Lobo may not be anyone's favorite admin, but he's not a suit (and as far as I know, not a photographer either).

He and Bruce were in a band together, the Bittermen. Some more discussion here.

Image exclusivity would be the sane route to allow independent content into Vetta & Agency. They'd have to change their policy on similars (and make it more like Getty's policy WRT submissions from iStock contributors to Getty - you can't have similars to Getty content on non-Getty sites)

I doubt that IS will open Vetta & Agency up in the short run, but I think they set a precedent when things now sold on IS as Agency came originally from various outside (non Getty) agencies - by way of Getty's Agency Collection.

In some saner future, why wouldn't they permit image exclusivity in the IS premium collections only? The old notion of exclusive at IS has been shot so full of holes it's really meaningless any more. That way those independents who wished to could put appropriate content there.

You're right.  I haven't been reading the IS forums.  Maybe I should start....

Very droll - if your sense of humor gets any drier it will morph into a sense of humour

@keithpix: As far as the microstock sites being unable to exist without contributors, that's absolutely the case. The vast majority of the content is contributor owned and can walk at any time. Some sites don't let you delete your own files, some make you wait and some just make it really hard to do.

There are a couple of things that get the attention of microstock sites, and unless a union (or ombudsman or whatever) can control those, they're powerless. For subscription sites, cutting the flow of new uploads matters a lot as existing subscribers want to see new stuff each month. For all sites, removing large numbers of files matters - empty shelves are as bad for the sites as no buyers.

For those of us making regular income each month - and especially for those supporting themselves and/or their families on this income (and that's not me; I just know of some) - removing portfolios is not a trivial thing and the sites know it. It's easier to go back to work after a strike than upload a portfolio of multiple thousands of images after you deleted it (upload limits as well as the work involved). The sites know this too.

The problem that a union can't solve is how to wield the power we have without shooting ourselves in the head in the process.

It's easy to rein in a smaller, newer badly-behaved micro site (assuming you're independent and submit to multiple sites) because pulling all your files is a pretty real threat and they know it. When one of the big sites pulls anti-contributor moves  - and FT, DT and IS have all changed royalty rates in their own favor; SS has done that with less fuss as the rate was never publicized so when they increase the prices of some ELs and didn't change contributor compensation it wasn't seen as a cash grab - it's much harder. People don't want to lose 25%+ of their monthly income.

Also, it's not the number of contributors taking action that matters but the number of files, particularly best selling files. That's a very small portion of the contributor pool. Without a good number of those contributors in whatever union, there'd be no real bargaining.

Unpleasant realities maybe, but realities nevertheless IMO.

I have Photoshop & Illustrator CS5 and get lots of junk e-mail from Adobe but I'd never heard of this service. How long has it been around?

Couple of thoughts just based on looking at the link you posted.

Many of the photographers here are one person businesses - designers might be more interested in the back and forth discussion you're trying to support.

You're very cagey about the price of this - I can't see what it is from any of the places I looked. I don't care if something's free for a year, if it's insanely expensive thereafter. I would never sign up for anything "free" without knowing what the eventual price was.

It appears that this sharing involves the content to be discussed getting uploaded to some server somewhere. Some businesses might want to know a bit more about privacy and security issues before uploading content that may be proprietary to servers outside their organization.

I think this is another in a long line of largely false warnings. See here.

Without delving into long discussions about the history of cheating in business - which is very long; the milled edges to coins and weights & measures laws in many countries as but two examples - "it's just business" doesn't tell the whole story.

While there are many people who are honest regardless of laws or consequences, there are many more who will just do whatever they can get away with. This is why we have laws regulating business conduct in most of Western Europe and the US (I'm guessing in many other parts of the world as well, but I just don't know enough to speak of those). The notion is that business can flourish when customers can trust that purchase of a given weight of a described product is actually that weight and actually that product.

Protest by customers and suppliers when things aren't right is one of the ways major problems get fixed. Sometimes people vote with their feet and move elsewhere (the move from traditional stock to microstock being an example). To my way of thinking there's a lot that's right about the microstock sites even though there are problems. Before walking away, it's worth trying to push for some changes. 

On a separate topic, the notion that business and communities are totally separate is a relatively recent notion. For a long time businesses were closely tied to the communities in which they were located. Things in the last 30-50 years have changed a bit, particularly in the US, but suggesting that business and community must inevitably be separate seems to ignore a lot of possibilities.

So somewhere between "A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do" and "Greed is good" there has to be some sort of middle ground.

Sean, you're a terrific fit for the Agency collection. After all the difficulties getting into the Vetta club - and how you were repeatedly shut down with all attempts to discuss that - I can imagine it's great to have a place to highlight your work.

If search and advanced search were fully functional - which they aren't since F5;  if Getty hadn't dumped a bunch of so-so files into the Agency collection; if Vetta and Agency were the same prices (and hadn't gone up so much in September in the case of Vetta); and if the best match lurching around trying to avoid having 100% Agency and Vetta in the first few pages; then I think your argument would make sense.

Right now buyers have to really work to avoid Agency and Vetta content. Even worse, if they click on the browse Agency image from the photos landing page, they're stuck in this bizarre Agency only world for all searches unless they can edit a search string, log out or browse Vetta.

I get that Vetta and Agency is the ticket out of the mire for those exclusives who participate. Doesn't alter the fact that IS has effed up the site with F5 bugs and badly crafted introduction of Agency to the mix. Once they straighten the site behavior out, buyers will actually have some choices they can easily exercise (prime among them the option to exclude the high price collections and make that a permanent preference).

In the current climate, last month is a long time ago and last year is ancient history - things keep changing. Not only the commission rate issues that have been discussed, but the elephant in the living room - the best match algorithm of the moment.

I've been exclusive for a little over 2 years and the first few months afterward were dreadful. They were playing around with best match 1.0 to work on best match 2.0. Once they introduced best match 2.0, things really improved for me (but not for some others; there was lots of wailing). When Vetta was introduced, there was more turbulence as moving all those files to the front of the searches obviously moved a bunch of other things back. And again with Agency and I'm sure there'll be more Getty stuff finding its way to the site in time. And I'm also sure that there'll be a trend to move the stuff on which they make the most money to the front of the best match results (look at the Thinkstock searches which for a long while - I haven't checked lately - put all the wholly-owned Getty files up front).

It's hard to say with certainty, but I believe that if I were still independent now I wouldn't choose exclusivity at this point - broken promises have completely undermined any sense of trust. You just don't have a clue what you're signing up for any more. That may seem odd given that I'm currently planning to keep my exclusivity - assuming I hit my redeemed credits target for a 35% rate in 2011 I will. Different issues to look at in choosing to stay for another year vs. signing up.

Read the explanation of this situation here - I had it happen to me earlier in the year, contacted support and then posted a suggestion based on the information they gave me.

This relates to the more general request for sales data that has come up recently, read about that here.

Just for completeness, I had said in a couple of (locked) IS threads on this topic that I'd post when I got an answer to my support ticket about the vector price hike.

I got an answer this morning from Joy. She apologized for the delay in replying and repeated what she'd said in the forums - a test of a site feature.

I'd have posted on IS if there was anywhere unlocked to post...

Although they've been nagged a lot about updates, their current position is that the database is updated once every 24 to 48 hours. It does sometimes go beyond that.

I don't think that's good enough - once every 24 hours should be the bare minimum - and have said so in their forums multiple times. However that's probably why you're still seeing your file's thumb.

... my guess is they will take good care of a select group of (in their eyes) good photographers lifting them towards midstock, the rif-raf will have to decide how far they bend before they drop out, as they will only be there to fill a couple of forgotten corners of the site and couldn't be cared about less.

As a member of Future Riff Raff of IS, I think you're close to the mark.

I expect to keep my 35% for 2011 but I think the targets for 2012 will be raised substantially so that those with lots of Agency & Vetta will be able to make the targets but probably not otherwise.

It's a double edged sword though - you only get somewhat higher commissions on Vetta/Agency files, and only when sold on IS -  the high redeemed credit totals count towards targets though.

I pulled out of Vetta (and have opted out of Agency) because they've required those files get sold on various Getty sites as well as IS and I wasn't on board with that. So unless there's a big surge in volume for "regular" priced files on IS in 2011, I'm guessing I'll be Riff Raff for 2012 and go back to independent.

For those who do want to participate in Vetta and Agency, they have the dual problems of the largely crap stuff they've imported from Getty and the clubby little circle that gets the bulk of acceptances to those collections.

What am I missing?

That the PAYG credit price can be lower than 95 cents. See joyze's comment yesterday, including "There is no pay-as-you-go minimum"