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Messages - Jo Ann Snover

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776
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/


777
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!

778
On a somewhat related note...

Canva announced an additional round of investment, bringing its theoretical valuation to $40b and they project $1b in revenue by the end of this year. Possibly Shutterstock's interest in PicMonkey was a consequence of viewing Canva as a threat

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/14/canva-raises-200-million-at-a-40-billion-valuation/?tpcc=ECTW2020
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58567722

Interesting note that of the total 60 million monthly active users, only about half a million "teams" are paying for the service "...in some capacity"

779
Unsurprisingly, I haven't had a response from Shutterstock compliance and my image is still in the scumbucket's portfolio (along with all the other content).

I sent a formal DMCA takedown notice to Shutterstock just now - here's the information in case any one else needs it

https://www.shutterstock.com/terms/dmca-notice

I also decided to start squawking about it publicly to see if that hurries them up.

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1438281198875283462


780
General Stock Discussion / Re: What constitutes derivative work?
« 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.


781
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!

782
The portfolio:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/sentongo?sort=popular

This is the image of mine he has uploaded as his own

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stunning-picturesque-sunrise-down-by-merrymeeting-1119292577

This is my image in my Adobe Stock portfolio

https://stock.adobe.com/images/mist-rises-from-merrymeeting-lake-as-seen-from-the-beach-by-the-marina-boat-launch-new-durham-new-hampshire-right-after-sunrise-on-a-summer-morning/133258605

The same guy has a portfolio on iStock with many of the same images, but not that image of mine.

https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/Sentongo?mediatype=photography

You might want to check his portfolios to see if any of your images are there - it's a very odd portfolio with lots of places around the world represented, but only one image of each location.

I have written to Shutterstock compliance to tell them to remove the image and send me an accounting of how many licenses they've sold and how much I am owed (it's marked as "Commonly Used"; it really irks that they would get to keep any money buyers had paid to license this image).

compliance (at) shutterstock (dot) com is where you can write if any of your images are  there.

I noticed two images that are just a flipped version of another Shutterstock image (the image numbers make it clear who's stolen and who's the author):

Originals
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/river-thames-bridge-st-johns-lock-520443904
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sun-rising-over-river-thames-on-520443892

Stolen, flipped image from Sentongo
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mystic-early-morning-by-river-thames-1113930485
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fabulous-twilight-before-dawn-down-by-1111015958

He's done the same flips in his iStock portfolio

Originals
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/river-thames-bridge-at-first-light-gm625232702-110044607
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/sunrise-over-the-river-thames-gm625231978-110043977

Stolen
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/a-mystic-early-morning-gm977643968-265797618
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/first-light-gm973801836-264951212

It's pretty sad that neither iStock nor Shutterstock detected someone uploading a flipped version of something already on their site.

783
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-launches-flex-premium-offering-greater-creative-flexibility-to-small--and-medium-sized-businesses-301371845.html

No prices on the web site, but this includes the entire collection - video, music, Offset images, extended licensing, editorial images, unwatermarked comps - with no monthly or daily limits for a flat monthly price.

https://www.shutterstock.com/business/flex-subscriptions

My crystal ball has taken early retirement, but I'm guessing that this will just increase the number of 10 cent minimum royalty amounts for all levels of contributors while dropping a larger percentage of the monthly fee going into Shutterstock's pocket.

784
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-acquires-picmonkey-a-leading-creative-design-platform-301369908.html

From what I've read, it seems Canva is the market leader in the online design-with-templates space and PicMonkey is just another player.

PicMonkey was using Unsplash and iStock as a partner for images and illustrations, but that's ending Sept 14th (Shutterstock takes its place).

Here's what PicMonkey is telling their users about the buyout:

https://www.picmonkey.com/help/accounts-and-billing/all-about-picmonkey-and-shutterstock/picmonkey-and-shutterstock

If you're curious about the (many) online design tool subscriptions currently out there, here are a couple of alternatives-to-Canva articles:

https://blog.dailylogochallenge.com/canva-vs-competition/
https://paperform.co/blog/canva-alternatives/

From the contributor's point of view, more buyers could be a very good thing, but for many of these design services, the royalty per download is small. It's also not clear that this is expanding the pool of buyers; it may be Shutterstock wants to be sure it doesn't lose buyers to one of the other design tools.

Shutterstock's stock (SSTK) closed down today but jumped in after-hours trading. No clue what that's about.


785
General Stock Discussion / Re: Time For A Veteran To Walk Away
« on: August 17, 2021, 19:28 »
Very best wishes for the next stage of your career.

786
That was a very large second wave - total in the free section is 574,566 items, 529,156 of which are photos

July 16th, the total was just over 319k

Most of the other asset types stayed nearly the same as in July.

The quality is excellent - putting a Customer hat on I wouldn't see anything different from the main collection.

At the beginning, the stated approach was breadth, not depth, but with such a large free collection, the depth has noticeably increased (based on some test searches I did)

I hesitate to ask, because today's answer might be different in the future, but is there any notion of a maximum size of this collection?

787

Aren't we already sharing our keywords, or allowing others to use our keywords, via the Shutterstock keyword suggestion tool?

Shutterstock isn't charging buyers $10,000+ for 12 months access to the keyword tool. The issue here is them making money they don't share with the contributors who created the source material.

788
https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstockai-launches-data-aws-data-exchange-advance-computer

I think that the announcement means that there will be images and metadata made available by Shutterstock to be used to train AI systems or other non-traditional uses with no compensation to the owners of the images or metadata (Shutterstock doesn't do any keywording). In spite of their claims about rigorous review, keyword spam is rife on their site

"The datasets include collections of images and 3D models from Shutterstock.AI's library of 400 million visual assets, along with metadata backed by rigorous human and AI review. The datasets span multiple industry categories, and have been curated to align with some of the most common computer vision applications in ecommerce, travel and tourism, self-driving cars, and consumer electronics."

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/shutterstock-ai-aws-team-up-to-help-companies-with-computer-vision

Here's some pricing information on the AWS web site:

https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=fb34254c-c7cf-47b8-806c-24045a0a2807

How does that $10,000 price get shared out among contributors?

From the description on AWS as to what you get for your (minimum) $10,000, you're not licensing content, rather "This data license gives you the right to train models for the duration of the subscription. Data sets will be published to your S3 bucket." I could easily see how Shutterstock would decide nothing was due in royalties for training models, even though without contributor content they'd have nothing to offer.

789
This is not really a surprise, but take a look at how the contributor share of Shutterstock's revenue has been reduced (probably pole-axed would be more accurate) over the last couple of years.

These are just for Q2 in each of the years noted. If you haven't yet looked at their earnings report for Q2 2021, you can find the PDF on their investor relations page:

https://investor.shutterstock.com/node/11571/pdf

If you want to read the buzzword bingo that is the earnings call transcript (where the analysts seemed distracted by the fluff about how Shutterstock's three new AI company acquisitions will enable them to help customers predict which images/illustrations/videos will work for their campaigns)

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/07/27/shutterstock-inc-sstk-q2-2021-earnings-call-transc/

Another note: the Q2 2021 report says that paid downloads increased, but that is with respect to Q2 2020. When you look at the paid downloads over time, you can see they are actually down below 2018 levels. And that's even with the unlimited downloads API program.

Shutterstock's stock was down 6% today (much more than the market overall) so not sure what Wall Street wasn't thrilled with... Closed at $101.11

790
If you are logged into your contributor account, at the top of the browser window, after the "St Adobe Stock" on the left, you should see, reading from left to right:

Dashboard  Uploaded   Files  Insights  Contributor Account            Upload Buy (your name) Adobe logo

Click on Upload

791
Not sure why you'd have a new ID, but if you look at the help page that was pointed to by the email I received about setting up SFTP, you have to generate the password from your own account after pressing the upload button. In other words there isn't a generic link anyone else can share with you

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/user-guide.html/stock/contributor/help/uploading-content.ug.html


792
I'm not a contributor to Deposit Photos, so I'm just a bystander, but wanted to point out the only way to stop these programs proliferating is to deny them content.

I understand how hard that is to do, but for those who weren't around at the time, it's a strategy that can work as evidenced by Fotolia's short lived and unlamented Dollar Photo Club. It's true that the contributor action was hugely assisted by a large group of Russian contributors who joined those pulling their portfolios from Fotolia (who wouldn't initially offer an opt-out from DPC), but it brought about change.

It is getting harder and harder to persuade agencies to treat contributors and their work fairly, but don't expect you can influence anything for the better if you opt in.

793
CanStockPhoto.com / Re: Another exciting news email
« on: July 20, 2021, 19:10 »
I didn't see anything on their web site with details about the process by which money is released to the contributor as part of the "hire an expert" option.

If everything always went smoothly with client accepting the work/creative getting paid, you wouldn't need an agent to hold the money while the work is done (and lose a large chunk of the earnings in the process).

If there are squabbles with the client (who gets the finished work but says it isn't what they wanted and doesn't want to pay, for example), how can the contributor avoid getting scammed (work is done and false complaints hold up payment)?

If I were still with CanStock (I'm not), I'd want to get lots of detail about how this setup would work before putting in hours up front with no deposit in hand.

794
The short answer is that I don't think you can be sure unless there is some FAQ on the web site that talks about the image source. You can make some reasonable guesses based on how the site behaves.

It's a good bet that the first site is using the API as you can do a keyword search and see a bunch of photos from Adobe stock in a page of search results.

The second site has very few results for common search terms (such as lake or beach) so it looks as if they've purchased licenses for those images specifically.

With the exception of a couple of fringe sites that included items for resale rights with a standard license (like Creative Market did, possibly still does), none of the stock sites permit that from a single standard license purchase. They would need to purchase one standard license per customer to avoid violating typical license terms.

As far as policing sites where you find your images, it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on who is selling what (or giving what away) just to know about the market into which we license our work. If you saw something obviously wrong (such as offering an image for download which no license permits) you might pursue it with a DMCA notice.

In an ethical, balanced marketplace, the agencies would, as part of the costs they bear, police the licensing of images and protect their artists' copyrights. I haven't seen any evidence of that in many years.

795
Selling Stock Direct / Re: Photography job marketplace
« on: July 06, 2021, 19:37 »
This idea - or things very like it - has been tried multiple times before, both by stock sites (iStock's Buy Request years back; Getty and Shutterstock briefs) and "platforms" for hiring photographers. As Sean mentioned, in the last couple of years a bunch of platforms to bring the gig economy to a custom photo shoot have popped up.

Without going into all the details about what went wrong, it's a hard thing to do well so that both buyers and photographers/illustrators can benefit. I can't see how anyone would be able to do this now (when agencies are falling all over themselves to give work away).

Take a look at this rundown of problems with a gig platform Snappr which gives you a flavor of things

https://www.insideimaging.com.au/2019/snappr-experience-low-pay-and-unrealistic-expectations/

IMO there was one thing that worked well when iStock was a young company, but I don't think it would translate into the current marketplace (it was the Request Forum for those who remember back that far).


796
The numbers in the Free collection have shot up today. It appears almost all in photos.

Total (all asset types) is now 316,836 of which 273,478 are photos and 23,830 are vectors.

Compare that to June 1 when the Free collection totaled 78,381 with 52,456 photos and 14,990 vectors.

Just doing some test searches shows many more have free content than did before this intake - it'll be interesting to see how badly this hits sales for similar paid content (I know the party line that it won't, but I'm too old to buy that yarn)

797
Canva / Re: Making Their Own In House Content?
« on: June 30, 2021, 15:45 »
If there's no mention of salary range in the job ad, I wouldn't even bother applying. The salary is probably paid in credits, which can be used to buy images and illustrations through them...

The headline says "Vendor" so I don't think there will be a salary.

This probably means they're looking to have people shoot on spec to their briefs and they will pay for whatever they accept. So possibly the "vendor" does all the work and it then told Canva doesn't like the results and so doesn't "select" anything.

If they paid contributors better they might get more supply, but I suspect all the agencies will run into this problem. They don't pay well, so lots of contributors stop uploading new stuff as there's so little money in it.

Wholly owned content solves the royalty problem, but they won't get regular supplies of "trendy, relevant, diverse, and locale-specific" content if they select only a few and pay peanuts.

If anyone gives this a try, it'd be great if you'd report back here how it went

Edited to add: If you look at the end of this Freelance job posting, they mention candidates should supply their hourly rate. In other words, even though this is Freelance and a Vendor, not employee, setup, they are planning to pay designers for this work. That language isn't in the photographer listings

https://www.canva.com/careers/jobs/korea-freelance-graphic-designers-korea/


798
Looking at the total in the Free collection (visible to buyers; no idea what's going on behind the scenes) it's the same this morning as it was on Friday.

799
I've never heard of them, but with a few quick searches, it looks like they have people make cheap copies of other artists' work or photos.

Here's an example that's a copy of a Sisely painting:

https://www.fizdi.com/snow-field-handpainted-art-painting-24in-x-36in/

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-la-neige-louveciennes-snow-in-louveciennes-1878-alfred-sisley-1839-89680608.html

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/painting.html?no_cache=1&zoom=1&tx_damzoom_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=1533

And this stock photo:

https://www.fizdi.com/on-top-of-the-world-handpainted-art-painting-36in-x-24in/

https://stock.adobe.com/images/red-bench-in-the-fog-in-winter/9310465?prev_url=detail

Their artist FAQ says work must be your own and that stock images are not allowed unless they have extended licenses.

https://www.fizdi.com/sell-paintings/

Looks like they're based in India. Not sure if a DMCA takedown notice would work

800
If you look at my earlier links you can see that from a portfolio page for any artist, you can select the "Free" versus "All" item from the drop down list to look at just the free works.

https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/adobe-stock-upfront-royalty-payment-opportunity/msg564934/#msg564934

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