Heres another profile:-  https://www.shutterstock.com/g/patrick+littles

Its most likely the same group.  Travel a lot, all editorial, illiterate captions that have no relevance to the images.
So far images on there are stolen from Getty, Universal studios, a few glamour collections and even some from personal blogs and trip reports.

SS yet again pathetic in its lack of reviewing and verification.

Given how much Getty love to lawyer up you have to wonder how long it'll be for them to have large scale selling of their images by a competitor before they choose to act.

I've emailled the author of the Mardi Gras images, or at least one that I checked. He's a Reuters 'tog.
And a Getty tog who took one of the others.

Possibly I whined too soon - I think the portfolio is now offline. Can anyone else follow any of the links?

They all seem to be still available from here, though as usual the links take me to the Spanish version of the site (!)

Added: but when I clicked on the contributor's 'name' on the Jack Nicolson file, I got a 404, which normally means the port is down.
But oddly, I cut and pasted the URI of the JN file into a totally clean browser, and still could see, and apparently buy, the file, but again clicking on the author name got a 404 error.

I then googled the author's 'name' and got a link to his port on SS, but that link was also a 404 error. (And although going via Google in the UK, I still got taken to a Spanish version of the site.)

The moron has also uploaded a Getty image:

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/londonengland-08182017-woman-holding-flowers-1435963694

https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/photo/senior-woman-holding-flower-pot-and-shovel-while-royalty-free-image/506155711

Where are Getty's crack legal team when we need them?

I've tweeted the account of the author of the image.
I heard nothing back from Getty the last time, other than the auto-receipt, so have no idea whether that was a worthwhile tactic.

Quote from: marthamarks on August 06, 2019, 17:28

Quote from: steho on August 06, 2019, 17:01

Ok, you missed the point...Im not happy about it...

I missed the point too.

Here's a modest suggestion� if English is not your native language, you probably shouldn't try to be ironic, sarcastic, or overly subtle, because those are things that take a lot of linguistic skill to do well.

That is rather patronizing. I don't think it was hard to detect the sarcasm/irony. It is well known the Americans are not well versed in sarcasm.

I'm not American, I'm very well versed in sarcasm and I didn't catch it.
However, it's late at night, so I'll apologise to the OP and leave it at that.

Yep, last month was about half of my peak, which was last November.

I sure hope you're doing well on Stocksy!

Quote from: ShadySue on August 05, 2019, 07:07

Quote from: gillian vann on August 05, 2019, 06:03

I feel a bit trapped at Alamy. I'm waiting for payments to clear, so i keep uploading. trapped in a roundabout with no exit.
I hate their disambiguation process.

What disambiguation?

that whole "poor discoverability" thing. trying to get the line turn green is pretty challenging, you have to put in so many keywords, or a super long caption, plus other things like location, category, etc. It's tedious and i'm sure leads to heaps of kw spamming by others. I generally don't bother, or I only bother with one out of a set.

Ah, nothing to do with disambiguation.

The 'discoverability' thing is a very poorly thought-out  (to put it politely) notion of Alamy (they have them, just like all the rest) which as you suggest leads to spam.
Even if you don't spam, for most images tryng to get to 42 keywords would lead to keywording small features of an image which are pretty irrelevant, meaning your views will increase but not your zooms/sales, which allegedly might knock back your Alamy Rank. Also remember that on Alamy any word from the caption can be merged with any keyword, even one word from a keyword phrase, also giving irrelevant views and hitting your click through rate. I normally get at least one of these search malgorithms daily. Eg today I have a hit for Turkish Tent, which is a Turkish musician performing in a tent. (But in particular, if you have an image of Joe Bloggs and Jane Doe, your image will show up on searches for Joe Doe, Jane Bloggs, Joe Jane, etc. Sometimes these mismatches show higher in the search than images of the real Joe Doe / whatever, but it's not so bad at the moment.

The more keywords you have, the most likely these malgorithms are to happen.

FWIW, I have fewer than 5% of my file with 'good discoverability' and these are all files with either a lot of location specific keywords or a lot of subject specific keywords, e.g. if it's a species which has recently had its name or classification changed, I'll put in the old and new terms, as many people don't keep absolutely up to date with these changes, and some regard them as 'dubious'.

In case you're not convinced, at the time when they introduced the current system, Alamy put up a video showing how the system worked, and they only used 16 (sixteen) keywords:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DeGewd73uw

FWIW, ATM and for over a year past, words in captions have ranked highter than in keywords, so make sure all your important keywords are in the caption.

The issues arising from the stupid discoverability thing have been discussed here a few times, and over on the Alamy forum many times. Alamy have never jumped in to explain why it's a good idea - but nor have they removed the feature).

And finally, if it's not a Live News or archival/reportage image, you can't have a 'super long caption': these are limited to 150 characters and have nothing to do with discoverability.
Correction: as mentioned above, your caption has everything to do with real discoverability, but nothing to do with Alamy's stupid 'discoverability' feature.

Again, just like the old iStock.
Being banned from the iStock forum was like a badge of honour, and it seems to be the same nowadays on SS.
Wear it with pride!

If they don't want to solve their problems, hell and the courts can mend 'em.

I see SS deleted the latest "stolen images" threads and if I read correctly before the thread was deleted it seems Alex (Brasilnut) has been banned from the forum (waits to be corrected)

If so these people are un-believable they do nothing about theft until contributors point out the problem then delete the threads and block those identifying the issue?

What is this some kind of weird big brother mentality in that outfit?

They've decided to up the ante in the race to become the most hated agency.

Looks like owenr osemarie is down.
Almost two weeks since his port was pointed out here.
Better late than never?
Wonder what measures they'll take to make sure it doesn't happen again?

I saw some from iStock on FAA

Have you got a link, please,

see U of Alabama vs Daniel Moore.

judge ruled that photographers can sell photos that contain trademarks.

No, these were paintings/prints/calendars not photos sold as stock and I'd expect these to be differently treated in Law.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/12/appeals-court-backs-artist-lawsuit-watched-many-universities
How far does a ruling from an Alabama state judge spread? Not as far as Canada, I suspect.

Just woken up this and got super excited to find a couple of photos sold on Alamy for $300, then I realised that Alamy shows the full purchase price before they remove 60%, doh... Well at least it's still 40%...but then I read the part that says buyers can take between 45 - 90 days to pay WHAT!!!!

In your experience how many customers don't pay and cancel the purchase on Alamy?

Sometimes there are refunds, but usually (not always) these are rebought for the same, higher or lower amounts.
Occasionally people don't pay and aren't successfully chased up.
BTW, sometimes it takes a lot longer than 90 days (especially with sales via distributors), but after three full months (i.e. the beginning of the following calender month), if you haven't seen a payment, make your first contact with Alamy to push it along.

Still, these are good value sales for Alamy nowadays, so well done! The probability is that you will get your money down the line.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on August 03, 2019, 11:38

Yes, most have a products for resale license.

Thanks. :/
Anyone that finds this tremendously unfair?! Or is it just me?
Here's an idea. Buying EL's of the most selling images in the business and open microstock and POD accounts with them. Easy money, heim?! F*CK!

Different things altogether and disallowed by the main  agencies at least.

It's a good idea to check through T&C of agencies you're thinking of signing up with before actually signing. Though to be fair, they are often deliberately phrased in obfuscatory language.