Quote from: Catastrophe on July 02, 2011, 05:03
Almost all of the creative imagery I have ever tried to upload got rejected for 'not suitable for stock' or something similar (of course much of my artwork gets funny looks from the art geeks, as well).
...Because it really does get boring making photos that look like an example in Kodak's old "Taking Better Pictures" guide.

IDK, food for thought. I found the path this thread deviated onto interesting.

Therefore I started my own Project, I simply got terribly bored ... www.artshader.com

Quote from: pseudonymous on June 20, 2011, 01:09
I actually considered hostgater till I saw that they were blacklisted.

Michael, do you mind sharing what way ktools is limited?

I built my Agency site from the start to accept non-microstock material (it is NOT thought as a microstock site) which includes e.g. artistic nude, pinup and fetish photography. Therefore I had to build a suitable infrastructure like credit card processors and hosters which allow this kind of material. Beyond that there had been million of details which are missing in Ktools. KTools is designed for using standard settings and tools like paypal. Hope this helps....

For my site I didn`t use KTools since I think it is too limited. But the requierements regarding the PHP ini and other server settings are quiet the same for any script like that.

I set up my own Server since it gives the most freedom. At the moment I use EUKHost.com and I am very statisfied with them. Please not that their Shared Hosting packages are not usable for something like KTools....just talking about Servers!

Quote from: lisafx on May 20, 2011, 22:15

Quote from: Michaelp on May 20, 2011, 18:41

I don`t know why so many People think that Shutterstock was doing right. No law had been broken. No bad intention had been included. Nothing to discuss about. Morally it may be a different thing.

Right.  No law has been determined to have been broken. OTOH, nobody is being sent to jail either.  Just an account closed by one privately owned business.  

The OP may not have violated any laws.  It appears the reason his account was terminated is because Shutterstock concluded he violated its submission guidelines.  They are perfectly within their rights to terminate his account, although it was a bit harsh.  

I keep reading these posts that if no law was violated then the account shouldn't have been closed.  There are other reasons to close accounts, and violation of submission terms is an appropriate reason for closure.  

So in answer to your question - that's what many of those "shutterstock did right" votes are about.  

Lisa. By "law" I refer too to Shutterstocks own TOS/ guidelines, not only to the governmental law.

Please read this from their agreement:
e.  if the Submitted Content consists in whole or in part of design elements, fonts, clipart, sprites, vectors, brush tools and the like that are included in design programs (e.g., Photoshop, Daz, Illustrator) by uploading such Submitted Content to Shutterstock, you warrant and represent that the end user license agreement, terms of service or the equivalent license held by you does allow you to incorporate such elements in Submitted Content created by you, and to license such Submitted Content to Shutterstock for the purposes set forth herein;

As such, I am unsure on what basis the account had been closed. A contract has to be valid for both parties, not only from one. A

Quote from: lisafx on May 20, 2011, 23:07
Any updates on this?  Are they worth uploading to? 

Yes, worth it. I have arround 70% of my Profile there and 55 sales last month. Not much, but steady and growing.

Quote from: gostwyck on May 20, 2011, 19:11

Quote from: Michaelp on May 20, 2011, 18:41
From my point of view the guy did not breach any copyright law nor the Agreement of shutterstock. It is possibly just an missunderstanding and the inspector thought he stole the Image from someone else and did not realize that it is a filter.

I don`t know why so many People think that Shutterstock was doing right. No law had been broken. No bad intention had been included. Nothing to discuss about. Morally it may be a different thing.

How do you know this? Have you heard Shutterstock's side of the story too or are you just jumping to conclusions without actually knowing the facts of the case?

Well, I cannot make statements based on unknown things. Nor anybody can do so. I do not like to speculate not against nor in favor of the OP. My posting is based on the known. It would be very interesting to hear shutterstocks side! Anybody listening :-) ?

From my point of view the guy did not breach any copyright law nor the Agreement of shutterstock. It is possibly just an missunderstanding and the inspector thought he stole the Image from someone else and did not realize that it is a filter.

I don`t know why so many People think that Shutterstock was doing right. No law had been broken. No bad intention had been included. Nothing to discuss about. Morally it may be a different thing.

Good question. I wonder the same. I _assume_ that if you submit them as Editorial they can do nothing legally. Thousands of "Paparazzi" are doing the same every day and earning money with that.
I remember a courts decision in Germany that People who are Actors have chosen to be a "Person standing in public" and has to accept therefore Fotos apprearing in Magazines, Websites, etc. ... your situation is different nevertheless....

Quote from: Fred on May 02, 2011, 15:45

Quote from: Buzbuzzer on May 01, 2011, 17:30
The dollar will go down, you better change your currencies right now.

Actually, if you are really confident that the dollar is going down you should borrow dollars and convert them now and pay them back with the weaker dollars you get from your sales later.  You have to borrow at low interest rates of course.

c h e e r s
fred

True. I thought about this many times. Without doubt it will devalue. Even in a stable environment...

Quote from: walter59 on May 06, 2011, 19:13
I have stopped uploading as limit has started. I am a full-time Stocker. If I can't upload my monthly production of 300-400 images, it makes no sense for me. So I have more time for other agencys. And I have reactivated I-Stock. Perhaps the better way.
I think upload limits are not professional. The only thing that should be assessed is the quality of the images.

+1

Dreamstime does itself no favor. And they continue to approve very low quality material which renders whatever limit useless.

Dude, they are from the same Contributor!

Quote from: gostwyck on May 03, 2011, 19:02

Quote from: vlad_the_imp on May 03, 2011, 18:54

QuoteAnother time they froze my account because I was logging in from another country.

Many banks will do this if you don't warn them you are travelling abroad. You should always tell your bank you will be using your cards abroad or they may well freeze them as an anti-fraud measure. I'm not saying PayPal are whiter than white, just saying, in my experience, they are fairly trouble-free. (hope I'm not tempting fate there >touches wood)

Yep. My bank have frozen my credit card and cash card when I suddenly (to them) tried to use them in Australia and Thailand (from the UK). However I've done PayPal transactions without a hitch whilst travelling in Thailand, Australia, NZ, Italy, France, US, etc, etc.

Wow, unbelievable...where are you located?

They froze my account a couple of times. The first time after transferring a certain amount of money. They claimed that there is a EU law which requires them to act like that, but after doing some research and asking a friend of mine who is a Lawyer it showed up that there is no such law! They simply lied in order to freeze my money! After two weeks of support requests and sending documents I finally was able to get my money out.
Another time they froze my account because I was logging in from another country. I was receiving a payment while on vacations. Big misstake logging in. Again a week of dealing with the useless support until I got my money.
Don`t tell me it is about security because I use since ages the same bank account etc. to transfer my money to...impossible that it is about fraud.

Imagine this: You bank freezes your account because you pay with your associated credit card while on holiday in another country! How stupid is that?? Unprofessional. Beyond that I do not trust companies who lie to me.

I do not use them anymore. No Problems here with Moneybookers and Payoneer are even better!

Harsh words for small issues. Why so emotional?
Canstock is a slow seller, true, but beyond that one of the best and fairest sites out there. I totally trust duncan (owner) and his crew and it is one of the few sites which ahven`t betrayed their Contributors and pay a fair royalty.

Thanks Leaf :-)

bump :-)

I agree. Uploading is just painful. Low perfoming sites should have an interest in making uplaoding for contributors as easy as it can be.

Hi Talia!

Thanks for your support! This reflects quite well the great support and service of payoneer.
I will switch right over to your forum!

Have a nice day,

Michael

Hi!

I am not from the US, so I can`t answer some questions, but I use my Payoneer card worldwide. For me at the moment its the best solution available. I love it. Paypal is unreliable, Moneybookers is good, Payoneer is best. I just wish all Agencies would offer it.

Too bad its just in russian! I like to support Projects like this...I think especially those markets like Russia, Asia, Brasil,... have a great future...

Well,I like the Image! ...for cases like this I started my own Agency Project, mostly because I am fed up with the creative limitations of the usual Agencies: www.artshader.com
(Please note that I am still in the beta-testing phase, but the site is fully functional)

Hi all!

Anybody from Buenos Aires on the board?
Would be nice to get a meeting arranged to rant in spanish about istock jejejej
Obviamente tendriamos que tomar un par de cervezas tambien ;-)

...I sent you an PM

Quote from: jeancliclac on March 05, 2011, 09:35

Quote from: djpadavona on March 01, 2011, 19:03
It would be simple to adapt a KTools site to a virtual agency with multiple contributors.  The "Contributors Add-On" is available for $89 to anyone who wants to start their own stock agency.  And we have been long aware of the Photoshelter option to do the same.

For now I prefer to stick to my own branding with my website, but I would join a virtual agency depending on who was running it and what commission structure they were to offer.  I think it would be best if one of these agencies was started by a higher end contributor who already had a significant following within microstock, rather than someone like yours truly.   

I agree this would be the most simple model, that could be implemented easily and work within few days already.
I would be interested to know if 5 to 10 of you having complementary folio of at least 3000 to 4000 pictures would be interested to join such initiative.
We could share the site and decide together the way to drive it. I already have littel experience with Ktool sites including contributor add on, not that I have a very wide experience, but at least a basic knowledge on how this works in practise....

The volume and diversity od such site will make it much more attractive.

Jean

I am definitly in. Portfolio of 6700 3D illustrations and some photos. Experience with the cms stock photo script and some in server administration (WHM/CPanel/CentOS).

I deleted the post, surely I didn`t thought about "competing" with Microstockgroup.com, sorry for that :-)