Quote from: cardmaverick on August 09, 2011, 11:53

Quote from: pseudonymous on August 09, 2011, 10:58

Quote from: cardmaverick on August 09, 2011, 10:09

The secret to success in Asia with all the pirating is going to be agencies changing the stock photo business model to one where the buyer's are not really paying for images, but services - because you can't steal that. I don't know exactly how that will take form, but clearly it would need to happen. Heck, it needs to happen in the US and Europe as well.

Interesting, do you mind elaborating on these services?

Originally agencies would have an in house team of people who knew the collection well and would work with clients to find an image they liked. Obviously today we have search engines. I've always been an advocate of a system featuring a basic "ok" free search, and then a premium pay search that boasts advanced features. Tin Eye has a similar concept, you pay for massive bulk searches, something you can't do for free, and NO, you can't do bulk searches on google either - you'll get blocked for that. So clearly there are some non intellectual property based areas where agencies and contributors can profit. I can foresee a system where any downloads used from a premium search would pay out higher to contributors. You could probably use some kind of system where the premium search fee is divided evenly between the images acquired, so a lower volume premium buyer produces a higher profit than a higher volume buyer.

I'm sure some will think I'm crazy, but I also think they are crazy for believing intellectual property can actually be reliably protected in a digital world. History shows they are wrong.

I can't see Google ever implementing a premium paid search because along would come another company and offer their previous model for free... which is what most people want.  If this is the case, then it doesn't matter what the agencies come up with because our images will still end up on websites that are visible to all.  The only way to ever protect interlectually property would be to come up with some way to protect it digitally.  For instance, some code is written in the image that makes a copyright symbol visible unless some key is entered to deactivate the code to make it invisible.  Once it's copied from the internet, the code is activated again.  But even then someone will buy the image and then sell it with the code.  I'm talking crap here, obviously lol.  There is no real way to ever stop the pirates except to punish them.  We have copyright laws but they're not enforced which makes the law pointless.

My point is that even with strict laws, enforcement is unrealistic, especially from a costs point of view. When I was talking about google search, I was talking about search volume. You can't bombard it with hundreds of searches, same with tin eye - you pay for bulk searches that happen fast. It's the "concept" I'm illustrating. People want free, but only if free is good enough. In the case of tin eye, 50 free searches ain't cutting it and google isn't allowing themselves to be bombarded. In my futuristic model you can search for free and pay to download, but if you buy a premium search, you'll save time ($) and have more control over the search. The big question is what level of search power is high enough to attract a purchase? As for being found using outside search engines, you can block them, so that's not an issue.

My basic point of view is simple. The current model encourages and enables theft and lost revenue. It's time to figure out what a stock agency can sell service wise that customers value enough to pay for, because images will continue to be stolen anyways; and "stepping up" laws won't work either.

The secret to success in Asia with all the pirating is going to be agencies changing the stock photo business model to one where the buyer's are not really paying for images, but services - because you can't steal that. I don't know exactly how that will take form, but clearly it would need to happen. Heck, it needs to happen in the US and Europe as well.

Does anyone know anything about the Ingram Publishing "Agency Collection"? I find some images on the Ingram site that are attributed to that, but no information on who actually shot it. My initial impression is that its a collection of images Ingram produced in house, but I'm not entirely sure.

Quote from: cardmaverick on June 22, 2011, 21:53

I was a very early contributor, I don't work for them as an employee. I actually beta tested their FTP, I'm also the guy who got them to support it in the first place, etc..

So,.... how is your experience with them?

It's been good, they really listen to my advice and act on it. They are still building the site, but from day one, it was miles ahead of many larger agencies on their opening days.

Ah Ah Ah!!
yes it's Istock!! For sure!!!

look at these pages:
http://whois.domaintools.com/photokore.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/istockphoto.com

Nothing to do with Istock?
It's simply the same!

Trust me, they have no relationship with Istock. Period. I know because I have been working with them "behind the scenes" for a few months now.

As long as we keep printing money, we will kill our currency, and a lot of our exported inflation is coming back to the US.... the dollar will die, or we will have 30% interest rates - either way the US hasn't even begun to feel the economic pain waiting for it.

To me this is nothing more than evidence of the fact that this industry has strayed too far from what it was originally selling:

SERVICES & CONVENIENCE

It was never about selling imaginary "rights", so get over it. Talk to any veteran of the business from the 80s and 90s who worked at an agency like I have, and you can get them to admit this. The web has forced a change however, because originally, it was very hard to steal stock images because you needed a decently high res file to make any real use of it in print applications.

What we really need isn't more useless legal intervention, what we need is more creativity about how to sell SERVICES & CONVENIENCE in the new digital version of this business, as well as better ways to protect the content on the sites themselves.

I like tin eye's technology, but the idea of using it to drag people into court was seriously not well thought out... most people don't go to court already because what they win (or could win) isn't enough to cover their legal fees or their time and energy. They should focus on using their technology to sell images instead of trying to chase down infringers.

How much you have earned in 2010 and how much they paid you in 2010 are two different figures. They report the former one.

I understand that, but even when I throw out December payments (which generally aren't paid until after the new year, and in Shutterstocks case, are put towards your next years taxes), the numbers are still way, way off....

I recently made another sale at my clustershot site and I notice a HUGE increase in my cut of the sale. I got a 95% commission 

Just curious to see if anyone else has noticed this yet.

It's been almost exactly one year since I opened my clustershot pro account, it's certainly been profitable.

A two part question

Can your model releases be linked on any of the sites?  I could have sworn that Dreamstime does this, but I can't find a way to link the same model together to her other shoots.  Wouldn't buyers like to "see more images of this model", not just from the one shoot associated with this release?

I think it was Ron Chapple who puts a unique model id# in the keyword  data, this seems so logical, but do the agencies not frown upon this?  Wouldn't it be convenient if we could tell a buyer or the model that they can search their number and all of their photos will pop up?

Any tips on managing releases on my end?  I have the least sophisticated method right now - in a binder sorted by last name, but wonder in a few years if I will even remember who some of these people are. 

I use a unique keyword ID for my Cluster Shot store photo series.

As for managing the forms, ALWAYS staple reference photos from the shoot to it. I scan all my releases and then store the files inside the folders containing the finished images from the shoot.

This is so laughable. The government no doubt had a hand in this whole "trying to protect the integrity of the money supply from counterfeiting" message. Meanwhile... Ben Bernake is counterfeiting 75 BILLION dollars a month at the Fed.

It would surprise me a lot if they stopped acceptance into the house-collection, many images there are looking quite dated actually, mainly because a large percentage there comes from trannies being scanned, ages back.

Not new content, I meant no longer, or at least very seldom, accepting new photographers.

At least 1,000 really good photos featuring people in their 30's, very low on the duplicate/similar images side of things, high on subject matter variety. If you can do that, and you are decent with keywords, $300 a month off shutterstock alone is pretty "easily" accomplished.....