So it seems that 4 dots is agency, 3 dots is vetta, 2 dots is Exclusive+ and 1 dot is independents, Photos+ and regular exclusive.

I'm glad to see they've (belatedly) done something, but as they don't price in dots, having an interface in dots is very confusing, IMO.

I can't see that there's much of a need to separate Vetta and Agency - having half the places for the expensive stuff smells like a sop for those who didn't want any search by price/credits/collection at all. The dollar bin isn't included in the settings, which is a shame IMO.

Getty has search by collections, so I'm not sure why they felt the need to go invent this new construct (one to four dots) instead of using collections or ranges of credits.

No worries about P+ being excluded as it's right in there with the one dot pricing.

Big problem is that it resets for every single search - it should at a bare minimum stay that way until you log out. Best is it's a preference.

I'd give this a gentleman's C

I think most of the agency license agreements specifically prohibit using anything in a logo, so at a minimum it's a license violation. When someone uploaded works at DT that were a composite of one of my images and one of their own, it was treated as a copyright infringement and IS worked to get the material removed. I also believe that sometimes there are legal arguments over the boundaries of derivative works and what infringes.

Are you looking to stop them doing this or get paid appropriately for it? If it's the latter, how about proposing an RM license that gives them the right to do what they've done in return for some cash for you?

Reviews at Veer are just glacial - I uploaded images June 2nd and they're still pending. I don't know if it's worth spending time on them.

I sent site mail to Contour99 and MariaPavlova as they each had a full size image in this album.

Useful title - Royalty Free Images. There's a ton of stock in there - you might all want to browse and see if you recognize any of yours.

In the case of the two I sent site mail on, I recognized them as recent free image of the week at iStock. I wonder if someone thought that made this OK??

Shutterstock's "infringement claims" replied to my support ticket this morning. Thank you..we take theft very seriously....

However, the whole album is now gone, so either SS got Picasa to do it or they did it on their own in the meantime (I didn't check back until today).

For yucks, I did a Picasa search for Shutterstock and there were 6390 results. Tons more albums with (from the looks of the few I checked) unwatermarked SS images available for download in contravention of the license. Over 7400 hits for a search for iStock (again, many appear to be collections of images to download illegally vs. a contributor's own portfolio album). Fotolia over 3100 hits.

It's depressing. Couldn't the agencies hire someone to do the searches and DMCA notices on this? Isn't that part of what they get paid to do? I realize they just don't care and don't want to spend any money to protect our images, but I think if the agencies got tougher with Flickr/Yahoo, Picasa/Google, perhaps they could slow this down if not stop it.

At least the thieves might make more effort to hide what they've done. They appear not to bother as they think there are no consequences for doing this.

Or, they're like boyfriends - full of flattery and wonderful promises, but once they've got what they want - your images - everything's different.

They don't reply to your customer support tickets, payments are late,  promises for more promotion for your images just never materialize - but it'll be happening "soon", they're seeing not one, but thousands of others...

In the end, there you are, alone on a Saturday night with just your hard drive full of wonderful images, crying into a large tub of ice cream which you're eating furiously

Shutterstock used to take anything a long time ago but now it seems to be harder to get images accepted there than it is on iStock.
In addition, up to 18 months ago it was true that the earnings from iStock were always more than from Shutterstock but since then the situation has reversed dramatically. Now iS only brings in 60% of what Shutterstock produces.

On Friday, my Shutterstock earnings were more than my iStock earnings for the day - and I only have a portion of my porfolio on Shutterstock at this point. And this is almost completely a result of things being really slack for me at iStock lately with the various best match ups and downs.

I would have said at one time that Shutterstock was very loose with acceptance standards, but they have certainly changed. They claim LCV on things that in my case I know have sold (because I have a track record at iStock over the last 3 years to demonstrate saleability), but other than that, I'd say they're pretty good at picking images.

This image has never sold an EL, so if one is required, they don't have it.

I guess this seems to me more like printing an image on a T shirt than printing an image in a marketing brochure, but in truth the background isn't really the main value in what they're selling. I don't see this as being a huge ripoff in practical terms given that they've got an army of low paid people churning these portraits out and the bulk of the effort on their part is "painting" the subject - not my photo.

If they were just selling the painted beach shot, I think it'd be much clearer that what they were selling was my copyrighted work, albeit gussied up a bit. As it is, they just need to give the buyer an idea for a different background. If you look at the example painting with a cloud background, they don't even closely follow the cloud outlines from the photo in the painted piece.

Honestly, given the paintings, I'd rather they didn't credit me

I got a nice e-mail back from the greeting card company with the information about the EL they purchased (I had asked if they'd purchased an EL and from which agency) and it checks out. I also found one of my images with some text added being offered at a free wallpaper site (www.wallpapersbot.com), e-mailed them, and got e-mail back that it had now been removed.

Seems to me that if it becomes known that you can easily be found when you lift things you shouldn't, it may decrease this sort of thing over time. I know people are worried about Google's search increasing unpaid for uses, but I have to think that this balances out overall to a benefit for those of us selling images.

I didn't see Stocklib by Epictura on the list. Whose partner are they?

I found some images I recognized there - Lisa Young, Paul Cowan, Sandra Cunningham - so I assume it's one of the micros.

I received a reply from Google/Picasa about my image - it's been taken down. The album remains though, so anyone else who has images in it will need to complain (I half hoped they might pull the rest as they're all from Shutterstock...)

Google's image search turned up one of my beach pictures here.. Mine is center bottom row.

They offer a "painted" image to the customer. If the customer wishes to have a background replaced, they can pick from one of the images shown.

I know that someone who painted (or collaged) something with one of my copyrighted works couldn't claim copyright to the resulting work, but can they sell it? This seems a bit like the Obama Hope poster dispute (minus the arguing about which photo it was based on).

I'm fairly certain this was sold by iStock but now I'm independent, I doubt they'd look at the issue (and the image has already sold via Canstock, so it might be them).

This site doesn't look like it's going to be the Wal-mart of hand painted photos, but I wondered if using stock in this way was within the license terms.