That blog read like a diary of a crazy teenage girl. Notice that she was mainly complaining about LO in the blog.
Leaving my crazy teenage girlishness aside for the moment, I would characterise what I was doing in that post as providing
feedback for LO rather than
complaining. The actual people behind LO got in touch with me on the back of that post and have been very receptive to my points, so I continue to feel like my relationship there is a positive one. Obviously, every individual experiences their own ride, and I'm a buyer not a photographer so YMMV.
And yes, IS annoys me for any number of reasons and I've decided to abandon my existing credits there and just not deal with them any longer.
But what I really popped in to say is this:
I came here through my referrer links in my logs. As a buyer, I am largely unaware of the splits made for photographers on stock image sites. I'm very surprised at some of the numbers I've read in this thread.
I suspect most stock buyers are unaware of photographers' issues around specific vendors - splits, late payments, unreasonable levels for payments, whatever they are. But I also think that people like me would be interested in being educated about things like that. I'm not a power consumer but I spend probably $500 a year on stock images for myself and my blog, $100 for pet projects, and a couple of K on behalf of clients.
If I can spend that money
ethically, for lack of a better term, with vendors who treat their artists right and pay reasonable money, then I will. But I have to know who those vendors are, and nothing about that has ever crossed my radar. Sounds like a grassroots education movement waiting to happen!