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Messages - bpepz

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51
I absolutely believe the model is in the wrong, and that any competent judge would dismiss immediately.

Do you not have business insurance for just such a contingency?  My insurance covered a similar issue for me.

I had insurance but they found a way not to cover it. As far as dismissing immediately, that would be the best case scenario, but there is little guarantee that is going to happen before the judge has more information, because as far as they know, the only thing they have is the plaintiffs information. I can't just say "well, she is not correct" there is a whole discovery process and stuff like depositions to do, which will be incredible expensive, easily tens of thousands at least, I have already spent a huge amount of money and not much has even happened yet. This is a very information laden case, just having to explain and cross reference everything cost a lot of money. Because of the number of defendants and other factors, something as simple as watching the docket and other routine stuff has been costly, not to mention research, countless emails and phone calls, I am billed for every second of this. On top of all of this, the plaintiffs lawyer appears to be doing this case for free for her, I could be wrong but that is what it appears to be from my perspective. In my opinion, he may think somehow he will make big money off of this.

The case started out in the northern district of Ohio and the reason it took so long for much to happen is because it took a while for them to serve me. I have a lawyer in Ohio I retained here in ohio and just very recently the case had a change of venue to the southern district of new york, luckily my lawyer in Ohio can practice in New York. I also hired Nancy Wolff because of her experience and knowledge about the stock industry. There was a pre-trial conference on the 6th. the case is starting to really heat up.

52
Try to contact Cindy Cohen, she is a great IP lawyer and her organization can help you for free. Link: https://www.eff.org/about/staff

Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF's overall legal strategy and supervising EFF's fourteen staff attorneys. Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1993, when the EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on digital rights and has traveled onto the Internet with Stephen Colbert.

The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "f Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online."  In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.

[email protected]
+1 415 436 9333 x108

PGP Key
Read Cindy Cohn's extended bio

Thanks for the recommendation, as of now though I am using lawyer Nancy E. Wolff, you guys have probably heard of her before, she does a lot of work related to stock photography and was recommend by some people at Getty, also , Shutterstock seems to like her.

53
Is there no way to get a pro bono lawyer?

I have looked and looked and looked, no one would do it pro bono.

54
General Stock Discussion / Re: model might try to sue me
« on: January 07, 2015, 22:48 »
                                                 -----UPDATE----

Please visit my new thread so I can update everyone on what is happening.

"http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/being-sued-by-model-for-half-a-million-dollars-in-federal-court-please-read!/"

55
-------------------------UPDATE!!!!---------------

Case has been withdrawn!






56
General - Top Sites / anyone know about PIXTA?
« on: September 04, 2014, 08:48 »
I got a private facebook message from someone representing PIXTA inviting me to sign up. It seems to be a japanese microstock agency. Anyone ever heard of them before?

57
Shutterstock.com / Re: Sales on Shutter
« on: July 06, 2014, 10:39 »
Don't know how this happend, but 95% of my sales are from outside the US even though I am in the US, and have no photos relating to anything outside the US.

58
Shutterstock.com / Re: Sales on Shutter
« on: July 02, 2014, 09:10 »
Actually, the growth numbers are not all that bad on shutterstock. Looks like this week the amount of new images is at 280k, and shutterstock has nearly 39 million images right now. That is less then 1% increase a month. Also keep in mind, probably 80% of the those 280k new images are probably poorly done photos of screwdrivers or apples on white, ducks, park benches, and stale food. The amount of "real" images you are competing with if you are half competent is very very small. So even growing your port at a very modest 2% a month should see growth.

There is a long talk about how tough the rejections have gotten on Shutter.  I don't think most of those new images are so LCV as you say.  The smaller growth is either people holding off uploading during the slow season, or the tougher reviews or both.

Have you looked at new uploads? Most of them suck, just like it has always been. The rejections at shutterstock lately almost seem random. I can confirm that I have had experiences similar to everyone else lately in that regard. Had an entire batch of 78 images declined for "out of focus", I resubmitted them and told them to take a second look, all 78 were accepted. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time something like this had happened.  The rejections seem to have nothing to do with quality.

59
Shutterstock.com / Re: Sales on Shutter
« on: July 01, 2014, 13:05 »
Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

If a newbie has a port of 50 images one month, and 100 the next, his/her port size went up 100%.
In that same month, the total images on any given site went up from, say, 25 to 26 million images, an increase of 4%.  As long as the rookie's percentage rate of port increase beats the total image percentage of increase, he/she can see fantastic growth.

But if a veteran has a port of 5000 images one month and 5,100 the next, his/her port size went up  just 2%.  Compared to the 4% monthly growth in total images available on the agencies, the ms vet is going backward, and will see less money each month.

Of course, there are other factors such as monthly variations (March is always a better month than April, December is always much worse than January).  So run the same calculation on an annual basis.  Depressing, depressing results.

It's a numbers game, and once your port is a certain size, and as the agencies keep growing at an incredible rate, you WILL start going backward.  I denied this reality for a long time, insisting that I could overcome the wall by finding niches and meeting an aggressive daily quota, and I may have held back the wall for a year or two by doing this, but it ended up crushing me. 

I've got nearly double the port size I had two years ago, and I'm averaging a few dollars less every day.  And I expect two years from now to be making even less.  For the first time in nearly 8 years of doing this, I feel very negative about microstock.

Actually, the growth numbers are not all that bad on shutterstock. Looks like this week the amount of new images is at 280k, and shutterstock has nearly 39 million images right now. That is less then 1% increase a week. Also keep in mind, probably 80% of the those 280k new images are probably poorly done photos of screwdrivers or apples on white, ducks, park benches, and stale food. The amount of "real" images you are competing with if you are half competent is very very small. So even growing your port at a very modest 2% a month should see growth.

60
123RF / strange upload problem
« on: June 16, 2014, 08:24 »
I went to upload some images today, and I was met with this message

"We regret to inform that we will disable queueing of files to process until further notice."

Anyone else been getting this?

61
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62
99% of my subs are at .29 cents, maybe fotolia was so eager to give us this "raise" because they knew it would hardly affect anything.

63
...it's still unclear to me why customers would not migrate to the dollar club, or some derivative incarnation of it, which is a much better value for them...

The only reason they wouldn't go to DPC or some similar product is if the selection of images is too poor, in terns of both quality and quantity. So far, I'm not seeing enough of a reduction in either to make me think that most customers will even notice.

Some customers have expressed frustration over picking out an image but then returning later to find that the image is no longer available. But that's just an effect of the mass opt-outs happening over the last couple of weeks. That won't be a common scenario once the dust settles and opt-outs slow to a trickle.

Also, once opt-outs do slow enough, uploads to Fotolia that are to be included in DPC will out-pace opt-outs and DPC will begin to grow.

Even if by some miracle half of the images at FT were opted out of DPC, that still leaves 14 million images at DPC, more than enough to run a stock business and have enough of a selection to keep customers happy.

So I see no reason why more and more customers won't go over to DPC. And I see a lot of reason to believe that many existing customers at other agencies will try out DPC. Fotolia is targeting existing stock image buyers, afterall. They've got a full-page ad in this month's HOW Magazine, a publication for art directors and graphic designers. The HOW Design Live Conference is going on right now and Fotolia is there, surely promoting DPC. They're promoting it in GDUSA, also another design magazine. Those are the ones I know about, who knows how many other promos they're running aimed at the design community.

So it's going to happen, buyers will move some (or all) of their business over to DPC. It probably already is happening. All that's left to figure out is how much this will impact us and the other companies. And that will take time. Maybe as long as a year before we see any quantifiable impact.

Not all images are created equal. Most of the people opting out are the most active and best contributors. Only about 1 in 10 shots in a stock agency really ever sell, you have millions of sub par images, millions of low resolution images shot in 2005, you have people who have never logged in for years. The 6.5 million images taken off of DPC is possibly over 50% of actual good content. That is a huge impact.

64
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia D-Day (Deactivation Day) - May,1
« on: May 08, 2014, 06:35 »
-

65
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia D-Day (Deactivation Day) - May,1
« on: May 06, 2014, 18:23 »
-

66
    
Partner Program Recoupment Notification
Hello rez-art,

We discovered that there were some irregularities with September 2013 and October 2013 Partner Program royalties payments. There were a number of contributor accounts that were overpaid royalties over these two months. Unfortunately your account was one of the affected accounts.

We have calculated the over payment amount to be $113.46. Rather than take this amount out of your royalty balance in one adjustment we have decided to schedule the removal of these funds over a 6 month period. Starting before the end of February 2014 we will begin removing $18.91. Once per month for the next six months we will recoup the balance of the over payment. You will receive a monthly notification as immediately after the funds are removed.

Over Payment Total=$113.46

Monthly Recoup Amount=$18.91

If you have any questions please contact us via our Contributor Relations Contact Ticket feature.

Regards,
iStockphoto LP

67
After thinking about this a while, as much as I am sure Istock has no problem outright stealing from contributors, I think its unlikely in this situation. More likely, the uptick in PP sales were totally artificial, a way for istock to boost its image on paper, knowing full well as soon as 2014 came around they would call it a "glitch" and claw it all back. It seems they knew they were under scrutiny and were trying to boost performance to prevent the downgrade from Moody's. Obviously they still had the downgrade, but even if they had not, the extra "sales" would of been clawed back either way. At least in this situation istock has not exactly defrauded its contributors,  you can't really feel bad about losing a sale that never happened.

68
Quote
bpepz

Reply #167 on: Today at 17:16
Quote #link0   
Quote from: bpepz on Today at 17:07
Quote from: mayaartist on Today at 13:54
I posted it on istock forum but it was deleted instantly. But here they can't do anything

After reading this article it's become clear that this is a fraud. They desperately looking how to reducing debt. And I don't want to pay for that.

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Getty-to-B3-from-B2-Outlook-is-Stable--PR_285298

P.S I don't understand why they delete my post on istockpoto forum. Because it's not a secret information. Everybody can find it and read.

After all this I've decided to start delete my portfolio from istockphoto. I don't believe them any more.

Lol, I just posted the same thing and it was deleted as well.

Ok, new update, they have banned me from the forums for posting that link.
I had  two site mails form Lobo when I posted it. And than I started deleting my images.

seems they are really sensitive about that article. I'm banned now for posting it.
No, it's not that. You posted it three times and ignored my sitemails indicating the article you are linking was from October 31, 2013 and it was in no way related to the Partner Program issues.

I originally posted to see if what people were saying was true, that if that information was posted you would get your message deleted. Sure enough, my message was deleted, signaling to me that indeed something indeed may be amiss, and I kept posting with the hopes that someone could see it. Truthfully though I did not see the site mail till after I noticed I could not post anymore, I am not really complaining about being banned, but it does show there is some sort of damage control going on over that information.

69
the article you are linking was from October 31, 2013 and it was in no way related to the Partner Program issues.

Why couldn't you just say "it is in no way related to the Partner Program issues" and leave the link there? I hope you do understand that all this hiding and other shenanigans seem very suspicious?

so what if it was oct 31st? its not like they could instantly pull something like this off. Only a few months difference, also the new year may have something to do with the timing as well. Only time will tell.

70
Quote
bpepz

Reply #167 on: Today at 17:16
Quote #link0   
Quote from: bpepz on Today at 17:07
Quote from: mayaartist on Today at 13:54
I posted it on istock forum but it was deleted instantly. But here they can't do anything

After reading this article it's become clear that this is a fraud. They desperately looking how to reducing debt. And I don't want to pay for that.

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Getty-to-B3-from-B2-Outlook-is-Stable--PR_285298

P.S I don't understand why they delete my post on istockpoto forum. Because it's not a secret information. Everybody can find it and read.

After all this I've decided to start delete my portfolio from istockphoto. I don't believe them any more.

Lol, I just posted the same thing and it was deleted as well.

Ok, new update, they have banned me from the forums for posting that link.
I had  two site mails form Lobo when I posted it. And than I started deleting my images.

seems they are really sensitive about that article. I'm banned now for posting it.

71
I posted it on istock forum but it was deleted instantly. But here they can't do anything

After reading this article it's become clear that this is a fraud. They desperately looking how to reducing debt. And I don't want to pay for that.

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Getty-to-B3-from-B2-Outlook-is-Stable--PR_285298

P.S I don't understand why they delete my post on istockpoto forum. Because it's not a secret information. Everybody can find it and read.

After all this I've decided to start delete my portfolio from istockphoto. I don't believe them any more.

Lol, I just posted the same thing and it was deleted as well.

Ok, new update, they have banned me from the forums for posting that link.

72
I posted it on istock forum but it was deleted instantly. But here they can't do anything

After reading this article it's become clear that this is a fraud. They desperately looking how to reducing debt. And I don't want to pay for that.

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Getty-to-B3-from-B2-Outlook-is-Stable--PR_285298

P.S I don't understand why they delete my post on istockpoto forum. Because it's not a secret information. Everybody can find it and read.

After all this I've decided to start delete my portfolio from istockphoto. I don't believe them any more.

Lol, I just posted the same thing and it was deleted as well.

73
If my account goes into the negative because of this, I'm closing my account on the spot. I wonder how they will feel about losing money already paid out? Hopefully not too good.

Actually, when you close your account it takes up to 30 days for your images to come off the PP sites so they will continue to generate income even though you are no longer there.  Final payout is about 60 days after your account closes.  So, in theory, any negative balance you have from this PP clawback should be made up for by the time final payout occurs.  iStock will get it's money.
My account closed today.

Good point, but that is assuming PP sales are good, which apparently they are not, the good sales where all "just a glitch" all along, so depending on the severity of the over payment, even 60 days may not be enough to "repay" them.

74
If my account goes into the negative because of this, I'm closing my account on the spot. I wonder how they will feel about losing money already paid out? Hopefully not too good.

75
123RF / Re: RC Totals Not Updated?
« on: November 03, 2013, 09:48 »
mine still have not changed

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