cobalt, re "I wonder if locations from Germany are interesting at all..."

Alamy already has an offices in several countries, including Germany.
(In fact, one of my more recent Alamy sales, around $100, was to a German magazine.)

Alamy does not have official designations of exclusive and nonexclusive for its photographers. It's fine with Alamy for contributor to submit same images on other agencies, but offer the Same License for the same/sister image on all sites.

In other words, if you have RM license for photo on Alamy, have RM license for it at every agency. Also, if you have two sister (Significantly similar) images, give them same license type.

RM basically means that when image license is purchased, it will specify TYPE, TIME, Maximum SIZE, Geographic  LOCATION, of use. This differs from RF where buyer generally may use licensed image without time limit, and for wide range of uses (though not just Any use, such as logo, or those that require extended license, print runs beyond certain Big size....)

This is broadstroke - rather than legal, thorough - info.

RT's a copyright attorney?

Quote from: ann on November 04, 2011, 15:01

P.S. perhaps we should just agree to disagree about the illegal part

When I "agree to disagree" with an attorney, on legal issues, it's a safe bet the attorney is right and I'm wrong.

@AttilaTheNun - Hi! Since you asked,  "But why getting worked up over it?"  I'm happy to answer you.

Though you and I, among others, are aware of the       � agency name     situation at that agency, and pulled our ports, there are thousands of contributors, particularly non-exclusives, who might not be aware of it, or perhaps not see the implications as significant, and so will not pull ports because of it.

The contributors' lack of a legal union once again is a boon for the agency.  Wouldn't the agency be quite pleased if the only fallout from their     � agency name    lie was having some small percentage of dissatisfied contributors simply pull their ports, and quietly go away....  

I �  do  � not  � want �   � agency   name  � to  �  become  � "the norm" -
where more agencies, emboldened by what the first one pulled off, consider doing the same.

That's why.

That's exactly what I did months ago with my tiny port, but an enterprising lawyer could decide the potential publicity, at least, made this worth her while.

-------------
I'm gong to use BIG brand names now so most will be familiar with them:


No store is going to advertise Coke or Pepsi as Amazon.com Cola or Walmart Cola  
not only because because Coke & Pepsi would rightfully sue them Big Time, but because the brand names Coke and Pepsi mean a lot to a lot of customers.

Coke & Pepsi would never be where they are now if, in the early days, they let whatever store sold them call their cola soda by the store's name!  Which, in effect, is not far different from contributors allowing  � agency name.  And they continue to have top lawyers actively protecting their brand name, because they know that the brand names are  Gold to their company.

Well, by promoting just the agency name, even at agency site, with  false     � agency name  -  the agency is helping prevent brand awareness, and therefor power, of the contributor/copyright holder  -  in favor of strengthening brand awareness, and therefore power, of the distributor.

Quote from: ann on November 04, 2011, 07:06

"The Emperor Has No Clothes"    "The Agency Has No Right to Claim Copyright"

Why bother? Just dump iSuck.

Cthoman & BaldricksTrousers -

Yes, it sounds rather melodramatic the way I worded it, so I can't disagree with you.
And since I didn't mean the images would literally have no attribution - but, rather a False one - I should have not used the term "Orphan Work."  

Separate from any images the agency may own outright:

The agency is the distributor.
It does not own the copyright to the images.

Writing   (c) Agency Name     is a Lie.
And it strengthens agency's tie to the work at the expense of distancing the work from the contributor.

Think about the effect of having one's images "out there" over the Years with just some agency name after the copyright symbol. It wll be unnecessarily harder for contributors and their heirs to keep track of the use of images they hold (c) to.

@fujiko: Thank you for the link.

�cclapper - Yes. Anyway, isn't it illegal for distributing agency to place/require just "� agency name" for whatever images contributors hold copyrights to?  Or, when contributors do business with agency despite it, does it give some sort of implicit consent to hijack copyright notice?

(Full discloser: I've already deleted my small port from any agency that feeds to thinkstock.)

Quote from: fujiko on November 03, 2011, 09:20

Thinkstock seems able to credit some files:
http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/stock-photo-turtle-and-chipmunk-wearing-party-hats/83290871

I believe it's more of an IS thing. It's not 'commercially reasonable' to credit IS contributors.

Actually, I was with IS for about 6 years and any time I found my photo, it was credited to me personally. This subject was brought up before here, because IS has recently started to do this too (I personally have noticed it, including in such magazines as Good Housekeeping, where they now put �istockphoto instead of the photographer ). sjlocke, in that thread, mentioned that Getty does this and contributors were complaining to Getty about it. Therefore, my reasoning is that IS has started following Getty protocol, hence my statement "it's a Getty thing".

And I don't really care if it's commercially reasonable or not for the agencies. Photos are copyrights of the photographers NOT Getty or istock and putting a copyright symbol next to the Getty or istockphoto name is just WRONG and deceitful.

RacePhoto's shared lots of useful info.

Just wanted to mention that for the First submission, they probably look at each photo until 1 fails or all 4 pass.

Though my QC results are not 100% green - a bit about about technical aspects...

We all know that photos typically will be rejected if less than technically perfect - soft focus, poor exposure, or whatever.

But, if a shot has something really special going for it, if it's a truly desirable subject, I'd submit it even if it had some technical glitches. Generally, the more desirable the shot, the more leeway with technical aspects.

A gorgeous sunset, shiny motorcycle, or absolutely adorable kitten would likely NOT fall in this "special" category - unless the kitten's driving the motorcycle into the sunset.

an extreme example - It's about 0% likely a reviewer will ever think this:
"Oh, here's a photo of Pres. Obama dancing with his younger daughter in the Oval Office. What? The left wall's blown out - FAILED!"

If I understand situation correctly - this is the most indefensible ruling I've ever heard of related to stock photography.

The dangerously inept company representative must think s/he's dealing with an idiot.

Your photo was worth $228 to the client. Micro prices can give a sadly distorted view of what the right photo can be worth to the right client.

BTW, recently on A, a client licensed a photo of a smashed monitor or TV set for thou$ands, and used tiny bits of the glass in a Harry Potter poster.

After seeing your reply, Ed, I reread mine, and realize one of my intended points was not at all clear - I was curious if UK contributors got a different or additional message re BAFLA than contributors got in other areas, such as U.S. (But you'd have needed ESP to realize that based on what I wrote.)

And I agree with you that their goal of helping student photographers goes deeper than giving the students an opportunity to earn 40% extra commission for a couple of years.

Ann, you're right....my point being they are trying to push budding photographers into going into the traditional as opposed to the micro route.

[....]
At least we're not taking a hit in our royalties to pay for it. Alamy has always said they support educational projects out of their profits. [....]

+1

UPDATE:
Last week: After an exchange of emails with SS support, I checked whois for the domain server for 'photooboi extra ua', and then hit a brick wall getting email addresses for those dservers, since they're Ukraine-based. (So DMCA not the way to go.) Then I sent the whois results to SS and asked if there was anything else I realistically could do about my 1300 x 870px image photooboi- was displaying.

Today: Shutterstock's counsel called, listened, explained his take on the situation, and gave me the wallpaper site's Contact email, which I missed when I searched the site. So, now I'm off to write them a letter about taking the 1300 X 870px photo down. And, if they posted such a large size due to ignorance, rather than malice, it might help.

BTW, in case that brief account doesn't make it clear - I feel Shutterstock's response to my concerns over image misuse by the wallpaper site was solid - responding to emails overnight or sooner on week days, and then attorney calling me. (Plus, though irrelevant to the image misuse problem, I'm a minor contributor, and the misuse problem was about an image that used to be on SS and another site or so.)