"A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union point out that private prisons are more costly, more violent and less accountable than public prisons, and are actually a major contributor to increased mass incarceration. This is most apparent in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world and houses the majority of its inmates in for-profit facilities."

When you start out your story pretending to be confused and innocent and then later admit that you paid an "e-marketer" who magically made your sales increase by thousands of percentages overnight, and all your sales were non-sub sales, then yeah, your story smells pretty fishy.

You lost a port with a couple hundred vectors that had almost no sales for three years. That means you weren't serious about it.

You keep asking us how you can avoid doing something wrong in the future...it sounds like you're digging for hints so you're not found out next time.

Submit your work elsewhere and play by the rules. If you want more sales, submit more work and better work.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on December 28, 2017, 11:54

Quote from: steheap on December 28, 2017, 09:49

I've been trying to work out this scam - it can't be that the scammer wants some small payment to generate all the Enhanced License downloads. It can't be that they want the images themselves (as they could get them from our favorite free site). It can't be that these specific images or illustrations are fantastic. It must be that they are going to download lots of images with a high payout with a stolen credit card AND have a way to get at the money being paid for the downloads. That seems to be the only way to defraud Shutterstock in a way where you end up with cash, not a few lousy image files.

So the fraud must work by making an arrangement with the contributor to share the revenue that the image sales generate. How else could it work?

I wouldn't think its an agreement so much as its just the same people doing the uploading and the buying.

Credit card numbers cost next to nothing. Any way they can find to get any cash off them is ideal for a criminal or criminal gang. Even if they only get 20-30% like in this case.

Normally they have to buy items and sell them on cheap, or even try buying vouchers and selling them on at lower than face value. Much easier and less risky to open an account with an image library and upload a load of images you have stolen off the internet, buy some licenses with the credit cards then cash out. They could probably set up a program to do it all automatically, another advantage as apparently criminals usually buy huge lists of credit card numbers only some of which work.

Set up a computer to run through the list of stolen credit card numbers and set up buyer accounts spoofing a new internet address for each. Then the account also automatically makes some random purchases plus a few big ones from your own contributor account, done.

Only one problem, your theories do not work with microstock given the delay between accepting payment and payout.  The contributor did not cash out.

Probably made it too obvious by buying too many images at too high a price in one month. Must have raised red flags.

The OP started out sounding innocent and confused and then gradually told us all the things he did to launder money through Shutterstock.

It's good to know SS shuts this sort of thing down relatively quickly, otherwise all of us would lose our sales to fraudulent money launderers who create a small, barely selling ports and then get their buddies to buy their images with stolen credit cards.

I can see the judge's point on some images.  Shutterstock has accepted several images of clear sky.  The photographer simply pointed their camera at a clear blue sky, and submitted the result.  A blue rectangle.  Should that really be copyrightable?  Anyone can reproduce it.  Are all of the clear blue sky photos infringing on each other?

If I were daft enough to submit such an image, would I be "copying" them?

If it's that easy to create the image you need, shoot it yourself. Don't steal someone else's image, as simple and ludicrous as you might think it is. Clearly the image in question had value to the company in question, or they wouldn't have stolen it or used it.

I'll bet you the company in question would vigorously protect any image THEY owned the copyright to.

Take Audi. This year they "updated" their logo to be four simple black circles in a row overlapping each other slightly. Anyone could draw those four circles in 30 seconds. Audi paid big bucks for something you could scribble in no time. But I'm sure Audi would prosecute you for trademark violation if you used their logo, as simple and dumb and ludicrous as it might seem.

You've done great work. From the first sight, it may seem that you have so many variants of photos' topis. But if it doesn't work, you need to keep experimenting.

Welcome. Please stop dredging up old threads. Thank you.

Less than 3 years...yeah, I felt the same way when I was in this less than 3 years. I was making thousands each month and every year my earnings went up. Talk to us in another 3 years.

Make sure you tell their customers what they're doing on their Facebook page, too. https://www.facebook.com/Freepik/

They're scum. They stole dozens of my vectors and were giving them away free for years until I caught them and reported them to Shutterstock. To my huge disappointment Shutterstock continues to allow them to act as an affiliate, even after they asked Freepik to take my vectors down. I see they've now expanded to stealing photos as well. Report them to Shutterstock.

"WE ENDEAVOUR TO PROVIDE THE BEST SERVICE WE CAN, BUT YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT THE PICKIT SERVICE AND ANY CONTENT IS PROVIDED �AS IS� AND �AS AVAILABLE�, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND. YOU USE THE PICKIT SERVICE AND ANY CONTENT MADE AVALABLE THROUGH THE SERVICE AT YOUR OWN RISK. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, PICKIT MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS AND DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT."

The entire point of the service, supposedly, is to keep people from being sued for using stolen images. But Pickit "makes no representations and disclaim any warranties...blah blah blah....non-infringement." You use the Pickit service and content at your own risk. In addition, "Pickit may, but has no obligation to, monitor, review, or edit User Content." Doesn't that sound like there will be no oversight as to what's uploaded?

Thank you for listening and making the process easier.

I was simply reporting technical difficulties on Shutterstock's end yesterday. Customers couldn't download images for several hours. They posted updates on Facebook.

The site is a big huh? for me, sorry. Why the focus on sports and "letters?" Are you looking for buyers or contributors? What's the price you're offering a discount on? It's all a bit discombobulated.