In a case between Canadian Masterfile and a Dutch car company a Dutch court has ruled that a particular stock photo is not subject to copyright because the photo is "not artistic" and lacks any "peronal touch". Although the verdict is about one particular stock photo of a temperature indicator on a dashboard, I'm afraid it will open the door to similar cases and that our work will eventually be outlawed. Am I too pessimistic?

For those who read Dutch, here is the link: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/12/21/harde-strijd-om-de-saaiste-stockfotos-a1585902

The information here on MSG forum is very confusing: recommendations, not only in this thread, are very clear: stay away from iStock! Yet I see at the right hand side of my screen that they are still firmly ranked as no. 2 of the "big four". Apparently people are still making good money despite the low royalties.  Note that the rating, whatever the number means, increased from 31.9 yesterday to 35 today which at least means that the list is active and kept up to date. As a newbie, why would one not want to contribute to the second best in the list? Unless the list is completely meaningless, I would know where to go....

Anybody who knows what "Connect Transactions" are? You can find these transactions as a text file in the export section. In my case there are a lot of "sales" with staggering royalties of USD 0.00099 i.e. less than 0.1 cent. I knew it would be bad, but this can't be true, can it? Interestingly these transactions closed the gap of 2 cents between the sales and royalty statement and my current balance. Anyone?