in Shutterstock and buy it outright? Let’s not forget that Shutterstock does not pay a dividend, so you’ll have to hope that it can maintain it’s current 2012 sales figures in order for you to recoup your investment.  Lets say it does, for the sake of simplicity, so it will continue to earn a rough EBITDA of $32 million dollars. It would take you a little over 57 years to get your money back. So would you buy Shutterstock outright for 1.9 billion? If the answer is “No” then why would you buy a single share? Because you’re doing the same thing, just a different percentage of ownership.

The P/E ratio is also helpful for a stock’s value. Today the share price is roughly $56 and it has a P/E ratio of about 36.  That means you’re willing to pay about $36 bucks for each dollar Shutterstock has currently earned. In this case you would be very hopeful that it will earn way more than it is raking in today. Don’t forget, there is no dividend so the stock will not be paying you as you own it.  I like to use the P/E as the number of years I can hold onto the share of stock before I get my money back. So for Shutterstock I would have to hold on to it for 36 years before it pays for it’s $56 dollar price. The average market P/E ratio is 20-25 times earnings. For perspective, Royal Bank (Canada) as a P/E of about 13 (and a dividend). Apple’s P/E is about 9.6.

As a final note, I encourage everyone to view the annual report put out by Shutterstock. Look carefully under “assets” and you’ll discover Shutterstock has valued all those photos and illustrations kindly submitted by contributors. (25 million images so far) It lists a dollar value (and lifespan) for an asset it doesn’t even own. That’s like saying my business is suddenly valued at a million dollars since my buddy parked his Bugatii Vernon in my driveway. Funny how no one brought that up...

Yes good for Jon for doing the IPO on Shutterstock. The real tragedy is I wish Bruce did this with istockphoto before he turned to Getty and sold out. Who knows what would of become of this marketplace then?

Want an easy stock tip? Look at Hasbro the toy company. It has a P/E of 14. And pays a dividend. It also owns the toy rights to “Star Wars.” And Disney just bought out George Lucas and has plans for three more Star Wars movies.  Connect the dots and there may be a buyout for Hasbro’s future.

The best way to get a reply is to send a registered letter to the person(s) in question. This may help lead you to who designed it: Zachary Johnson - the director's cousin http://flavorwire.com/332530/behold-the-first-official-animated-gif-movie-poster  and his website is here:  http://thezacharyjohnson.com/  Seems like this would all be done "in-house" to lower production costs.

My guess? They bought the image and didn't really think about extended license. Not sure if you're going to get your microstock supplier on your side since it's bad optics. They all need the business and are probably not going to raise a stink. I would talk to the guy who sold his image on the cover of Time magazine and see what he got in the end. http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=87339

Before reusing content that you’ve found, you should verify that your use is permitted and check the exact terms of reuse stated in the license. For example, most licenses require that you give credit to the image creator when reusing an image. Google has no way of knowing whether your use is permitted, so we aren’t making any representation that the content is actually lawfully licensed.

That's a nice way for Google to try and cover it's behind. "We aren't making any representation that the content is actually lawfully licensed." but we also removed all metadata from the images...

I'll just leave this here...

Quote from: sdeva on February 04, 2013, 04:12

Does anyone know how many images actually came down in the lead up to and including 02 FEB?

Sorry is its posted somewhere and I've missed it ... 

44,516 were pledged to be taken down.  The totals are 11,000 less images now than before Feb. 2.  Many files that were taken down had zero dls or were very low selling images, not all but a lot of them. 

Total files 12695464
Waiting approval 68305

I wouldn't trust the istock numbers. The site is buggy and they will never reveal the true effect of d-day. Could even be more than 44,000 images removed for that matter. Besides, look at their "Make a Difference" campaign where they "tweaked" the numbers. They will take a corporate response, not mention what happened, and you will hear "moving forward" as their reply. It's damage control, they did it back in 2010 when they told us buyers and contributors were not leaving.
 
PS - Enjoy the istockphoto forum while you can, they are going to make some big changes to it in the next 30 days. Corporate is not happy with the little people speaking out and making a stink. I'm guessing any old posts may be deleted, don't want any evidence of your past failures out in the open...

Suijo: You're probably going to get banned off the istock forums if you keep posting like that. Your best bet is to contact a lawyer (I believe you said you knew one personally) and have them write a formal letter to Google. That you are the owner of said images, that the metadata has been stripped from them which is in violation... etc. lot of information out there now for you to make your case. My guess is if they think your images are "questionable" then they might just pull them from google drive. At the very least they should reply to you and might provide some more information that we could all learn from. All the best.

Ah! I knew it... On my quick search there are a little over 36,000 vector files at clipart.com, most of it is just crap. If they think this isn't going to screw up the best match results, they are fooling themselves. Also, I believe Getty Images also owns those "1,000000" and "100000 clip art" books and cd packages that were so popular in the late 1980's. Bet you'll see a massive upload on those as well. Here's how the conversation will go:
Getty: "We're sending you our vector artwork files to be sold on istockphoto"
Istock HQ: "Um, Ok, and once they pass our inspection, we'll..."
Getty: "No inspection, put them all up today. Thanks" Click.

Quote from: ARTPUPPY on January 10, 2013, 12:16

Based on all of what is happening, I think there might be grounds for a class action case. You cannot force contributors to an "agreement" to promote our images without giving us an option to opt out of it. There is a case against facebook now that seems to be of the same guide lines. Facebook is trying to settle it quietly. The judge has rejected the settlement since it does not award any damages to facebook contributors. For facebook, it could result in a lot money.

From the article: "The lawsuit, brought by five Facebook members, alleged the social networking site violated California law by publicizing users’ “likes” of certain advertisers on its “Sponsored Stories” feature without paying them or giving them a way to opt out, the documents said."

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/facebook_quietly_settled_lawsuit_that_could_have_involved_up_to_1_in_3_amer

There are also other articles that show how Facebook is forcing people to pay to insure all your followers will read your posts. Guess what? People are now turning against facebook. Amazing how you can screw up your own business...

----------------------------

From 15b of the contributor agreement
b.You consent to service of any required notice or process upon you by email, registered mail or overnight courier with proof of delivery notice, addressed to the address or contact information provided by you at the time you are first granted access to the membership portions of the Site. You agree to waive any right you may have to (i) trial by jury; and (ii) to commence or participate in any class action against iStockphoto related to the Site or this Agreement.

Not saying that the language is ironclad, but we did agree to it

They can put whatever they want in an "agreement". It's up to a judge to decide if it holds water. Don't believe everything they put in it. Besides, there is a certain point of "good faith" that you agreed to, when they go beyond that point with the damage that Google has done, I believe you have a case.