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?

...that the new search allows buyers to exclude all regular collections (Main, E, E+), but not to exclude Vetta or Agency?

In the F5 thread it was said that this would only be temporary, but there is also a hint that it might be permanent, since apparently the Advanced Search feature to exclude the premium collections was seldom used.  It was also made clear that any ability to exclude V&A would be thoroughly tested and nothing would be done in a hurry - surely as strong a hint as they could make.

What do you all think of that?  Are you happy with this development, that buyers must always see at least one premium collection, but can hide most, if not all, of your work?

A diamond exclusive that sells an EL at the minimum subscription credit of 0.95, currently gets paid out 0.47. Under the new system, if this diamond drops to 35% royalty, loses the 10% EL bonus, and with the minimum sub credit being reduced to 0.65, the payout is 0.23, less than half of the current payout.

Is my math correct?