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Messages - iFlop

Pages: [1] 2
1
Sure, but what does it matter in regards to this discussion? Do you think the customer is ever told by any of the agencies that the image he bought was stolen?

My  point was: Agencies do not care about legal aspects, as long as they make a profit and can get away with what they are doing and I think that's the stance of the agencies that allow AI images while some others don't.

No, they do care about legal liability and less about keeping a bit of money that they earned on an illegal stock content sale. So, buyers should be given a refund and told the content they bought does not have legal copyright and that they should stop using it for that reason. But the stock sites usually won't tell them as you said, which is really bad business practice. But it is for different reasons. 

Stock sites give refunds all the time. The real issue in a situation like this is that the stock sites would open themselves up to lots of questions and legal liability if they told a buyer that the content they licensed to the buyer was wrongfully licensed. Questions such as how could the stock site unknowingly be selling content that they don't have correct copyright license on. And then, if the buyer already used the content for a large commercial campaign, the buyer will be worried about their own copyright liability and could even take legal action against the stock site for their blunder. Plus, all around, the optics aren't good with such a clumsy admission like this to a buyer from a stock site.

Anyway, this is all really off-topic and doesn't address the OP's points about why some agencies do license AI generated content and other's don't. Again, I don't think it is about something as simple as trying to make extra profit doing something wrong and getting away with it. The sites that don't license AI content are probably more concerned about potential legal liability down the line because the copyright laws on AI content are still in flux and the stock sites that do license it probably don't think there will be any liability with it later. Different views on it from different stock sites and I think that was part of what the OP was trying to express.

2
But they make money from it, so what do they care? Has anyone ever heard of them contacting a customer telling him "Sorry, you have to stop using that image and we will refund you, because we didn't have the right to sell this image" or have they ever contacted a contributor telling him "hey, we sold this image stolen by someone from you, we have removed it, closed the port and here is the money  the thief made from that sale that should be rightfully yours".

But if you were the buyer then you probably wouldnt want to continue using some stolen imagery you bought. You rather have a refund because, as a buyer of stolen copyright content, you could still face penalties for a rights violation if you continue using the stolen imagery.

3
iStockPhoto.com / Re: YTD counter working on ESP??
« on: June 14, 2018, 00:30 »
Sales across the board usually drop about 20% for iStock as a whole starting on June 1 and don't pick up again usually until after labor day weekend in early September. It is probably just the usual summer sales blues. :o

4
In this 4 minute except from a Getty documentary, Mark Getty talks about starting up Getty Images and shows a bit of their photo archiving facilities in London:


<a href="http://youtu.be/uf5dVOoR4KE" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://youtu.be/uf5dVOoR4KE</a>




5
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Is The iStock Site Down?
« on: February 26, 2018, 20:19 »
Seems the outage was very temporary. The site is now loading again for me.  8)

6
iStockPhoto.com / Is The iStock Site Down?
« on: February 26, 2018, 20:01 »
I am getting this at this very moment:

7
Agree the Royalty Free term is confusing to many. Would be great to get rid of it and change it for something more self explanatory.


DPreview isn't helping:

https://www.dpreview.com/videos/1694624230/zack-arias-on-unsplash-and-the-race-to-the-bottom

8
iStockPhoto.com / iStock Unification Email
« on: October 31, 2016, 14:12 »
Email just received:

iStock Unification a stronger platform for better tools

Post Edited:

Sorry - I've decided to remove the content of the email that I just posted. Not sure if it was meant to be a public email from Getty. If someone can confirm that it is public then I can repost.

9
iStockPhoto.com / iStock Royalty Change
« on: October 25, 2016, 14:10 »
Serious question, can anyone afford to spend their time creating a product of any kind at all that sells for $0.10 and pays you as little as $0.02 in profit on it?

Personally I can't think of any business in the world that I would be willing to enter into which earns so little, talk less of putting the time and personal creativity into making something artistic just so that big corporates could have unlimited commercial usage rights to my artistic creation practically for free.

Hey Getty, really? You just can't make this sh*t up.

10
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock Royalty Change
« on: October 25, 2016, 13:40 »
My simple take when skimming the email (couldn't be arsed to really read it) is: Confusing as fu*k and meant to be that way so it's hard for anyone to see how much deeper and harder they will be bent over in the future.

Also, in essence nothing seems to have changed. They have done away with the redeemed credit system yet you need to re qualify for your royalty rate again each year. It wouldn't take a child prodigy that excels in maths to see through that one. Sheesh!

11
Getty's concerned about protecting us from copyright violations? Then where's the image creators' share of all the money Getty collects when it send out extortion letters?

Getty's concerned about protecting us from copyright violations? Then where's the image creators' share of all the money Getty collects when it sells people's images without their permission?

Isn't Getty being sued right now for a few billion for just that?

12
Fear not, I have added my email address, country and zip code to those Getty petitions. Now you can rest easy again and everything will be fixed up good as new in no time. You watch!

13
I deactivated some of my images, have a small port and am keeping most there, mainly because I've already deleted a lot of them. It's just so discouraging.

The irony is that I actually tried uploading editorial images there lately, and I captioned them exactly as they request (I shoot newspaper and magazine assignments, I'm not new to this) but they kept getting rejected as not being properly captioned and I was at a loss as to figure out their objection. Meanwhile, a handful have done really well on shutterstock and one in particular is selling multiple times daily since I uploaded it a couple of weeks ago. iStock's loss.

It's too bad they just can't get their act together. When I started with them back around 2012, they earned me more per image than any other site.

The problem with many of these sites is that they are run by people who are motivated solely by profit and really don't care about offering a good product - sites like Stocksy and 500px which are about the photography as well as about making a living for everyone involved nd not just churning out profits with a dollar store mentality, are the way of the future.  (I know 500px dropped their royalties/photographer share)

I hate removing images that are selling, but I just don't want to be stuck if shutterstock, for example, somehow decides to go the exclusive route or if iStock drops their extended license terms even more. If I'm making ~$700 on shutterstock and ~$30 on iStock, removing the image is really not going to hurt my bottom line. The ones that have earned me over $100 on iStock and that are still selling - that's a tougher decision. I'll probably leave them, as well as those with comparable earnings elsewhere, online. Ironically, I'd like to upload more editorial work there, but I'll have to find a different reviewer.

I'm close to a payout - a wait that seems to get longer each time, and now the wait will be longer.

Try installing the latest version of DeepMeta for iStock uploads. It sets up the editorial captioning format for you when click to submit an image as editorial. It takes all the guesswork out. Then all you need to do is change the names and places. Make sure you got the dates correct in the captions and that they match the date in the EXIF data of your file. This can cause rejection problems too. DeepMeta takes care of that too though by reading the file date from EXIF and inserts for you. Hope that helps.

14
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Classic View Gone From Portfolio Page
« on: August 06, 2016, 23:01 »
Yes, a pity. And speaking of options being taken away, in about another week you won't be able to deactivate files anymore. Better do it now if you are planning on it because the option will soon be gone forever.

15
As was said before, cutting exclusives down to 20%, and raising independents up to 20%, will still be a huge net gain for them, especially if they lock in all the independent content as exclusive content in the process. But it seems what they also may want is a uniform system of everyone earning 20%, which is another valid reason for the change.

I don't see how they can lock in indie content as exclusive. Well, at least not without the contracted 30 days notice. They may well put exclusives down to 20%, and hold indies down at 15%.

They could give all indies 30 days to remove their content from other sites, and then raise them from 15% to 20% when they do, or then force them to close their iStock accounts after 30 days if they aren't willing to comply.

But simply putting exclusives at 20% and indies at 15% wouldn't work. I think any exclusive would give up the extra 5% at that point to have the option to put their files onto as many sites as they want. They would need to offer a bigger reward to keep your files exclusive.

The only other incentive they could offer to exclusives to keep them file exclusive, versus going indy, would be to put all exclusive content onto Getty in exchange for the exclusive royalty cut to 20%, while keeping indies at 15%, but without mirroring any of their files on Getty.

Even so, I'm not sure exclusives would want to stay exclusive for only 5% more, with or without the Getty mirror. Not enough of an incentive.

16
As was said before, cutting exclusives down to 20%, and raising independents up to 20%, will still be a huge net gain for them, especially if they lock in all the independent content as exclusive content in the process. But it seems what they also may want is a uniform system of everyone earning 20%, which is another valid reason for the change.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

17
And the reason to drop the big royalty-cut bomb in September is simple. iStock has had one of its worst revenue years in the last 15. If they reduce their contributor payouts during the 3 best selling months of the year, then they still have a chance of dressing up their balance sheet a bit to show a revenue spike in Q4.

18
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock Sitewide Outage Again?
« on: July 02, 2016, 17:24 »
So what is the official word? Or isn't there one? Any news when uploading can recommence? Or should we just remain dangling from a thread as usual?

19
Thank you all for voting so far. Please vote if you are presently an iStock contributor. The more votes we have the better we may be able to see a pattern and understand which people have been effected/hurt the most.

Great idea. Perhaps it can be of help to Exclusives to give them an idea if being indy (with pictures prices being 1/3 the price for buyers) means you sell and make more. If enough people vote it could give people an indication if they should give up the crown. If they can earn more on iStock than they are now as an indy, and put up their files on all the other sites, then they could end up making more in the long run.

The monthly iStock exclusive polling results on the right might not be a good enough matrix to gauge things by if you get more istock exclusive contributors voting on that poll than from the other sites. But this poll is good because it measures the results of just iStock contributors and gives breakdowns of how much their income has dropped since 2012.

20
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: September 03, 2015, 01:34 »
I just noticed a new member log-in screen. So it looks like the September site changes have started. I haven't had time to really check out the rest of the site. Has anyone noticed if they have broken anything in the process yet?

21
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: August 22, 2015, 09:11 »
Actually, the whole "F" concept was started by iStock in the summer of 2010 when they pressed the self destruct button by redesigning the iStock site and in the process breaking the site almost completely. They called the revamp "F5" at the time.

http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=826

F5 is a keyboard function key which is commonly used as a reload/refresh key in many web browsers and other applications.

22
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: August 22, 2015, 09:04 »
F = Fail
6 = 6X

23
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: August 22, 2015, 08:56 »
Hold onto your chin straps. F6 is only about a week away now.

24
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: August 16, 2015, 14:29 »
What would be positive:

- get rid of the RC system and replace it with lifetime earnings,including all earnings from getty,pp,subs etc...

- offer the third path of exclusive images, like adobe does

- reestablish the old public lightbox system and encourage people to "collect" files across their favorite theme and post these galleries to social media and sharing. Think of an intelligent system to reward those that do this and drive sales and traffic to istock. Use the crowd intelligently to curate millions of files. Discover and promote the editing talents in the community.

- make istock work smoothly and speed it up to be competitive

- give artists a good app for direct uploads from mobile phones, look at how great the fotolia app is.

- offer industry standard rates for video, especially 4k

- a new CEO that knows how to communicate online and can draw people in (buyers and producers) and attract a loyal following

- bring in a social media manager who leads by example with visible experience.

https://plus.google.com/+ThomasHawk


If a single artist like Thomas Hawk can have over 7 million followers, then the social media manager of a company like getty and istock should have a much, much larger following. Dont allow amateurs to run your campaign, bring in professionals who can show from their own blogs or following that they know how to lead.

etc...


What they will do?

something abrupt and aggressive and very unlogical,

untested, so the site breaks down and people cant buy files in the most important buying season

and many "exciting" announcements that will lower our income...

At least this has been their routine for several years now...I dont see an indication that they will break their pattern, sadly...for some reason I dont understand they love drama.

Whatever they do, the biggest benefit will go to SS and adobe, like in all the other years...

I would love to see all your positive predictions come true because you have some great ideas there. But what I am truly expecting is just what you said will probably be what actually happens as history always seems to repeat itself:

"...something abrupt and aggressive and very illogical, untested, so the site breaks down and people cant buy files in the most important buying season, and many "exciting" announcements that will lower our income..."


One of the best ones was when they got rid of all the lower pricing for small sized downloads, which dismissed all of the web/blogger buyers. The spin we got from gurus at HQ though was the exciting upside of how many more sales and how much more we were going to make because they also made all the XXL and XXXL files so much cheaper too in the process. So we were going to sell a lot more files and not less with the new 3 credit pricing for all sized Signature files. Well, we all know how that went. And then shortly thereafter they practically exterminated credit sales completely by dropping prices by an average of 400% with the subs plan. Let me stop here before I start to get even sicker because I feel like I already just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

25
iStockPhoto.com / Re: F6
« on: August 16, 2015, 03:57 »
I feel a dose of the word "Unsustainable" coming on. Perhaps followed by something like "It's not about the money". Then a mention of lens caps.

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