Quote from: xst on September 18, 2015, 14:11

Quote from: tickstock on September 17, 2015, 18:58

Quote from: disorderly on September 17, 2015, 18:52

Quote from: tickstock on September 17, 2015, 18:19

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on September 17, 2015, 10:55

Well, their site, their choice.  I don't see anything wrong with that image.  Maybe they're being forced to be PC.

Maybe models threaten to sue when those images are used for escort services, porn sites, or other things they don't like.

That's a violation of Getty's own release (pornography or defamation), which is the one I use with all the agencies.  I've had it happen twice in ten years and was able to have the images taken down immediately with a DMCA request.  So no, whatever the reason for iStock's change in policy, I'm confident that you haven't identified it.

Some of those images look like they could only be used for those kinds of things, if they can't legally be used per the terms then it makes sense to cull them.

there is market for those images - "covers of romance stories".
There are a lot of self-published books of this kind (even on Amazon)
www.amazon.com/Their-Stepsister-Alexa-Riley-ebook/dp/B00U02FK12
And (wearing my designer hat now) sometimes it is more convenient to have nude image even when final product won't show any private parts. Covering them by texts, etc makes it visually more pleasing then have it covered by clothes. Illusion sells...

I guess romance novelists will have to go elsewhere to get nude images that they want to crop or cover up so there is no nudity in the final copy.  Seems like a very limited set of buyers though at least.  BTW it looks like the image you used for an example would still be allowed wouldn't it?
I also don't think they should get rid of requiring releases for commercial work just because a buyer could crop, blur or cover the parts of the image to make it ok.

BTW it looks like the image you used for an example would still be allowed wouldn't it? - Nop. Deactivated.

this is iStock/Getty's site and they make the rules.

I guess we should now charge more when people contact us directly for this kind of images.

the same here,
waiting since august 
complete nonsense

Alamy way of calculation commission is realty creative 

When they sell through distributor,
distributor gets 40% and Alamy 30%, so you left with 30%.

In usual distribution business of normal goods you usually get % of whatever money you delivered to next entity in the food chain, not form end price.

They really should charge 30% not from original price, but from whatever was left after distributor got paid.
so in more fair world it should be 40%*30% = 12% of original price and our cut should be 100%- 40%-12% = 48%.
almost 1.5 times higher

n/a

with 15%-17% commission - XL images will pay $1.5
SS is paying up to $2.85 on single image purchase. (non- susbs) and get quite a bit of those
In word, even if I'm going to submit anything new to iStock - it will be with 6-10 months delayed comparing to other sites

I actually like the price change. I think it's a little extreme, they should have aimed to get the XL images in the $10 price point (at current credit rates they're in the $7-9 range). But the sentiment is reasonable. Other companies are charging similar prices, and the years of price increases at istock have certainly cut down on the sales volume we used to see.

But why the heck not not try something. Things aren't exactly going well at istock lately. Desperate times, desperate measures.

I think it would be good idea to each of us send a e-mail using iStock contributor relations form and inform them about our readiness to protest and deactivate images.

If somebody could compile a standard text it would be good.

Anther thing - I don't really read iStock forums, so I was unaware about this issue.
However if I get iStock site-mail - I always read it.
Again,
maybe somebody can compile a simple message alerting about this issue. And then each one of us could send this message to our "Creative network" on IS site???

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/govt_copyright_white_paper/

I've talked to a lawyer informally.
He says that there can be legal recourse for some of our requests.
(it would require some organization work and money to hire a lawyer.)

however he says that even if we have lawyer the first step would be to have very solid documented proof about every specific request and pattern of IS ignoring those requests.
The bottom line  is that we can save money and organize this step ourselves.

the next step would be requesting audit. (this would require money. We would probably need to get 400-500 contributors on board for this. The number isn't small, but not out of reach.)
Audit should reveal discrepancies between what they sell and what they report to us (and according to him it's almost guaranteed.  At least from his experience there was no audit that wouldn't find at least something)

And then if are able to classify this as "class action suite" then they would settle, because at this point it would be much more expensive for them to go for actual trail.

What's important is, that although this issue isn't big - it can help us to form some sort of organizational representational structure, which later can be leveraged to renegotiate our standard contracts 

That's may long term plan.

I agree with you that reporting is so hard to gather as to be useless, but I don't think it would make a difference to IS if every contributor e-mailed them hourly. This request can go on the list (which by now is scarily long) of all the things, promised or desired, that aren't being done.

Doing work on contributor tools represents a cost to them. They are busy trying to maximize their profit and control (minimize) costs. They no longer care what contributors think and I believe assume that for every disgruntled contributor who leaves, there are more out there who will contribute.

Sounds defeatist and disgruntled? Perhaps. I've been a contributor with IS since Fall 2004 and I'd say I'm just being realistic about the current situation.

As the old saying goes, save your breath to cool your porridge.

KKR - is the one that buying 50% of fotolia.

If they concentrate IS and Fotolia in one business, taking the worst if both - it will be perfect abomination

everybody has to send e-mail to Veer.
They have to know the extent of dissatisfaction.


Unlike other sites - we do have more leverage with Veer because Veer is relatively low-earner. And for most of us it won't be big financial damage to drop them.

Quote from: xst on April 26, 2012, 12:32

numbers: Pay attention to contributors commissions change vs. Agency commissions change.

Basically for level 1 and 2 they shared some, although agency raise was much bigger.

For level 3 and 4 (especially L and XL) they took almost all price increase to themselves
 

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I would say this doesn't account for level jumps though. My level 1 images became level 2 images and my level 3 and above images tripled in quantity. I think some of the people that were most hurt by this were their successful contributors with lots of level 5 images. Strange that successful contributors have been targets lately by many agencies.

Please pay attention,
That table takes account all this

.