November royalties were payed.

"Interesting investigation and the prices are all over the place. But people who sell the same images on micro and Alamy have long contended that there's nothing wrong with doing that?

Good point.

Obviously, money will go back to the individuals whose Credit Card's data has been stolen and used. And, by the way, judging by the fact that any of these posters doesn't have the slightest idea of "what istock is" (so they never bought there)  it seems that there wasn't any breach of security at istock, probably CC data was obtained elsewhere.

Quote from: leremy on December 28, 2010, 11:42

I do think IS site is hacked.
I don't think the hacker hacked a credit card account or some real money transaction thingy.
The hacker should have hacked into the system of IS, and increase his credits to perhaps a million, and quickly use those credits to download all the Vettas.

Like some other forumers said, with a collection of Vettas, he can easily print CDs with those and sell at China for $10 a piece.
Or maybe upload to Hotfile.

this makes the most sense to me.  I was thinking the same thing.. they just hacked in and gave themselves unlimited credits.

I don't thik is so big. I just had about 3% of my Vetta/Agency file dowloaded these days and after all that's less than my normal pattern, so maybe some sales are legit. Or maybe my files weren't good enough for these thieves...

Another apparent fiasco:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=284542

That, a fiasco? That's nice. It would be better to keep 40% for Vetta and Agency sales, true, but in just two days seems to have had a better effect on V and A sales that the sale at minus prices, and the stats "messing up" doesn't matter at all to me, after all I can see Vetta sales ordered by date. Well, nothing more, it's better being short and not wasting the time needed for those dedicated to the Fiasco Warching Mission.

Quote from: pancaketom on December 22, 2010, 13:04

IS does seem to be able to sustain these blunders though. It is somewhat impressive in a sort of train wreck way.

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

In the short term I totally agree they will muddle through like they always have.  But longer term, I'm not so sure that they can.  I think they are busy ripping apart their foundation both with customers and contributors.  Its kind of like that game where you have a stack of wooden bricks and you have to keep pulling them out one by one until the whole thing collapses.   

I don't know what do you mean with "the long term", but I had read comments like yours five and six years ago. By luck, I didn't listen. Now I'm earning at IS 15x what I was earning then.

Quote from: loop on December 19, 2010, 15:18

Quote from: Komar on December 19, 2010, 11:11

Quote from: loop on December 19, 2010, 10:43

Well, the other part has had two weeks to to post and clarify, all msites owners read here?

If you know all the msite owners well enough to know that they read here. Your Acceptance Ratio must be fantastic.

It seems you weren't able to see the question mark.

More likely he had difficulty parsing your fractured English.  I know I did.

A question mark is a question mark, here and in Sebastopol.

(And sorry if I speak a somewhat broken english... but I speak other five languages as well (being english my worst). So, let's go on with the discussion with the language of your election... I'm sure it won't be difficult to you.

Just re-read what he has been accused of;

"We discovered serious copyright infringement issues within your portfolio of images on Shutterstock Images, LLC. Based upon our investigation, we have determined that you made a material misrepresentation to Shutterstock Images, LLC."


He's had at least two weeks (we don't actually know when this all started) to convince SS of his innocence without any apparent success so far despite assuring us that "I can easily prove the images are mine of course.".

Those are the only facts we know. Everything else is just speculation.

Well, the other part has had two weeks to to post and clarify, all msites owners read here?

Quote from: loop on December 15, 2010, 15:48

Quote from: cclapper on December 13, 2010, 19:43

So it looks like they've changed the DL numbers under my images. Anything with 100 to 499 DLs says >100. It doesn't change until you get to 500 DLs then it says >500. My image with 1300+ DLs now says >1000. Talk about rounding down...

If you open the file to view, you can see the number of downloads as they were showed until a few days ago, an so, have a better information about the popularity of this file.

Thanks, loop. I do understand that, but buyers can't see that number. I suppose in the grand scheme of all things hosed over there, this one is just minor. Someone made a good point about how people rush to copy you if they see an image that sells well. That is a good reason to get rid of the info, but from a buyer's perspective, I would think that number might factor in to the buying decision. If popularity isn't an issue for a project, no problem. If a buyer wants a fresh image that hasn't been seen everywhere, I would think the info would be relevant.

I really don't know the reason for this change... but the reason for te first change --if I remember well-- was the fact than posting the exact downloads allowed anyone with IT skills, competitor or not,  to monitor the daily total sales of istock. Just guessing, but maybe this new change intends to difficult eve more an approximate calculation.

Thanks Sean and Sue, for answering my question about captions.  I skimmed the article, but must have skimmed over that part.

Releases for minors?  That leaves out quite a bit of travel and lifestyle editorial stuff.

I understand is for minors alone, not, for example, for minors in a crowd.

Yes, it is.

I certainly think it's harsh. at the same time, playing devil's advocate....an agency must protect its artists and its guarantees to customers....if it's a slap on the wrist, what's to deter contributors from copyright infringement? in publishing, plagiarism can result in fraud charges and potentially imprisonment. again, no insinuation about the case at hand....just saying, I don't think it's as easy as calling it unfair.

Maybe yes, but the least an agency could do with a long term contributor is contact him beforehand an explain him the situation, and listen to what he has to say (not just sending a generic e-mail that doesn't explain at all what has happened).