Ha, I have to love that, as Etsy and similar other sites, do nothing to stop, erase or prevent fraudulent listings. Etsy wants this because they would have to clean up their site. I hate to say the same goes for FAA in some ways and some other craft and POD sites. Etsy makes money from stupid listings, because people pay to list. Of course they don't want to remove those.

There is some who's responsible, as sites are protected now, but asking for the sites to pay attention and not just ignore fraud, because it costs money to monitor, is interesting. Hey wait... anyone say stolen images, fake ID ports with stolen images, on some major Microstock agencies? That should be included.

Where do we sign the petition that supports the EU new rules? 

"Do nothing" is an incorrect statement.
I submitted hundreds of DMCA requests and Etsy removed those listings with no questions asked.
Only a few sellers countered my DMCAs. Out of those, maybe 3 had valid reasons, showing me the proof of their extended licenses.

Less than a handful countered without showing the proof.
While these are more complicated cases, I have not seen these sellers re-listing my work, despite their counter.

In principle, I have a problem with those who expect others (read government) to take care of their business, instead of taking similar actions. Maybe all of us should flood Etsy with DMCAs, before we ask for government intervention.

I can also see a valid point in Etsy's message. Sellers with valid licenses can be unfairly impacted.

Besides, why don't you ask for similar regulations for the postal service? Make them responsible and penalize them for delivering stolen goods.

Or make the power companies responsible and penalize them for delivering electricity to thieves and criminals.

Or supermarkets for feeding thieves and criminals. Why not?

etc...

In my opinion, governments should hunt down these thieves directly, instead of delegating their responsibilities to commercial companies.

Quote from: Unamas on November 16, 2021, 14:06

25 out of 25 editorials approved yesterday. 9 out of 10 commercial rejected today for focus. The funny part that only approved photo is the photo with focus issues from my point of view.

As for 10 cents. I have the great run with one photo. ~50 downloads in 1 months, and I earn whopping $8.79 !

At 10 cents an image, if you want to buy a 1000$ lens, you will have to sell 10000 images.. At 120 images a month, that's about 7 years.  Ouch !!

You seem to forget that it's not just 10 cents. I can bet that your RPD is at least twice that amount, probably more.
And you already spread your assets across at least one additional agency.

Redo your math and you will realize that you can afford to buy your lens faster than you think. 

$89 here. Not bad.

No, it is not at all mandatory to be a member in the Netherlands.
When I worked in construction as a technical draftsman, I was not a member.
When I became a teacher, I did sign up as a member, because at that time there was a lot of cutbacks in education. But that too was voluntary. I think half of my colleagues were not members.

Yes, I mixed that up. Being a Union member is not mandatory in The Netherlands, indeed (hence my edit, while you replied).
Correct me if I'm wrong (again), but companies above a certain size are mandated to host a union (works council) and grant union leaders special status.

It never goes well because of human flaws. If you study the industrial revolution in the 18th century in the Netherlands, you see the end of working from home, very poor working conditions in industry, abject poverty, child labor for very young children. During that time, the first Socialist parties and later trade unions arose and living conditions improved.

Actually, that's a well-known fallacy and a speaking point repeated ad-nauseam by Marxists and Neo-Marxists, who only look at the world through a class-warfare lens.

Marx himself wrote that in Das Kapital. But he used 30 years-old data to "prove" his point, forgetting to mention that when he was writing that, the working conditions were significantly better than what he described in his "masterpiece".

The fact is that the working conditions got better because of competition, not necessarily because of unions.
Company owners simply realized that it's more expensive to replace and train new employees than to improve working conditions.

Unions, very much like all other (pseudo)-monopolies, are blocking the competition, the progress, and the prosperity of the masses.

That's very much valid today as it was valid 2 centuries ago.

Quote from: UPLOAD-UPLOAD-UPLOAD on October 29, 2021, 09:42

I don't understand why people waste their time with this stuff.
It's not like we have any power to change things.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

Just upload some files, you will feel better in the morning.

Each time the topic seems closed.
Then someone comes with the comment that he doesn't understand what someone is worried about. After which there will be of course an explanation as to why you can still worry about it.
The never ending story. 

I am pretty certain that someone wisely advised you to pray for wisdom and be worried only about things it's worth being worried about. 

Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.

Certainly not (anymore)!

10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".

Between 2013 and 2020, Alamy use to account for 5% of my total revenue.

In 2021, it dropped down to 2.5%, which is in line with 123RF (2.4%), DP (2.6%), and slightly better than DT (2.1%).

That's an out-of-touch self-promoting article.

Quote from: Zero Talent on October 26, 2021, 06:16

You get commisions as low as 10 cents and the occasional big sale is less frequent thant the occasional big sale on SS, for example. And sales in general are less frequent than what it use to be.

What content are you talking about here? RF/RM, editorial/news, photo/illustration?

RF photos.
And believe me, I know what I'm talking about.
Looking at your sales graph, I can say that I make several times more than you, with a fraction of your port size.

"the wall" is when the number of new images you can produce does not keep up with the falloff of sales of old images as well as the total number of new images overall.

If you have a few hundred pics you can double your port in a relatively short time and keep the sales volume rising. As your port gets bigger at some point you can't keep up. If you can produce a higher percentage of good selling pics you can stave this off for longer, but it is a numbers game and they will catch up to you eventually. Hopefully at that point your return is enough to offset the amount of work you are putting in.

I also believe that the wall is hit when you repeat yourself.
Not necessarily with similars, but with similar themes, similar styles, etc.

If you want to keep growing your sales, you must branch out and try new themes, new styles, new techniques, etc.
You must innovate instead of doing the same old over and over again.

Quote from: Mantis on October 14, 2021, 07:39

Quote from: Gcarter08 on October 14, 2021, 07:28

Has anyone deleted thousands or hundreds of images from adobe stock at one time? Did you have to go through one by one to delete?

Also curious if agencies or those with larger catalogs had to do it this way also

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

So Mat just told you no, it cannot be done. No matter how many times you ask, it cannot be done.  Although, I think there is a way.  Close your account.

Same thing to you ddb...don't say anything if you don't know what you're talking about. The question is directed to people who know about the better options provided to larger agencies and contributors.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

If you are slightly familiar with scripting, you may be able to use one of those web crawler tools to automated the process.

Maybe I got myself explained wrong. It is not that they are pumping it artificially but they made a quick money grab the same as Getty did with Istock some years ago. At that time Getty grabbed clients money multiplying prices for customers and so many disappeared. Shutterstock went the opposite route. They have put the burden on contributors and those are disappearing fast (just look at what gets uploaded nowadays at SS).

With such moves you make investors happy in the short term because your benefit increases dramatically but down the road things don't look so rosy anymore. Lets talk about SS stock in 2 years . You will see how drastically different their stock market graph and corporate benefits will be.
Contributors and after clients will be where the good content is. And it is no longer at SS.

Doom's Day predictions are a dime a dozen. There is a guy in every main square prophecying that The End is Nigh.

Yeah, there is always a chance for SS to fail in two years. But if it will happen, it will not prove that you are wise, but just a lucky gambler. 

Even so, if there will still be demand for stock on the market, a competitor or more will jump straight in, to fill the gap.
You will be fine, maybe even better, if SS made a mistake, because smart competitors tend to learn from mistakes.

If demand is still there, buyers buy from a different outlet.
As simple as that.

Isn't FB an example of how most businesses operate in the US?

1. Step 1: Eliminate all competition, create a monopoly
2. Step 2: Maximize profit: lower quality of product/service, remove disaster recovery
3. Step 3: Disaster happens: get a government bailout

1. That's only possible in a crony-capitalism system, through government intervention. Like when the government is issuing preferential laws and regulations designed to favor their sponsors. But also when good intentions backfire, when regulations meant to "protect" people are only met by a few big companies (able to afford armies of lawyers and accountants) while being prohibitively expensive for smaller competitors. Some of these pseudo-monopolies are even lobbying the government for tougher regulations, designed to shield them from smaller competitors.

2. That's normal, for anyone one of us, not just for companies. Those who pushed too hard will pay the price, being punished by customers who will migrate to better, more stable alternatives.

3. Similar to 1, that's only happening in a crony-capitalism system, where the government is bailing out their sponsors, instead of letting them die as they should, punished by their customers, as mentioned on point number 2.

Having said that, there is a significant amount of crony capitalism in the US. No doubt about this!
However, in my opinion, there is less than in other countries more heavily regulated. In many cases, the government becomes the biggest monopoly.

We can safely say the crony capitalism amount and the likelihood of monopolies is directly proportional to the amount of regulations and government interventions in the economy.

Quote from: Zero Talent on October 08, 2021, 09:02

Quote from: Suspect on October 08, 2021, 08:59

Hypothetical examples are always used to justify regulations.  This is a method of suppressing abuse.

You are rather selective in the applications of your principles ZT.  They are clearly not universal, as once extrapolated they don't hold up to scrutiny.

No. That's an abuse in itself.
Besides, regulating something that doesn't exist is not just a waste of resources but it's simply stupid.

This is what you said:

"As I said, FB is not allowing such content on their platform. Their ToS is very clear about it.

That's not what we are talking about, is it? It's a moot point. It doesn't happen, and hypothetical examples should be used to justify regulations.
"

If it isn't happening on FB, it could happen (as it happens elsewhere) so regulating FB even if it doesn't exist on there at present, isn't stupid.

However, I'm not sure if we are talking at cross purposes, as I am uncertain what you really believe with regard to censorship ie who should be accountable and who should do the accounting.

You are looking at it from a political point of view I think, but every principle can and should be extrapolated (in my view).

I was still editing my previous post.
Maybe this can clarify:

Nothing is universal. Even the 1st amendment doesn't grant absolute freedom to go unpunished if you scream "Fire" in a movie theater and people die in a stampede.
But don't allow the government to use it as an example to shut you up.

And yes, making laws for things that never happened, but are only thought possible by some politicians, is simply a waste of time and a nice way for those politicians to prove themself "useful" in front of voters who were never concerned with that matter because it never happened. Suddenly, that situation that never happened becomes a concern, a fear, and a reason to vote for saviors from things that never happened.