A weird thing happened when I was reading the online version of one of the (more popular) Belgian newspapers in Dutch "Het Laatste Nieuws". In the "bizarre news" section, there was a headline about a man watching child porn on a laptop in an airplane. It was accompanied by a photo right under the headline. You didn't even have to open the article : the photo was already at the summary news. The photo is of an elderly gentleman, clearly not of stock quality, like taken candidly from another seat. The full article is here. I saved a screen shot in case the image should disappear.

Translation: Man watching child porn on laptop in airplane.

There is no copyright mentioned near the image so one could think this was the man. If stock, in my book this would be clearly slanderous and degrading use. Imagine the model (or even the person taken candidly and sold as editorial) saw this title and his image, wouldn't he have grounds to sue for damages after being recognized by his employer, employees, business associates or family?

Being curious where this image was sold, I opened ImageExchange and it was for sale on Getty and Media Bakery. Thought it was quite surprising since the white balance is far off and the framing is very-snapshot like.
On Getty, the image wasn't available any more. On Media Bakery too but I found an image that definitely looks like the same man and plane here, for sale on Media Bakery.

The image was, according to Google images, also in use (cropped) on a site about deep vein thrombosis on longer flights, here, and credited to David De Lossy/Valueline/Getty Images.

My question is whether this kind of embarrassing use is permitted on Getty (Media Bakery?) and the question is for those on this forum that are contributors on Getty.

I though from what I read originally that the basic difference between pro and basic accounts was a downgrade to 10gb allowance, 2 price profiles instead of unlimited and some other minor things which did not concern me.  I figure that 10gb and 2 price profiles were sufficient for me. However, what was revealed is that in addition to the above mention, the basic profile does not allow to keep my url denispepin.com as it would revert to denispepin.photodeck.com, I would get only one price profile and most importantly, image buyers would not be able to download automatically and directly from my site meaning that human intervention would be needed. To me this is no longer an amazing deal.

Thanks for that info, it's worse than I thought. So the lite plan is just a teaser to lure you in the expensive plan. I read their offer carefully at http://www.photodeck.com/features/ but it shows 2 price profiles. You always have to dig deeper to find the catches. So the 2 profiles are a lie. Fine.
The URL at their site makes the lite offer useless: you will lose all your external links and Google images traffic if they go out of business or when you find out that the 360$/year "deal" is no match for Photoshelter at all.
Their hosting offers are a joke, especially in the EU. For their price of 2.5 Gb extra, you can get decent full hosting in the EU. My current hosting in the US is 3$/month, unlimited domains.
I was interested in their SEO manual but you need to sign up with Zuckerman's monster Facebook, so no thanks. Photoshelter has excellent SEO and design manuals and they just need your email.
When Photodeck came online here in their early stage, I thought already there was something fishy about it. The other guys (forgot the name) started free too, then started to charge, then went out of business. Once bitten...

Why not just take proper hosting and buy a proven framework like Ktools or CMSaccount for a 1-time fee? You can change hosting as you wish and the links are permanent since they are towards your own domain.

Hi David,  Can you tell me if you plan to add channels for StockFresh and Photodune?

Het can't do that yet for PD since you have to feed them different batches composed out of images of the same model(s), then send the release to a different FTP folder. He'll have to wait till PD has a release library and you can attach releases online as part of the submit process.

If you want to store your images in an online backup, and possibly get some occasional sales, why don't you try Most Photos. This stock site lets you download the full res copies of your own images if required, and they do have occasional sales. Upload is pretty easy as well.

This thread was about self-hosting, not about agencies.

So it might be worth to stretch your budget if you are going to give it an intensive use.

I worked all my life on crap screens up to 18 hrs per day, starting with a flickering green DEC VT240, later B&W monitors with 30fps less than VGA. My eyes are still fine : I don't need reading glasses and I can spot a nice woman 1km ahead. What else do you need? 

Question . . .  which Samsung are you using.       That question also goes for you, Mr. A.T. Nun.  Come on boys, a little information please.

Samsung 24" S24A350H LED, now 190 euro (since the collapse of the euro) but begin of August 170 euro, and it was a bargain then.

The perfectionists don't want a monitor like that. They want top stuff with color calibration etc, worth at least 700 euro in total. I have seen a setup like that at work and I have to admit the colors looked stunning... on his monitor.
Upload the images on a stock site and all the stunningness is gone. Why? Perhaps the stock agencies change the color profiles. Those shots look even dull on the thumbs. A buyer doesn't buy judging the full hires result, he buys on the thumbs.

I have worked on Barco's about 20 years ago as they were used in the tapestry and fabrics production industry by fashion and fabric designers. The price then was 25K euro and up (included equipment for constant calibration). We ourselves needed accurate colors for color vision research.

So top monitors are fine for those kind of applications where colors needs to be exact objectively. For stock, it doesn't matter that much (that's why I said "good enough"). The end product will be viewed on normal monitors anyways so who cares. If it's about print, the printer will adapt your colors since the same color looks different (depending on the process, dyes etc..) and the printer knows his processes best.

What matters IMHO is exact dynamic range so you can recognize details in shadows and highlights. Flatscreens have a much higher dynamic range as to luminance than CRT monitors and you will see the dreaded banding easier, especially with perfect (non-noisy) gradients as in illustrations. A simple flatscreen therefore is much better than the most expensive CRT nowadays. There are fine test images online to check your LCD visually as to flooding highlights and blacks = contrast/luminance/clipping.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM

What also matters is to include the color profile into your jpg's and chose the best (sRGB). Your images can look pretty dull when you miss this. When saving jpg's in photoshop, dont't forget to check the "include color profile" box. When converting raw to tiff (I use Canon's DPP) always include the color profile and chose the best (sRGB).

If you take these precautions, your images will look fine amongst others on a search page and you can just do with a standard good monitor.

Have you tried sorting the DT list by downloads/image. Very strange results at the top of the list!

Those are from contributors with high historic sales but that de-activated their port after a while and left (by accident?) some online.

I get the distinct feeling that very non nun-like, "we" are very stingy in giving out any reference to any site which may cause extra competition. 

Is that so?  (you're right).

Thanks everybody for the valuable info. I have an RF account at Alamy but since that content is over the micros, I abandoned it. I felt it not to be fair to buyers to have such diverging price points for the same shots.

RM is another cup of tea. I had a look at the port of Jeff Greenberg and most looks like snapshots, anyways not the kind of imagery that would be accepted in micro, not even as editorial. You can very well see he doesn't put much time in post-processing, rather upload straight from cam to the site. He seems to walk around and snap whatever moves. It seems to sell too. Good to know.  

Did you take the 10$/month (light) plan on Photodeck or the 30$/month (pro) plan? 360$ per year looks more expensive than Photoshelter but they don't take a share on the sales. Also, the 10$/month plan just comes with 10GB and that's a bit limited for hires Canon 5D shots at jpg 12.

This got to be one of the fastest results I ever had to place a referral link. I started three days ago to place this referral link. Now I have 10 referral so far, and one person already has a sale.

I'm there since May but I don't spread my referral links around in this forum. I even helped them out on some stuff. Oh boy! 
(they won't make it)

Alamy.

Samsung (170 euro, 140 pounds, 24" - I got 2)