I have opted out of China in distribution scheme last April but had again tens on sales to China (China,Editorial website) for a couple of cents each.  I have also opted out of Novel use.  These sales were all dated 20 September 2022.  Any idea what is going on? 

I just had about 20 more sales for 12 cents gross.  They were all distributor sales netting 3 cents each.  Country is not disclosed and there is no info whether these were novel scheme sales.

It is soon April and that is the time period to opt out of various sales categories.  There is novel scheme sales to consider, distributor sales and sales to different countries. 

I would like to opt out of all those penny sales without losing any good sales. 

I plan to opt out of novel scheme and China + Russia.  But the 20 distributor penny sales from yesterday did not disclose a country.  I think that is deliberate from Alamy.   

What would be the optimal strategy here?

Just had a huge sale, my share is 7 cents.

The deal is this:

Usage: Editorial, Use in syndicated editorial news features, single context only. Includes archive rights in-perpetuity.
Media: Newspaper - national

Print run: Unlimited
Placement: National
Image Size: up to full area

Duration: In perpetuity

Alamy was acquired by PA Media 2020. It is part of PA Media Group Limited, a private company with 26 shareholders, most of whom are national and regional newspaper publishers. The biggest shareholders include the Daily Mail and General Trust, News UK, and Informa.

So 7 cents, unlimited print runs in perpetuity for all shareholders of PA Media.  Includes archive rights in-perpetuity...

"Also for the RF license: You can't use the photos in products that you will then resell on a retail model, like a POD site. Someone would need an EL for POD sales. However as in the earlier posts, someone can advertise a product, lets say a large print, using our SS images (and many other sites that have API partners) to display the product for sale, and must pay for the license if they sell that product."

Uncle Pete, is this your personal opinion or can you give a link for this info?  I didn't find any mention of PODs in Shutterstock TOS.

SS has a lot of affiliates, re-sellers and partners either selling directly or marketing SS content.  Displaying embedded images from SS is naturally OK but displaying SS images with no reference to SS/artist is something else.  If clicking the image takes you to the original image in SS then everything is just fine.  I understand that with PODs embedding is problematic and so are watermarks.  But the images must be, in my view, linked to SS if PODs are based on standard licenses per each purchase because otherwise there could be no control of PODs.  If a POD site sells once, buys standard licence and receives original image, then SS could not control the POD site anymore.  SS could be losing money. 

So it would make sense for SS to require that either displayed images are embedded from SS or the reseller buys ELs.  Both of these cases are OK and necessary for marketing.  Both of these cases would also allow the artist to spot thefts.  But the problem is PODs where there is no reference to original agency/artist/license - no ELS and no embedding.  Like the cases I described in my first post to this thread.     

It would be nice to find any info SS has itself released about rules concerning POD sites.

I am trying to keep the original question alive: How can you tell if someone is selling POD stuff of your images legally or just stealing from you?   

"Also for the RF license: You can't use the photos in products that you will then resell on a retail model, like a POD site. Someone would need an EL for POD sales. However as in the earlier posts, someone can advertise a product, lets say a large print, using our SS images (and many other sites that have API partners) to display the product for sale, and must pay for the license if they sell that product."

Uncle Pete, is this your personal opinion or can you give a link for this info?  I didn't find any mention of PODs in Shutterstock TOS.

SS has a lot of affiliates, re-sellers and partners either selling directly or marketing SS content.  Displaying embedded images from SS is naturally OK but displaying SS images with no reference to SS/artist is something else.  If clicking the image takes you to the original image in SS then everything is just fine.  I understand that with PODs embedding is problematic and so are watermarks.  But the images must be, in my view, linked to SS if PODs are based on standard licenses per each purchase because otherwise there could be no control of PODs.  If a POD site sells once, buys standard licence and receives original image, then SS could not control the POD site anymore.  SS could be losing money. 

So it would make sense for SS to require that either displayed images are embedded from SS or the reseller buys ELs.  Both of these cases are OK and necessary for marketing.  Both of these cases would also allow the artist to spot thefts.  But the problem is PODs where there is no reference to original agency/artist/license - no ELS and no embedding.  Like the cases I described in my first post to this thread.     

It would be nice to find any info SS has itself released about rules concerning POD sites.   

Thanks for your comment zsooofija.  Which agency are you writing about?

Reading what others have written there seems to be different views on whether the POD shop needs to buy ANY kind of license BEFORE they actually sell the POD.  Also these deals seem to differ from agency to agency.

Which agencies require ELs before actually selling PODs? 

It would interesting also to know which agencies require no license of any kind before actually selling PODs?  Or just standard license?

 

I mailed one of the sellers in Amazon and they replied that all their images come from "the net picture library".  When I asked them for more details they claimed to have bought the image from Shutterstock.  They also removed the image from their shop even though I didn't ask for it.  I checked my SS site and it has been bought once from SS a couple of years ago with a standard subscription.  I didn't mail the other 5 Amazon shops also selling PODs of this image.  They could all make similar claims or just not bother to answer at all.

Jo Ann is most likely right.  Embedded images are the rule here and if no watermark is required, nor mention of agency/author, the artist has no way of knowing whether a POD use is legitimate or not.   

As ShadySue said it might not be a very good idea to make accusations without proofs.  It would be quite hard and time consuming to prove anything and even if I managed to prove something I can't see any rewards coming my way.  And if no purchase of a license is necessary before a POD is sold, proving is still more difficult if not imbossible.

Sorry for this gloomy view and thanks for commenting.






   

I am selling images on many sites so there is no way I can tell from which site they downloaded.  This is at the heart of the problem.  If the POD seller gives no info about anything, the artists has no way of knowing from which site the images originated.  All the info I have is that they are selling my images as PODs with no mention on the original site/artist/licences.  If no one can tell, based on all this info, whether the PODs are legitimate or not, there is really very little point in trying to chase the illegitimate uses or thefts. 

I am trying to ask the wider question here.  How can you tell if someone is selling POD stuff of your images legally or just stealing from you?  Are there any rules for this kind of use of images?   

 

Thanks Hannafate

Can you tell me why you are sure that this is a theft?  I also believe that this is a theft but how can you tell a legitimate POD from illegitimate?  What is it exactly in my case that makes it a theft?

Does the seller of the POD need to buy EL before the print is purchased by a customer?  Or the coffee mug? 

Can the seller use just RF subscription license to put the POD on sale?  Or can the seller of the POD just use the free image option of SS?

I know I have my images all over the POD market without EL licenses but I believe these are mostly some sort of affiliates of agencies and only resellers of the agencies.  I believe these are mostly legitimate PODs as the images must be uploaded from agencies every time the POD is sold and that way I get my 10 cents or whatever. 

So how can I tell for sure that my images are being stolen in this case?  If there is no way to know for sure without contacting the sellers in each and every case then this is a dead end and waste of time.




   

Thanks, I contacted one on the sellers already through Amazon but have not received any answers so far. 

I know mine is just one particular case of possibly illegitimate use of images and as such not so interesting.  But this is Amazon and it is possible to leave negative seller feedback and contact Amazon.  That might make a difference here. 

But mostly I would like to known what is legitimate and what is not when selling others images as PODs.   How do you recognize an illegitimate POD use?  Contacting the sellers makes no sense unless you are pretty sure the use is illegitimate.  if you have a lot of images in a number of agencies (I have about 10.000 in various agencies) it is not any more possible to track the legitimate uses. 

 

Here's an example of one of my images being sold as prints, phone covers etc.  No watermark, no reference to any stock agency, no reference to artists or licenses. 


https://www.amazon.com/Hitecera-Lichen-Growing-Willow-Artwork/dp/B08MQMMHV6?th=1

https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Lichen-Growing-Willow-Compatible/dp/B0895MHFC9?th=1

Would you consider this legitimate? 

This image has never been sold as EL and I am not selling it on any POD site. 

This is not the first time I have found my images sold in dubious sites, as wall papers, wall art, towels etc., but usually there is some trace of a stock agency licensing the image.  This time there is none.

So how can you tell if someone is selling POD stuff of your images legally or just stealing from you?  Are there any strict rules for this kind of use of images? 

edit.  Searched a bit more Amazon for this image of mine and  found several other brands and sellers using this image in similar ways.  Google image search does not find these but if I search for the title of this image I have in Alamy I find several sellers in Amazon.   Like this one

https://www.amazon.com/TinYida-Yellow-Growing-Hanging-24X12In/dp/B08925N9QX?th=1

All are recently launched and all are under different brands.  Some are private persons and some are companies.   

Ok, thanks for the info.

Cheking my mails from Adobe I find that the last mail I received about the bonus program 30 Mar 2020 informs that the new bonus program starts at February 2021.

I activated my old bonus program during September 2019.  So it ended this September and I have to pay until the new program starts at 2/2021? At least my old subscription was activated by Adobe and I was charged on Creative Cloud Photography with 20GB for October. 

Or am I missing something here? 

Adobe seems to be out, at least I couldn't find any images from adobe with the badge.  All the others seem to be IN like SS, Alamy, iStock, Dreamstime etc... and many of the smaller are also in already.

Photoshelter is very much IN whereas SmugMug seems to be OUT.   This is strange as SmugMug has an integrated e-commerce site which would fit well with the badge directing there.  For independent photographers this could open some possibilities. 

I wonder whether photosites like Flickr or 500px will allow the required URLs in IPTC? 


edit.  I added the required URLs in metadata in Lightroom and exported it locally.

I then used this tool to check the metadata

https://getpmd.iptc.org/getiptcpmd.html

The exported file had all the nice ITCP fields with all the required URLs like
statement of rights and licensor filled up nicely.

Next I uploaded the image to my own site in SmugMug and used Google search console to index it.  The image showed then in Google image search but did not have the licensable badge on it.  So I downloaded my image from SmugMug and checked with getpmd whether the required ITCP field were still there.  They were gone from the image.

I then double checked by uploading the image to my Flickr site, downloaded the image from Flickr and checked the metadata.  All the required stuff was there.

This is fairly disappointing as I have lot of images in my SmugMug site with integrated e-commerce platform.  It would have been very nice to be able to incorporate these images in the Google image license scheme.  This could have been a major opportunity for independent photographers selling images through SmugMug.  Now the images are side tracked as google badges are missing. 

It would be very interesting to know which other sites strip the required IPTC from images and which don't.   


 

Jan - May 2020 rpd 0.771 (about 1000 sales)

Jun rpd 0.658

I'll wait for a month and decide then what to do with SS.  The whole point of moving to percentage based scheme is to make future price cuts possible. 

I just uploaded to Dreamstime first images since 2016.  If I can use ftp and export from Lightroom with metadata intact I might upload most of my portfolio there.  I think competitors will get a boost now and this will hit SS quite hard.  Also if adobe were to offer exclusivity now I might take that offer.  I can't see how SS net income and revenue would get a boost from their new scheme.  This is a mistake from SS.  They are the market leader and could have moved the whole market the other way too.  But no, they decided to go against contributors and start a price war.  And bow to chinese censorship. Adobe must be thinking hard about their next move.    Contributors should be considered as the biggest asset in image business.  But now SS is pissing off contributors as well as their own employees.  The new SEO must be desperate to sell SS to Visual China Group. 

The new percentage based scheme started today. 

I just had my first June sale, a subscription for 0.36.  That's been my subscription fee in May too.  In the new scheme I am at level 4.  That's 30% share.  So 30% share is  0.36 too?

A bit surprising.  How is your June sales developing?

What are the percentages we are earning now?  Without this information it is not possible to compare earnings.

So, does anyone know what are the current percentages?

Uncle Pete,

0.00403 per file.

It is stuff like this that makes me reluctant to upload new images to EspGetty.   I haven't uploaded new stuff to Getty/iStock for a year and have a backlog of 3000 images already uploaded to other agencies.  These 0.4 cent sales could be perfectly legitimate and reasonable but as there is no explanation I feel a bit paranoid.  After all it is a lot of hard work and a portfolio I feel is worth more that 17 dollars.

I think there are two possibilities here.  Both are a bit concerning.  Either Getty sold my portofolio to Google or it was sold to Visual China Group which is Getty's exclusive distributor in China.  Which ever is the case I hate it. 

But there is nothing I can do about it.  It is RF and sold...

 

This is apart from stuff like Pinterest and apart from pay-per-view stuff.   I have lots of those also reported in connect.txt. 

This is 0.4 cent sales of every image in my portfolio (4000+ images).  My connetc.txt file for March has about 5000 lines, one for each sale.   

I wish Getty would explain stuff like this. 




 

Thanks ShadySue

I found that piece of information but all it says is that fixed usage fee means that a customer pays a fixed price for a high volume of files and makes the content available to their users for a defined use. 

So there is a customer who wants to use my images and buys them all and I am paid 17 dollars or 0.4 cents per image.  But the rights of use is not limited to the customer who bought my images.  The customers of the customers ("the users") also have the right to use my images - for a defined use.

For me this reads like my whole portfolio is now in public domain. 

Maybe this is just Google paying to Getty for "reasonable use" and photographers receiving a one-time payment for the use of their portfolio.  So 17 dollars...







     

Checking March income statement for espgetty I see that I have made about 20 dollars from various items reported in connect summary statement.

Most of it comes from items under fixed usage fees. 

Connect.txt reports these sales one by one and I have about 4000 sales there (all or most of my portofolio in iStock).  The data in each of these 4000 sales is the same: Getty, California, 0.02683, 0.15000, 0.00403. 

So Getty has sold all my images as fixed usage for 2.7 cents and I am paid 0.4 cents per image totaling about 17 dollars. 

There is no information about the buyer nor have I found any explanation for the term "fixed usage fee" or the nature of these sales. 

I was under the impression that connect sales were view based royalties from embedded images.

I have not been active in espgetty for a year and might have missed some info about these fixed usage sales. 

I wonder what this is all about.  Anyone else having similar fixed usage sales?

Thanks ShadySue. 

I finally got a response and my file has been deacticated, but not deleted, which is what I requested for.

It seems that files can't be deleted anymore, not even through contributor tickets.  The answer I received also stated that once a file is deactivated it can't be activated again.  The question is why not delete if it can't be activated at a later time.  This is pure speculation but it smells like their system has been hacked at the master key level, so they can't allow deletions even by their own employees.  That's why the whole system has to be exported to Getty's and the whole contributor account database had to be cut off. 

Just my 2 cents... maybe I am wrong but their actions seem very much like panic reactions without choice.   

I needed to delete one image from iStock.  So I created a contributor support ticket specifying the file and asked for deletion.  I also gave valid reasons why this one file should be deleted.  It has been a couple of weeks and there is no response and the file is still on sale.  Is there some other way to get the file deleted as contributor ticket doesn't seem to function? 

Henri

Thanks Leaf,

I did what you and Baldrick suggested and it works very nicely.

After some experiments I now believe that there is a bug in the software I used for editing IPTC data. 

Thank you both for your advice.

Henri