I very carefully read stockmarketer's post and found it to be exactly on target. Absolutely accurate. I agree with every point he made.

Actually so do I mostly, this is a business and it needs to be treated as such. The only thing that annoys me (and 'stockmarketer' if you are a CEO of a big agency this applies to you) is when the company management make statements on their forums that is downright insulting to anybody with a shred of intelligence.

So if this is a business and the agencies want it to be treated as such I'd appreciate it if the management could cut the 'community' rubbish and act like business managers.

Wow, really?  In the UK people keep 100% minus costs? 

Here in Florida the attorneys take 33% PLUS their substantial costs.  Injured people are lucky if they see even half the settlement.   Frivolous lawsuits and ambulance-chasing attorneys are rampant.

Don't start packing your bags yet Lisa, I pointed that out as an example as to the type of lawyers that'll take a case if they stand to make a quick buck, the claimant gets 100% that's true, but I wouldn't recommend them if you have a serious injury, I get the impression their aim is to settle at the earliest opportunity rather than battle it out to get the most for the client, if the examples in the ad's (where somebody with a decent case sits there smiling with a cheque for a pittance of what they could probably get) is anything to go by.

Just read your post higher up about your legal case, now it's my turn to say Wow, you won and it still cost you personally!

To me, gay and ethnicity are a million miles from baldness. I could understand if this model had had a rash retouched on his face with the headline 'This person is contageous' but the implication that he might be going bald doesn't give him much of a case as far as I'm concerned.

It might not to you or I, but as I said above it clearly does to him which is the salient point.

Okay, if this person walked into your legal practice with the cure for baldness ad, would you advise him to go for broke or gently persuade him to stand down as there's likely to be little in it for him?

I've never said he'd make any money, but like most people as soon as you hear the word 'sue' it's what you think. I see you're based in the UK, no doubt you're aware of the growing number of 'ambulance chaser' type adverts asking people if they've "had an injury that wasn't their fault"  the common sales line is "you keep 100% of the settlement" - why do you think that is?
So in answer to your question (not that I'm involved in law anymore) I'd imagine that the key undermining factor for some law firms would be 'Can we easily win and get our (substantial) costs back' and in this case there is a very strong possibility, even more so because it's a simple case that could be assigned to a junior. Of course each lawyers main objective is to act in the best interest of the client

And back to the subject at hand: The model signed a release in which he granted permission for his likeness to be modified. His character has not been defamed. Anyone who says otherwise opens the door for every bald person to counter sue as it implies that a hairless person has less character than a hairy one.

Again completely wrong, although I do admire your stubborn ignorance of the law, it is not for you to say whether he's been defamed or not because your opinion doesn't matter, neither does mine come to that, it is the person in question to say whether they feel their character has been defamed, then it's down to a court to decide whether it falls within the definition of the law.

In this case it's clear even to the most blinkered person that the model in this example feels defamed by the usage, and within the definition of the law the use and outcome described fits within that criteria. So the very fact that you and some others think he's being a bit lame (and in all honesty so do I because I lost most of my hair years ago) it's not for you or I to make that judgement, if it was we might as well not bother uploading model releases and let anyone do whatever they want with the images.
And as I said earlier it doesn't matter what any agency says in their T&C because they don't make or judge the law either, as soon as they accept the release they agree to abide by it's contents - it's a two way thing.

As for your last sentence regarding all bald people being able to sue, I'm not even going to belittle you there suffice to say I presume you think it's alright to portray a straight married model as gay because they couldn't sue as it would open the doors for all the gay people in the world to say they had less character! Same thing goes for changing someones ethnicity.

I'll have that tenner though 

Quote from: RT on November 09, 2010, 07:11

Of course it's a defamation of his character, going bald might be a fact of life but if he isn't going bald and this image portrays that he is then it's defamation.

Defamation refers to character. This ad is misrepresentation (of truth).

Without seeing the ad you can't say it's misrepresentation, if the image of this guy had a speech bubble saying " I use to be bald but thanks to xxxxxx I now have a full head of hair " that would be  misrepresentation, in this case it sounds like they're just portraying a guy as going bald which isn't misrepresentation because people do go bald, the unfortunate issue here is that the person they're using isn't bald and he has suffered as the result of their altering his image, which would fall under defamation of character.

It worries me that so many people have no idea about the law and what can and cannot be done with stock photos, it also worries me that so many people rely on the comments made by stock agencies and presume them to be legal.

Having worked in law I can tell you 100% that from what the OP has stated it would fall under defamation of character because by legal definition it is, and I can also tell you that if this guy decides to persue the matter he will win, and also that he will sue the photographer because he signed a contract with the photographer (the release) and therefore the legal process begins here, now the photographer will have a legal defence because presumably he has a clause in the release that he uploaded to the agency that excludes any defamatory use of the person in the image, so therefore the process moves onto the agency and then down the line until it reaches the stage whereby somebody is identified as having breached the defamatory clause.

To the OP, if you haven't got it yet make it your first priority to get legal insurance, I take it your model release has a defamatory clause, presuming as such you have nothing to worry about as you're in the clear but if this guy does decide to take the legal route you will be involved initially. My advice to you would be to speak to the model and attempt the amicable route by getting him to allow you to contact the hairloss company seeking some form of 'out of court' settlement, the reason for this is because if it did go the legal route you may not end up out of pocket eventually but you'll spend a lot of time in the process, either way make sure all of your communication with the model from hereon in is recorded in some way.

When they find out they have been buying microstock images on alamy, I wonder how they react?

As it's the license they're buying and not the image it's their own fault if they react badly for buying something they don't need.

If I need turf for my lawn and buy 500 rolls from a bulk supplier only to find out that the shop down the road sells them in individual rolls and I could have just bought the 20 that I needed it's my own stupid fault, not that of the bulk supplier or the guy that grew the grass.

Irrelevant of whichever sites T&C that it was licensed through I'd say that this falls within 'defamation of character' of which you should have a clause on the model release that you uploaded to the agency, therefore no it is not allowed.

As you don't know which site it was downloaded through I suggest you contact the hairloss company and explain the above.

Each month somebody starts a new thread on the Alamy forum where people can report images they've seen from Alamy, plus there's a more extensive version on the Alamy yahoo group, I'm not sure what use your blog would be.

Alamy don't edit their collection for content so in theory (and in practice) anything and everything sells on Alamy if a buyer desires a photo of it.

......and their reputation would be shot. 

Depends on which reputation you're referring to.

I've had that problem in the past but not lately.

.....can u assure me their services are not up to the mark.....

Yes I can, the fact that they can't even spell basic words on their website means the likelihood that they'll be able to keyword an image correctly are pretty much zero.

Well that sound strange coz I found they are key-wording for a photographer who are selling images on stock sites. And their key-worded images appear on the first page of the stock sites. This was confirmed by the photographers themselves. I don't know about their site but you might have helped them recognize from key-wort to key-word      . I think you should send a few images as well and wait for the key-worted images OPPS key-worded images. 

Your first post as a new member is in support of them, and you've given an unsupported example, how novel we've never seen that here before. Why not share who this fortunate photographer is or show us this wonderfully keyworded image on the first page of the stock sites 

Well their services might not be up to scratch but clearly you've they've got the Google analytics sorted.