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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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751
« on: October 18, 2021, 16:19 »
...
I wonder what Shutterstock does with the money from a closed account with stolen photos. Would they pay back the customer who bought the photos, or compensate the people whose photos were stolen? 
... I don't think they pay any compensation to the copyright owner. I assume that they just keep the money. In many cases you can find an identical image in four or five portfolios. There were lots of those examples. How would they know who took the Image. Especially in the case when the person who took the picture doesn't even offer at shutterstock - that also happens often enough. I have also never read or heard that a contributors was compensated. [/quote] I used to be with Shutterstock (contributor #249) and recently had to contact them about a photo of mine that had been uploaded to SS by a thief. In my contacts with SS I asked for an accounting of how many times it had been sold and how much I was owed as royalties. The image was marked as "Commonly used" when in the thief's portfolio. I have never heard of them compensating the owner in the case of theft, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask. That image was in my SS portfolio before they closed it (and I suspect they still have all the records of my account and portfolio), so there's no issue about who owns the image. As you might expect, I have not received an accounting and I haven't been paid anything 
752
« on: October 18, 2021, 16:12 »
...
So do you want swift justice for the ones you don't like, or careful investigations, even though it means some turd has all stolen images? Seems like this case took less time than others where SS made a mistake and reversed their decision. Balance...
For a contributor who has been with them for more than (let's say) 1 year, what I would expect is that Shutterstock would contact the contributor to say an ownership issue had been raised about one item in their portfolio and could they please provide (specify what evidence they'll accept) to verify the ownership of the item. SS doesn't pay out on request, but they could mark the account to withhold monthly payments until the issue is resolved. If the contributor doesn't respond to the request promptly, SS could suspend the account (i.e. nothing will sell) until they do get a response and after (let's say) 4 weeks, close the account if there's still no response. The majority of the scam accounts occur with new contributors, not with people who have been with them for a long time. Not to do existing contributors the courtesy of asking about a questionable item before allowing an automated process, or a human complaint is not reasonable or fair. I suspect that SS takes this route because they are trying to cut their costs wherever possible and having human inspectors or a reasonable contributor support process costs money.
753
« on: October 18, 2021, 12:12 »
I would like to say that my account has been restored following their investigation.
Thanks everyone for the messages and I guess it's worth waiting a few more days before truly panicking and reaching out to the forum...!
Very glad that there was a positive outcome. It might help for future readers if you changed the title of the topic - perhaps to something like "SS account suspended with no notice, but restored after leisurely investigation"
754
« on: October 16, 2021, 12:25 »
That stinks. I have found (and bear in mind that Shutterstock threw me out last year over my social media campaign over the royalty cuts, so this isn't a quiet route) that public shaming on Twitter over something like this can help. A month or two back, I sent them mail and then DMCA notice about a portfolio full of stolen stuff (including one of my images). They did nothing until I took to Twitter and then miraculously - and I sure totally by coincidence - they took the portfolio down. Be careful in how you word things so you don't libel them (no sense in giving them any more ammunition). At the very least, you should be paid your earnings. Edited to add, if you don't mind going public about this cockup of theirs, I'm happy to tweet about it too if you want. There's not much they can do now they've closed my account
755
« on: October 15, 2021, 22:31 »
This nonsense of 21 cent "gross" license prices became real for me today - three licenses, each at 21 cents with my net at 8 cents each. Even the sad sack Shutterstock pays better than that!
I can get my head around high volume subscriptions with low per-use royalties and a minimum payment to contributors - what Shutterstock used to do before they switched to pandering to the stock market. But Alamy is so low volume for sales that the 40% with no minimum royalty plus a massively long wait for sales to clear is a terrible package.
If these pathetic royalties increase (or if the higher royalty sales decrease too much) it may be time to bid Alamy farewell.
756
« on: October 11, 2021, 11:43 »
any news about vectors ?
Regarding the stats I shared above, vectors are just over 20% of the total collection and 3% of the free section. In other words, vectors are under-represented in the free collection, which has to be overall good for vector artists. I don't submit vectors to Adobe Stock, so I'll leave it to others who do to comment on the state of sales. Earlier in the year, some vector artists were saying that vectors didn't sell as well at Adobe Stock as other sites (and that was a reason many were sticking with Shutterstock even after the royalty cuts). When the Free section started last October, it was just over 77,000 in total with about 14,900 vectors - so vectors were about 19% of the free section then.
757
« on: October 10, 2021, 15:54 »
Shutterstock (and other sites) have broader license that sell for 22 cents, so it's not clear what "too low" means given the current market.
Alamy's days as a higher end, RM and RF agency are long behind it and they're selling microstock-priced licenses these days. I haven't had anything that low there, but I know I've heard others complain of this type of under $1 license, so it's not unprecedented.
758
« on: October 09, 2021, 23:11 »
I'll offer an addendum to my earlier post - about the value of "custom" sales over time. Not all that surprisingly, the royalty amounts are dropping compared to 2020 and 2019 even though the volume of custom sales is rising.
It's not easy to look at details because Adobe Stock has very few stats tools for contributors, but I did a little checking on my royalties and saw that the double-digit custom sales have disappeared in 2021 (in 2019 I had a couple of $60+ royalties on custom sales) and the $9.x or $8.x custom royalties are largely a thing of the past too.
Custom sales volume was up about 60% in 2020 over 2019 and 50% in 2021 (so far) over all of 2020. However the royalties that were $4 and up in 2019, $2 and up in 2020, are $1.80 and below in 2021 (seeing lots more recently in the $1.5x range).
I realize that there's price pressure because of competition, various free collections (including Adobe's own), a weak economy because of the pandemic and a huge supply of content. But when you look at a bundle of 20 custom royalties in 2019 that netted me $95 and compare that with a 2020 bundle of 20 that netted me $36, it makes it really clear how much royalty erosion there has been in just a couple of years.
759
« on: October 06, 2021, 13:59 »
Yeah man, I only sold one image in one month! This free convention seams to have backfired...
I'm no fan of the Free section (which started out at 70,000 a year ago and is now over 878,000), but I have not noticed it eating into my sales. Not sure what type of media you license - mine is almost all photos - but that might make a difference. People from some countries have seen big drops after Adobe started handling "regions" differently and excluding large chunks of the collection - there's a thread about that here if you want to read the details). Looking at my September 2021 compared to Sept 2020, Adobe stock sales were up 37%; even if you compare 2021 to 2019 (i.e. pre-pandemic), my sales were up 32%. My portfolio hasn't grown much (i.e. this isn't about a vast increase in size). Long term, I think the free section is a very bad thing for contributors, especially of photos. Short term, I'm doing OK.
761
« on: October 01, 2021, 13:53 »
Continuing the 'Hummer' thread from the SS forum which will soon expire in late October. Hopefully, there will be some wildlife discussion here and all manner of other topics too. And also a place for people from the old SS forum to hang out.
For those of us who were not regulars on the Shutterstock forums, could you outline what the topic/purpose of the Hummer Thread is?
762
« on: September 30, 2021, 15:39 »
I misread the title at first - I thought you'd been "murdered" (banned) in the Shutterstock forums
763
« on: September 29, 2021, 20:37 »
For anyone who's not keeping a tally of how large the free section now is, with this latest increase, it now totals 873,762 items, 825,371 of which are photos. Photos represent just shy of 64% of Adobe's entire collection, but in the free section, photos are over 94% of the total. Either that means photos are popular with Adobe's users, or it's that photos are now the loss leader and it's the other asset types that Adobe hopes will continue to make money. Or something else entirely Vectors, for example, are 20% of the entire collection but only 3% of the Free section; videos 8% and 1% respectively. In addition to work from existing contributors, I see more new artists who only have work in the Free collection - I assume where there is a niche they see as unfilled? Oct 20, 2021: Edited to add that the free section is a little smaller, I assume because the year is up on some of the original content and it has returned to the main collection. Today, the total was 831,910 - 792,820 photos and 18,583 vectors (down about 8,000). Illustrations were about 20 fewer and videos about 1,300 fewer.
764
« on: September 28, 2021, 11:21 »
In 2017, I switched to a Fuji (currently have the XT-3) as I wanted to cut the weight of what I was carrying around. I've been very happy with the image quality. I had previously used Canon for decades - wasn't unhappy with the quality, but sold all the gear and lenses and started afresh.
765
« on: September 21, 2021, 12:03 »
In addition to the problem of getting totals, with royalty free licenses, you have no way to map total downloads to total uses. One license could mean many hundreds of uses if it was a large company using the image in many ways over a long period.
With rights managed licenses, you can answer those sorts of questions, but I'm assuming you are licensing RF, not RM.
Also, for them to copyright or get a registered trademark for their logo, using work that was previously licensed as RF may pose legal problems.
766
« on: September 20, 2021, 16:24 »
By tracking average revenue per download we should be able to see that...
Part of it. What we can't see, except via their quarterly earnings reports, is if their revenue is increasing as a result of their changes in product offerings. What would not be good, for contributors anyway, is for their income to go up without ours also going up by a similar percentage.
767
« on: September 19, 2021, 15:22 »
Rather odd for support to backtrack on their initial answer, but I did a Google search and Bogdan Dudko is the sales team lead at Deposit Photos according to his LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/bogdan-dudko-7a654b6b
769
« on: September 18, 2021, 10:34 »
I had some 38 cent purchases in September - I think it's the date the buyer purchased their subscription that counts, not when the image is actually downloaded. DT's page on their charitable programs says the Covid uplift for contributors ran through the end of August 2021 https://www.dreamstime.com/supporting-community
770
« on: September 17, 2021, 10:20 »
No further communication from Shutterstock compliance, but the portfolio is gone, as is my image (although if you click on the link I originally posted, you can still see the detail page as if the image were live). I'm still waiting for the accounting of licenses issued and royalties owed to me (while in the other person's portfolio) I tagged the UK photographer whose images (I found three) the dirtbag has lifted. I'll let him go after the iStock portfolio. There is also a portfolio on PicFair that includes Ian Sherriff's three images - again, not mine https://53nt.picfair.com/
771
« on: September 16, 2021, 13:15 »
Today's update is that I received a reply from Shutterstock compliance that they had removed the two works of Ian Sheriffs (the ones the scumbucket had flipped), and explained that even though that wasn't a formal DMCA notice format, they'd removed the work anyway.
Big of them!
As those weren't my work, I couldn't have sent a DMCA notice anyway. And my image is still up!
I've written back to Shutterstock compliance, so I hope something will happen (and who knows if the response had anything to do with yesterday's tweet...). I also pointed out that three stolen images from two different contributors should be enough to shut the whole portfolio down.
Tossers!
774
« on: September 15, 2021, 10:59 »
No.
You do not buy resale rights or copyright ownership with an extended license (of any agency I'm aware of)
Removing material from an image (isolating) does not make this a new work.
775
« on: September 11, 2021, 13:32 »
Updated list:
.......
Shutterstock has apparently paid no attention to weeding out stolen photos - that list should be an embarrassment to them. Even their own similar image feature can find 5 other copies of this strange looking cupcake (and I'm not sure where the original comes from, but it shows up on a bunch of sites that allow "free" downloads of what look like stock photos to me). Interestingly, two of the five have already been taken down (if you click on them it says the image is no longer available). It's sad to see an agency become so utterly unconcerned about intellectual property rights - all Shutterstock is focussed on at the moment is their stock price. Tossers!
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