Quote from: ShadySue on May 08, 2014, 02:42
Maybe it was just the unfortunate use of the word 'altruistic' in the context of 'paying contributors fairly'. (?)
I'm sure no-one objects to the principle of being paid fairly.

Yes, but I don't think it's unfortunate, it seems deliberate. It's turning out to be a pattern, Bruce has done this before. When Stocksy got started he said something along the lines of "We talked to photographers and they wanted more". I forget the exact words, but that was the sense of it. Photographers want more. The implication being that he's there to satisfy a subjective want, potentially greed on the part of the photographer. Now he's basically repeating this with being altruistic and helping photographers.

If he had said instead that he's paying photographers in a fair and sustainable deal, preferrably with a guarantee that the deal will not be worsened for at least 10 years or so, I would be the first to cheer him on. As it is, I smell a rat.

Brucey boy can stuff "more altruistic" where sun don't shine. Photographers need contracts that fairly reflect value generated in the deal, not agencies that are "more altruistic". All that says is that he can't wait to jack up his own take.

Oh for the love of... I wonder just what it is that the "father" is "researching" as a "professor" if he has enough spare time to create 11,000 nicely processed photos.

Why do I always get a strange sense of psychosis whenever I read something originating with this guy that calls himself Yuri??

Off-putting nouevau riche bigging his self up at every opportunity.

Maybe there's a positive here. Once he leaves microstock we can all get along counting our pennies, instead of paying attention to this attention hoe. Let's hope so. I for one have had enough of the mind**ck known as Yuri.

Rant over, moving on.

PS: and no, I won't follow up with an apology. I actually mean it.

Those of you claiming that iStock exclusivity is about to end, how do you think iStock will survive without it? How will they justify their higher prices?

On the question of whether Socksy is a genuine co-op or not, it's worth noting there are plenty of so-called co-ops that are quite similar to regular corporations. Like the Co-op Bank or Co-op supermarkets in the UK.

Something I have come to realize about Stocksy, is that if they were a genuine co-op, they would pay a royalty closer to 100% than just 50%. With their present structure, a small contributor will find they have a new boss: large contributors competing with them. Because the profit is disproportionally distributed to the large contributors. This seems to go against the principle of equal opportunity that a co-op should embody.

If I ever succeed in joining them, I'll be working for sjlocke!

UK VAT laws aren't very relevant in this. All they regulate is whether UK VAT must be charged or not. In this case, the supply is deemed to be in the customer's country, so if the customer is outside the EU, no VAT needs to be collected.

As for the US, the IRS has no jurisdiction over vendors based overseas and cannot claim any taxes payable for purchases made by US residents from such vendors. If they could, then someone like iStock would have to collect taxes for their sales to US buyers, which is clearly not the case.

This "deal" stinks, IMHO. The client is either much too wary of the IRS for some reason or there's something else at play. Only Poncke can decide how to proceed, but it were me, I would tell them there is no tax to pay or there's no deal. I definitely wouldn't go seeking an ITIN just for this. If you do, you're placing yourself under US jurisdiction, establishing a US commercial presence, which may not work in your favour at some point in the future.

Good luck!

Thanks, Scott and Poncke. Sorry I missed the pricing, now I see it's in the press release. At those prices, the overlap with microstock will be negligible.

Scott, one hundred points out of ten for engaging here, that's much appreciated even by those of us not active with Shutterstock, watching the industry moving in a new direction. I have a question I hope you would care to answer.

Many of us in microstock try to compete on quality, serving the bargain hunters. It seems to me that with new high-end agencies coming up such as Offset, Stocksy and whatever else may be coming down the pipeline, these new agencies are new competition for quality microstockers. Judging by Stocksy pricing, at smaller sizes - bread and butter in microstock - the prices are not greatly higher than at say iStock. We don't know Offset pricing yet, but in order to compete I don't expect them to be vastly different from those of Stocksy.

What would you say to address this concern, that your exclusive new offering is going to be competing with the very best in your microstock house?

First look at Stocksy...

It is exciting to see a co-op finally come to market, but otherwise, it's a little disappointing.

-- It looks cliquey, a bunch of friends getting together, and compromising their editorial standards in the process. Editing is weak, too many similars, and uneven standards of acceptance. I would reject more than 50% of what's there if I were one of their inspectors. They need to take care, there's an earlier echo of this problem at iStock itself, it's being repeated.
-- Mostly it looks like a collection of Vetta and Agency quality material. On the Agency front, we're looking at top of the range microstock, but it's still microstock. People smiling at camera or doing very obvious things, literal tropes and formulas employed.
-- On the Vetta side, we see works that reach the half way mark, quality executions in search of a concept. The authors are in too much of a hurry to create cool shots. Self-editing is weak, as is conceptual self-understanding, planning and preparation.

So I think we're still waiting for the holy grail, a new agency styled as a co-op, targetted not at designers but at art directors, with old Taxi type quality. Clever, unique, strong concepts, the kind of work the best assignment photographers produce, or used to produce before Getty largely lost their form.

Good luck, Stocksy, here's looking forward to your evolution and improvement.

Good to see some initial reports from people who had been accepted by Stocksy. However, I'm having trouble seeing how this is going to work if it's RF only. Most iStock exclusives won't drop their crowns to sign up with Stocksy. High end RM artists will stay with their macro agencies... That leaves independent microstockers. I'm sure there are many of you who can create at the required quality, but I don't see that being enough to take significant market share from iStock/Getty.

Wouldn't it be more promising if Stocksy offered RM too? Then iStock exclusives could take part, and slowly migrate over. Once their RM income is proven, then the decision to move over RF as well would be easier. But even that would not be without problems, as it would leave the question of what to do with lower quality, bread-and-butter stuff that sells in microstock. With iStock exclusivity gone, the only way to maintain that income would be to spread the work around, not something many exclusives want to do. Still, with an RM option available, exclusives could take part and delay the tough decisions for later.

The guy that posted the "summary" on this subject on the Alamy forums is a first rate a$$6ole. I admire Sean's reserve, I would be liable to bite the bait on such slanderous trolling.

BTW, I felt physically sick for a whole day after the news of what happened with Sean and Rob. Feeling a good deal more positive today. No-one has died, both affected individuals will be fine, and so will the rest of us. The landscape is definitely changing - for the better in the long run.

Really looking forward to the launch of Stocksy now, it's going to be big I reckon.

Still can't get over the fact that Rob was booted as well. His port is small, he's not an active contributor, wasn't involved in any revolution as far as I could see. His only "crime" is his rather prominent involvement with Stocksy, via the Facebook group.

The message is, anyone seen to be associated with Stocksy (even privately, as Sean was) will be risking their iStock account. Getty must feel seriously threatened by Stocksy, and that's probably good news for us contributors. Getty usually have their finger on the pulse of the industry, their behaviour in this matter is a vote of confidence in Stocksy as a viable future competitor.

So ironically, Getty have just done Stocksy a big favour!

On Sean's blog in the comments, Rob Sylvan reports his contract was also terminated with 30 days notice. Are there any more, anyone else getting booted?

The FB group is no longer reachable. I guess they realised (or were told) they were a little premature. Some kind of pre-announcement from Stocksy would help.

Site is legit, Webcorelabs in WHOIS.

Has anyone received a reply yet to entering their email?

Our situation as iStock contributors will not improve as long as the current contract remains in place. A group of major contributors needs to gather together, hire a lawyer and demand that iStock/Getty negotiate with us on a new contract. There is plenty of scope for making the contract clearer and fairer. Opt-out provisions, transparency on custom deals, better definition of sub-licensing, etc.

As a small contributor, I would take part by sharing the cost of the effort. But the effort should be fronted by all, or nearly all, of the black diamonds, backed by the rest of us. Any black diamonds here willing to get this process started?

And only five views....

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-22965412-looking-at-the-future.php?st=d9f1edc

Is iStock finally recovering?

It is quite wonderful to see this initiative, so in general terms, thank you and best of luck.

However, I must say this. Forget Wordpress, for a number of good reasons. If you're serious, you will develop a solution with your own code. I'm not going to go into sensitive detail, but I fear if you don't heed this advice, a day will come when you will recognise your mistake and a lot of effort will have been wasted.

Take what you have learnt so far with Wordpress and start with a clean slate. You've done a good thing, announced an open source codebase for independent stock sellers. The Force is with you, in a manner of speaking. It's just the tools you're using are wrong for the purpose.

Regarding cost. Criminal entitites are taking advantage of online outsourcing platforms to scrape entire websites for $30 paid to a third world programmer. If our enemies can work this cheaply ... you get my point.

Quote from: Jonathan Ross on January 25, 2013, 04:51
Hi ffNixx,

I did answer it earlier when I said it was 62 of our bottom feeders that were agreed upon by Blend and Getty from our Legacy collection. Getty did not just pull our files. If you reread what I already wrote I think you will find I clearly stated this prior.

Jonathan

Thank you for the confirmation.

To the rest of you who are affected by the deal and were not consulted, this is valuable information, it strengthens your case. Getty acted arbitrarily in how they interpreted their contractual obligations. Their prudence to seek agreement from contributors was not uniformly applied and they placed those who were not consulted at a competitive disadvantage.

Quote from: Jonathan Ross on January 24, 2013, 18:12
Hi Lisa,

I think you were probably misunderstood. That happens a lot on forums sometimes it is a language barrier sometimes it is because they didn't read the entire post and sometimes it is because they have their own position and when they read your words they are misinterpreted because of what they already believe. I can see from reading a lot of the posts here that this is a very emotionally charged conversation for some. My only advice when making business decisions is to remove yourself emotionally as much as you can from your decision making. I know that is easier said than done but I would be out looking for as much solid information as possible rather than speculating.
Here are replies to three posts that I feel are speculation and not based on fact. Getty did not make a huge sale here if you knew the sale price it would blow your mind, very small. Getty did not make a deal to continue to feed Google anymore content and last Hughstoneian Getty makes $1 million dollars a year off of just my sales, they actually make more and if I deleted my account they would not bat an eye.
So my concern on this deal is that if you want to really make a stand and have people take notice you have to pull your entire collection especially the best sellers or don't bother. To remove your bottom feeder images is only helping Istock and Getty out by clearing out the trash to add new stronger content, this has to hurt Istock in order to work.
Once again this is only my opinion but it is based on some facts like the price they made for this sale. It was peanuts to Getty so I do not think Getty wants Google to take over their business these are very savvy business people that want to and hopefully will make Getty stronger I guarantee that is what Getty wants in the long run. Keep up the info sharing I think that is always a good idea but be carful not to believe all you read without first doing some investigating.

Best,
Jonathan

Jonathan, I take it from your refusal to answer my question that Blend did negotiate about the placement of images in the Google deal. I mean, you haven't denied it.

Quote from: Jonathan Ross on January 23, 2013, 20:37
I have spoken directly with Blend about our images that were used. They were from our Legacy collection images that have been with us from the start and are no longer making sales. For our company to sell 62 images that were no longer selling from our 100,000+ collection is a good gesture and a strong building block in our future relations with the biggest reseller of imagery in the world.

Are you saying that Blend agreed to the placement of the 62 images in the Google deal? Are the terms of the agreement known to you?

Quote from: gostwyck on January 17, 2013, 19:03
The Getty/Google deal is probably a massive mistake.

Hmm... It seems to me Getty is too slow and deliberate to make such mistakes. It's more likely a ploy of some sort. Getty and Google are like two alley cats sizing each other up and miaowing loudly before the real action starts. Remember that Klein a number of times made the point, "all it would take is for Google to flip a switch" and the stock photo market would be transformed. That is, Google allowing images in ads. It hasn't happened, but something else has, which we now can see, but only partially.

So at first glance it looks like 1-0 to Google. But you have to wonder... Isn't Getty playing a pusher to a potential junkie? The deal is so clearly underpriced. Getty would have known the reaction of iStockers would be severe, a negotiating tactic they can plausibly deny, but that can only drive prices higher in the future. Getty took an "own goal" in the first round for a bigger prize later on.

Why do you guys keep talking about lawsuits, as if all you wanted is to have your day in court?

The objective is to remove your files from this deal. All it takes is one person succeeding, and the whole thing will most likely collapse. Start small, get a lawyer to send a take-down demand, and you may be pleasantly surprised (see my previous post).

And those of you who do have files in this, be careful. Timing matters. You need to act soon because the longer you delay the more likely will your inaction be used against you.

Quote from: Anyka on January 13, 2013, 13:06

Quote from: ffNixx on January 13, 2013, 11:00
I can't offer legal advice, but if any of my images were involved, this is what I would do. Ask a lawyer to write a letter to iStock, demanding the images be taken down from the offending "deal" immediately, and no further such deals be entered in to with my content. The letter would point out how the deal contravenes or might contravene iStock's contractual obligations and reasonable business practice, the implication being that those would be the lines of complaint if we should go to court. For various good reasons, iStock is unlikely to want to go on record resisting the legal request, it isn't worth it to them. Chances are 99% they would remove the images. The whole thing would not cost me more than one or two hundred dollars.

How can Istock (or getty) take down images that are on Google Drive?  I don't think Istock would be writing a letter to Google saying "sorry, but could you remove one or two photos from the Deal?  We'll return the 60$ of course".

They would do it because the alternative would potentially cost them a lot more than a fistful of dollars. That is assuming they wouldn't scupper the deal altogether. If they receive a good number of legal demands, that is a possibility.

Oh, and I forgot - If any of you do send the letter, please ask the lawyer if it could be made an open letter, and post it here. The lawyer might advise against it, but if not, it would help the community to see it.