Restrict the government involvement in the economy, allow people the freedom to pursue their own interest in a free market society and corruption will dissappear.

Another huge load of nonsense.  Yes, if there are no rules to break then there can be no corruption - by definition.  But allowing people to do what they want with no regulations will only lead to disaster as we have seen many times in the past.  Allowing people to pursue their self interest without government involvement gave us a Cuyahoga River that caught fire many times, the Love Canal disaster and is currently making the air in many parts of China unsafe to breathe.  You can't call it corruption if there are no rules to break but it is a disaster either way.

You are right that the financial crisis of 2008 was caused in part by well-meaning policies of the Clinton administration to lower lending standards as a way of increasing the rate of home ownership.  However, it was much more complex than that and included allowing too many mergers creating the whole "too big to fail" situation and eliminating the barriers between lending and investment banking.  Just before the crash we had six years where Republicans controlled the house, senate and presidency and reduced or eliminated many regulations on all kinds of businesses.  The crash was caused exactly by allowing people to pursue their own self interest without government intervention.  The lessons learned from the Depression served us well for 60 years and it was only when we forgot that and let businesses do what they want that we had another major problem.

I agree with you that allowing people to pursue their own self interest is essential and is the main driver of a successful economy.  However, it has to be properly regulated to make sure that your pursuing your own interest doesn't interfere with others pursuing theirs, and to prevent too few people controlling all of the wealth so that nobody else can advance.

Now my cats are pursuing their own self interest and telling me that I need to feed them so I'd better stop.

They are evolving over time as any good business does.  It is not reasonable to expect that they could have foreseen every possible wrinkle while making up their original business plan four years ago.  I don't like having previously accepted images deleted either but sales are increasing every month so they are doing far more things right than wrong.

Wow, what a load of rubbish.  You make very confident statements with absolutely no supporting evidence.  Your user name is very appropriate.

You should never blame a failure on "greed".

Why not?  If someone makes a bad decision because they got greedy then the failure most certainly can be blamed on greed.  There are examples of this everywhere.  May as well call it what it is.

Thanks for providing that gbalex - so basically their profits are off because they are paying out too much in stock options to management.  Or at least that's how I interpret that.  It's a different mechanism but basically the same strategy that eventually severely damaged iStock.

"The cleanup is designed to have them using great images despite their inability to tell the difference."

I love that quote.  The problem, of course, is that what is great is relative - if the buyer thinks it's great that should be all that matters; trying to force people to only buy images that you think are great can be a problem if your vision doesn't correspond to current trends.  As long as Canva keeps up their sales numbers though I won't complain too much.

So, someone buys a clip use it and after 5 days, realizes that it doesn't fit with his/her project and ask for a refund (for another download).

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.  Personally I don't think they should give refunds for digital goods, but it is fairly common at 123 and also happens occasionally at DP and Alamy.  Never for other agencies in my experience except for iS credit card issues.  Unfortunately, like so many other agency issues there is nothing we can do about it except stop submitting.

I agree - Canstock is dying, unfortunately.  They used to be good but dropped off a cliff a few months ago.  With the slow reviews and lack of participation here I think they are just coasting until the end.

This month DT is doing only about 25% of the average for last year and the worst month in 2.5 years.  Number of sales is the lowest since 2010.  For me they often have the most variability but the drop for this month is so severe that it seems something has changed.  Supposedly they rotate favorability in the search so hopefully I just rotated out of favor and will rotate back in next month, but I am not optimistic.

...  photos are worth anything.

They were asking if their photos are worth anything and wondering about sales - it was implied that they think they are low and they expected them to be higher.  I was just responding that their sales are what can be expected and that if they expected to make a lot then they will be disappointed.  That is the reality - they should know that from their own experience.

But again is the RF price at Alamy same as the RF prices on SS, DT etc? Otherwise why would you buy an image at a more expensive rate from Alamy when the same is available at SS for subs price

They might not.  But not all buyers check multiple agencies, plus the standard Alamy RF license is more like an EL license on the micros so depending on the purpose the cost might be similar.

sharpshot and the others summed it up well.  I send anything that is regular RF to Alamy as well as the micros and have been surprised sometimes at what sells there - not always what I expected.  I also have separate images that I submit there exclusively, usually RM.  Anything that has unreleased people (usually editorial) on the micros cannot go to Alamy, as they would need to be RM there and can't be sold RF elsewhere if they are RM on Alamy.  For any images with people in them you should have different shots for Alamy versus the micros.  Alamy also is very strict about what they consider people - an unrecognizable silhouette in the distance or part of a hand that might be OK as RF on the micros would qualify as people pics on Alamy and need to go RM there.

No idea - I think it depends on the usage.  For me the return was decent for the number of images.  Some people have reported getting large amounts back so definitely worth applying if you have some sales that qualify.  They say the average payback was 250 pounds so not pocket change.  Their web site is here  (http://www.dacs.org.uk/for-artists/payback).