I don't recall anyone complaining about this sort of thing recently

we have now implemented our new watermark with the black bar on many of the images and we are nearing completion of applying this new watermark to all images.

Where did you find this new watermark? My images are still with old (no) watermark.

• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-312063164.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-316072910.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-294187370.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-296280893.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-306799715.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-220400083.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-296785538.jpg
• http://image.shutterstock.com/z/uselesswatermark-313342280.jpg

Okay guys, first some updates - most of the beta testing is over and the plugin is almost ready for release. We're double checking stuff but it will be in the next few days or week. The hosting solution (which we are now calling Symbiostock PLUS) is already live, but we aren't announcing it yet. If you want to get an idea of how the plugin looks and works, go over to symbiostock.com, create a trial account and you can use it for 15 days without fuss.

You can see a long list of features here (http://www.symbiostock.org/the-symbiostock-demo-is-live/) and you can browse the documentation here (http://www.symbiostock.org/docs/).

As for all the other stuff, I encourage you to read our EULA (http://www.symbiostock.org/symbiostock-eula/) and our Trademark Policy (http://www.symbiostock.org/trademark-guidelines/). The EULA overall basically just says 'we aren't liable if Symbiostock doesn't perform the way you want', amongst some other clauses. Pretty standard, I think I lifted it off RedHat (http://www.redhat.com/en) and ammended it.

The trademark policy was likewise lifted off a few other open source projects and tweaked. Specifically, our fair use clause outlines that anyone using any of the Symbiostock software can, and is encouraged to use the name or logo. The main reason the trademark policy was created was to prevent third parties from creating weird software, claiming to be Official Symbiostock this or that, and causing confusion as a result. In order to grow, open source organizations must do this to protect their users.

Most importantly, I'm going to kind of sever my relationship with the legacy software now because it seems my attempt to include it in the future of Symbiostock kind of backfired. In trying to make sure some of you didn't feel left out, I was trying to keep you included - but as I now understand that the previous version was a unique animal unto itself that didn't limit itself to the software, I'm going to only focus on the new plugin and leave the legacy one to you guys. It's Leo's code, after all, and the new plugin as well as the new project, despite sharing many qualities and a very similar vision, does appear to be a new breed. In accordance with this, I'm also not going to be providing legacy users with discounts on future Symbiostock stuff. As I didn't get any of that revenue, your best bet would be to recover it from Leo. My taking responsibility for the old plugin was kind of a good faith gesture, but as it has not been received as such, I'm not going to keep beating the poor, and very dead, horse.

My best suggestion would be this - if you feel content with the legacy Symbiostock, feel that its performance and output, and overall leadership and consistency was good for you, you should head over to Leo's spiritual successor to it. I genuinely believe you will feel more at home there.

The new Symbiostock project and plugin is professional, aggressive, sharp, and meant to expand. It's central, most focused purpose is to make us less reliant on third parties to sell our media. It is an open source business for a community of business-people.

For any questions, feel free to PM me on the Symbiostock forums. My communications here will be sparse, at best, for the time being.

Robin.

he doesn't tell anything about himself on the Sy forum either.

• Free Photos
• On-demand photo

The past 4 months have seen 0 sales, so I suspect they ARE in some sort of trouble.

Delivering new and fresh content is important, and makes customers keep coming back for more. Letting your collection grow old and outdated doesn't seem to be a good way to maximize profits. Hope it won't take too long.

Quote from: cuppacoffee on March 17, 2013, 08:52

Quote from: sjlocke on March 16, 2013, 18:47

Quote from: jsnover on March 15, 2013, 14:53

I thought Sean's images could be found via "tailgate" which produces no results now.

Yes, they are gone.  I can not find any of my images - the pharmacy one, the student one, or the tailgate ones.

I wish they would keep us up to date on what the deal is.

Perhaps they must remove any images that are no longer on istock since their original agreement was with istock (or their partners)? No one has seen the actual, original agreement between google and istock that started this fiasco. Just speculating...

Allegedly the agreement was between Getty and Google - allegedly iStock admins didn't know anything about it until Sean pointed it out.
It would be a very unusual agreement that required images to be pulled if the person pulled their port. iStock's IT dept could never cope would be 'extremely challenged' to cope with that!

I believe Getty wanted to fire a warning shot across our bows for the collective stance which many contributors have adopted recently. This is a very common tactic in large corporations in order to silence employees and regain a sense of dominance, in lament terms 'I'm the daddy around here'. It is basically a form of intimidation.