I understand those authors whose content is placed in file exchange systems illegally, but the links to it are published without coordination with them. And I am fully on these authors' side.

We have no connection to depositfiles.com, but we have the same big investor, and I am sure he is honest. DepositFiles.com is not the only big project which is owned by our investor. We could conceal this connection easily but we do not do that since we consider it to be a great advantage to our relations.

There is no other way in the world other than direct contact with the author or his/her representative. That is why file exchange hosting have no right to delete files until they are complained about. There is no other way, since the whole system and the basics of the Internet will be destroyed. The model will be destroyed. That is why in different countries there different norms regulating content circulation in the Internet. Absolutely all micro and macro hostings work by these norms and regulations. All web 2.0 projects, all "tube" systems (which you regard in your I-Phones), all micro and macro stocks. There is no other way.

I consider this fact slanting and racial prejudice of some persons who wrote here as a special-order event organized by either direct order or by their own silly initiative. We are entering the market and are ready for any attacks. I am asked to cashe all public accusations and slander from concrete persons with the possibility to further use of this material in court.

Dear FD-amateur!

You write idiotism in public, and I dare to suppose that someone was able to interest you so that this idiotism came up to the pages of this respected community. You slant facts. Your thoughts are proved by your understanding of things only. You are incompetent and prejudicial. You are angry because of some reasons which I fail to understand. 


Dear WarrenPrice!

Your accusations in money laundering is a serious accusation. I do not think that you are so short-sighted that you consider open investments proved by documents and published by the representatives in the net to be money laundering. Don't you think that money laundering is a secret process? In our case everything is open and clear for the partners from the beginning. You are wrong. The payments are being made for a long time. We do our business honestly and have come to the market for a long period.

You may call us, come to our office for explanations, and please try not to make silly conclusions based on empty shouts of people interested in negative information.

Dear FD-amateur,

I have no wish to start polemics concerning depositfiles.com. I would like to only say that I have already stated everything that you describe now in the negative way. This information is nor concealed by us – it is stated as a fact. I do not understand who and in what is right, in your opinion? 

Yes, we do have the office in Cyprus (now it is not an off-shore, but a part of the European Union. It is a pity that today many people do not know geography).

Yes, we do have offices (programmers, administrators, managers) in Russia, Ukraine (programmers, administrators), and in London (lawyers).

We do have the representation office in the USA by the indicated address, and there are real people working there (sales managers and consultants). In this project we work in accordance with the legislation of the USA, under the US jurisdiction, and pay taxes in the USA. 

Yes, among the co-owners of the project there are Russian Americans (besides that, in Russia and European and Asian countries the most talented and cheap employees are concentrated), and we do not consider it to be negative. If you have racial prejudice towards some nations – please let us know.

Yes, we are related to depositfiles.com, since the company which owns this project, invested money in us. At the present stage we have no choice. This is very good money.  Let me remind you that any working connection between depositfiles.com and depositphotos.com is impossible. These are absolutely different spheres of the Internet business. 

As far as I know, the files on depositfiles.com and on other file exchange systems are uploaded by the users of the services, but not by their owners. There are norms regulating content circulation in the net (for example, DMCA in the USA). The Rightholder (or his/her representative) has the right to address to the support service with the complaint to delete his/her content. The service works legally and has a great number of users (the third place is occupied by users from the USA and Western Europe) and respected partners. We consider our investors to be serious and respected people. 

If you have or will have the reason to doubt that reliable and honest people related to our project do exist, and if there are or there will be concrete claims – I would like to ask you to address us in private. After it we will provide you with the contacts of our lawyers. 

Dear Sirs,
I will not explain the situation concerning the addresses of our offices and official representations any longer. This is silly. I am forbidden to do that, since it is not a serious topic for our discussion. I was also asked not to be engaged in empty polemics concerning the project which is now in the process of beta-testing. However, we are very grateful to all those who specified our mistakes on this stage. 

We have nothing to be ashamed of. We have nothing to confess. And there is no one we should make excuses to. If one wishes to visit us physically – he/she may do it any time. At the moment our office is not so luxurious, but it is a real office located by the address indicated in our Contacts.  The storey secretary will accompany you to the place where you will be listened and heard. Believe me, there is no need to pretend and make empty statements just for the sake of attracting several photo persons who are not able to analyze the situation and understand that such projects do not appear from scratch. At the moment the things with the project are going quite well. The base is being accumulated. Our hopes for the success are increasing.   

Attention!

We do not force anyone to work with us and we do not ask for trust. It is up to you to decide whether you wish to participate in the project or not. It is your right to earn money or not. Everyone has the right to choose. Forget about us. From our part I can be just grateful to those serious people who have already started the cooperation with us. We will do our best not to let them down. We greatly value the opinion of intelligent and useful persons. 

From this moment all paranoid requests will be ignored by us.


p.s. We accept photographs, vector illustrations, and raster vector illustrations.

Our representatives are physically located in many Western countries. Time will tell. Thanks for your advice.

I addressed the question to the DepositPhotos office where the design was developed and where layout designers work. I received the following reply: the website was read by our colleagues from the USA and Great Britain, and they do not understand what mistakes are meant. Since I am not able to analyze the whole text adequately by myself  I am asking you to specify the mistakes which discourage you.

Payments are being made and many photographers have already received them. I think it is incorrect to ask questions about micro-payments of the company, which can organize such a project.

In any case the information on the first payments is already available in the net, while full credence to us is the matter of time. We are entering this market honestly and for a long period, and we would like to be clear for our partners. That is why our management has come to the decision to register representatives in outstanding communities of stock photographers and illustrators (which is a rare case, as far as I know). I hope this is for a long time and that from now on we will be able to inform you about our development. 

A passport or any other identification document is obligatory at registration, and this condition should be observed by each author who applies his/her photos for examination. We are not able to change this rule. For the first week we registered about a thousand of photographers who uploaded about two hundred thousand photographs. We do our best to attract high-level professionals.   

In England our office is represented by a law company which conducts the affairs of DepositPhotos. I am able to provide the phone number only by coordination with them in private. If necessary, you may contact us by any convenient way. 


Concerning Istock. We consider this resource to be very reliable and respected; in our opinion, it is the lawmaker or even the inventor of the micro stock business model as an Internet service. We have the same business model with several additions and conveniences for our partners. It is hard not be alike using the same structure. However, we copied nothing from IStock for 100%. Let me provide you with an example on the global leaders of the Internet industry (at least it explains the similarity): Google and Yahoo; these are search services which borrowed the best from each other.  Istock and DepositPhotos are services which sell stock photography. We do not copy – we take the best and develop it to perfect the business model in general.  Much is ahead, of course. 

Good day, Sirs!

I am charged to register an account on this forum and to provide necessary explanations concerning the new project on behalf of the official representative of the new photo stock, DepositPhotos. English is not my native language, so please consider it. 

- DepositPhotos is the project of the Russian Americans, or the Russians who live on the territory of the USA (many of them live on the US territory for different periods of time). One may make an analogy with Google, for example, where the Russians are presented in the same degree .

- The real office with real employees and phones is located by the address which is specified in the whois of the domain and on the website in Contacts. You may both call or visit our representation office in the USA. We also have offices in Russia, Ukraine, London, Cyprus. In the nearest future we plan to publish the pictures of one of our representation offices. We would like to compete with Facebook in this direction.

- The project development started in 2008 and within a year the team of talented managers, programmers, and photographers from the USA, England, Russia, and the Ukraine created DepositPhotos.com

- At the moment project's beta-testing is in process; we try to attract the best photographers for cooperation with us by paying for their pictures from our own budget (frankly speaking, we have rather good investments for this purpose). The loyalty program will be in effect until DepositPhotos enters the market. In accordance with this program it is stated: "a stocker cooperating with DepositPhotos should not receive less than he/she receives from the nearest competitor". 

Concerning the mistakes:

- Probably, in the process of preparing the documents there were some stylistic mistakes in English, but we do not consider them to be serious errors (did you read the Russian or the French ShutterStock? ), and at the moment competent specialists are working on correcting them. Everything will correspond to your requirements. 

We need to do a great job, and we have money and experience to do it. 

- DepositFile.com and DepositPhotos.com are two absolutely different teams which have no direct connection and which work in accordance with different norms, in different countries, and in different offices. As far as I understand the situation, both projects work legally and fight against copyright abuse, but each of them bases on different regulating norms (for example, in the USA for hosting companies DMCA). 

We guarantee that our cooperation with partners in the sphere of copyright protection will be our priority. We are able to track the situation in the net, and will do our best so that the photographs of our partners could not get into the file-exchange systems ILLEGALLY!

I hope that I managed to clarify the situation with the new photo bank. And I hope that we will both be able to make profit out of these initiations.   

Please feel free to ask any questions

New (not doubled in your account) and made by you - nothing more

We offer quite new possibilities for sellers as well as for buyers, Customer stimulation (a free second image as a gift), payment for images by sms, low prices. For sellers there are convenient attribution process, promotion programs, hight revenue.

DepositPhotos (http://depositphotos.com) the new photobank is open.
At present the photobank is working in accumulating state, photographer's promotion program is running.

To take part in the Photographers promotion program it is required to pass the exam and then perform activation in the Promotion tab. After that, money will be added to the account for each accepted image. Info: http://depositphotos.com/promo.php

The nearest plans cover launch of other language versions of the site and actions for customer attraction. Expansion of upload ways is announced.


Strengths:

• The promotion program - $0.20 per each accepted image (on 500 images);
• Convenient uploading and attributing, autofeeling by the previous attributed file. Mass autofeeling (to a file group), as well as piece;
• Author commissions is 44 to 60%;
• Cash request is starting from $50. Money received upon the promotion program may be ordered without any limitations;
• Money transfer systems are PayPal, Moneybookers, Webmoney;
• Detailed statistics of image sales and views

Customer offers:

A unique tool set for purchasing maximizes customer audience:

• Credits;
• Subscription;
• SMS-payments;
• The on-going offer "a second image as a gift" (moreover, authors of bonus images receive royalty like for a general purchase).

The photobank features:

• There is a symbolic exam of 5 images;
• At registration, a document proving identity (a domestic or foreign passport, driving license etc.);
• A free bonus image for a piece purchase; moreover, both the author of the sold and bonus image receive the royalty;
• Separate registration for authors and customers;
• The royalty size depends on the quantity of sold images.