I am sorry, I simply cannot understand why some of our photographers cannot stand up for ourselves and are willing to find every excuses for stock photo agencies.

If your local government is running a deficit, can you, as a taxpayer, accept to have the same police officer who laid the charge against you to be the judge at your trial for your traffic offence?

Stock photo agencies should not hire the same person as reviewer and contributor. There are plenty of people and agencies around. If a person works for LO as a reviewer, this person can still contribute to other agencies. Reviewers get paid. If the reviewer's pay is small and unfair, you have the option not to be a reviewer but as a contributor. To have your cake and eat it is not ethical.

But this is not the reviewer's problem. Stock photo agencies should understand that a biased reviewer will deny the agency's opportunity to have the best photos online and make the most profit. This is common business sense too.

As I pointed out in another thread, for reviewers, who are also contributors, to judge the images of their competitors, the issue of conflict of interest is inevitable.

Stock photo agencies should hire non-contributors to review the images of the regular contributors. LO is not the only one having this problem.   

Excellent!

Cclapper, I hope what you said is true and you are one of the people in the know. I'd appreciate if anyone can be more specifice about such guidelines.

P and M, I undertand your curiosity but sorry I am not going to show my photo. I do not wish to trivalize a policy discussion into personal resentment against any individual or agency. My photo has been reviewed and accepted by every agency, except the one which showcased a very smilar photo at a conspicuous time frame.

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The question is wether or not the stockphoto agencies are aware of this and have the mechinism in place to deal with it.

Yes, they are and yes they do.

Lisafx, I do not found your comments to be fair.

First, I wan to make it clear that my photo was NOT submitted on the same day that the other photo was submitted. My photo was submitted a few days earlier. If that person was a reviewer, it was possible to shoot the same thing after looking at my photo, and refuse my photo on the same day of his own submission. 

You can always find technical flaws in any photo. One poorly lit photo can be applauded as being "moody" and dramatic. It's very subjective but as long as there is no abuse, I can live with rejecitons. I am not talking about rejections, I am talking about potential abuse.

By the way, my photo was accepted by all other agencies and had sales.

If you have not found any bias or abuse in the stockphoto industry, it does not mean other people have the same experience. It's unfair to discredit other people's findings of bias or suspicion of abuse. Using an inappropriate example, if you have not been beaten up by your husband, it does not mean that other women have never been abused.

I am even more disappointed that you try to dispute other people's rights to discuss issues and improve the industry's standards. You can spend every minute of your life shooting photos and submitting them, other people may find the fairness issue equally important to their sense of justice.

If you are a stock photographer or even if you are a newbie, it does not mean you should be reduced to a submissive technical slave, and only say "yes" to people who may be in the positive of power or even the beneficiaries of the status quo.

I trust this forum was created to offer people an opportunity of free speech, and such an opportunity should be treasured and not discarded.

I can certainly understand the concern in theory.  However in practice I have not seen evidence of that type of bias from reviewers.   I am often surprised at how evenhanded they are. 

To the OP, even if the person who reviewed your image was the person who uploaded the similar image, there is virtually no chance they could have run out and copied and uploaded the same day.  More likely it was just a coincidence.  I didn't see either image, so please don't be offended by the question, but is it at all possible that your image had technical or lighting issues that the accepted one didn't?

I have found over 3 years of doing this that my acceptance rates have improved in direct proportion with my technical and lighting skills, and this is across all sites.  Unless there is hard evidence of some sort of bias then it probably more productive to spend time taking pictures and improving skills than theorizing about biased inspections. 

It is not my concern that my own photo was rejected. I don't want to cause trouble for that person either. Besides, I don't know if that person was a reviewer.

I think stockphoto agencies should take this possibility into consideration, that's my point.

Litifeta, if they just missed one or two sales, I'd say it would be a commercial matter or even an innocent mistake. But if the situation repeats, it will warrant police investigation.

There should also be a government department dealing with business fraud and business fairness. You can also contact the tax authorities to see if they will audit the business.

For those that are interested, i did report this to the Police. The answer from the police was: "what do you want us to do about it".

They basically said it was a commercial matter that should be dealt with by solicitors, not a criminal matter for the police.

I find the notion of exclusivity benefiting stockphoto agencies and buyers interesting. I can see why some photographers are benefiting from the preferential treatment as being exclusive.

As we know, many prominent universities prefer faculty members who had studied and taught at other institutions because of their broader experience and exposure, rather than those whom only had the exclusive experience in one place.

In order to survive at different places, a non-exclusive photographer has to be more adeptable and tougher, and the quality is likely to be higher because of the broader experience.

When a photographer is exclusive to one agency, his photos are still available to all buyers in this agency. So I am not convinced that the buyers will have any problems to see the same photos available in other places. Because the exclusive photographer's photos are never exclusive to one buyer unless the photo is sold through an exclusive buy-out license immediately.

So why will exclusivity benefit stock agencies and buyers?

Freezing, appreciate your comments. I had done what you said, but none of my ftp photos showed up anywhere.

Also the thumbnails of some web uploaded photos are not showing up either. I don't know if I need to re-upload or just wait.

Ok I just uploaded a few with ftp.  @Freedome, AFTER you have uploaded them go to "My Panther" then "My Images"  and then to "Image Upload (FTP)".
Then you can edit your images. But yes, I just tried and noticed the same problem as Clivia and ason, images somehow have a problem getting saved.  Like a week ago it worked well for me. I hope this is only temporary and they will solve the problem soon.

IS leads by 50% though not spectacular.
DT is a distant second, flat but ok.
123rf is improving every month though the earnings are low due to too many subscription DLs.
FT trails behind and the reviews are very unpredictable. It remains the only site which prohibits external links and any numbers. What is it afraid of?
LO is still kinda alive and let's wait and see.

I agree with your comments about the three agencies.

IS performs much better than FT and DT and is more fair and consistent in reviews. Seems that FT and DT have developed some "moody" review standards lately. Even though the images are selling ok, they are increasingly rejecting decent images and making me feel I am wasting my time by contributing to them.

But, my freedom is also important, it pains me to limit myself with one agency, it may limit my vision and creativity.