Seems like you are representing DPC...

Yep, that's me. A secret DPC agent. I'm just trying to fool everyone by opting out of DPC, deleting half of my Fotolia portfolio, blogging about the harm DPC can cause, tweeting about it, posting on facebook about it, and convincing a few people to opt out over 10,000 images.

But you figured me out.

Good point, but also rather missing my point. If I were looking at trying to support a site for political reasons, yes I would. If I were simply trying to make some more money and thought the site had a chance of doing that then I wouldn't bother thinking about it.
The lack of investment in Stockfresh to attract buyers suggests to me that the owners aren't really interested in running a stock site any longer.
As for Stocksy, is anybody convinced that it won't be sold on at some point? That doesn't mean that it won't produce a worthwhile return on effort in the meantime, or, indeed, continue to do so if it is sold.
It's also a dangerous business building up "fair" sites. If I remember aright, back in 2005 Fotolia was the fairest of the fair. The first site that was going to be totally fair to photographers and stop the rip-off commission. It was the site you had to join to start the fair-pay revolution. And what happened as soon as Fotolia gained unstoppable momentum? It became nastier and more exploitative than any of those it was going to save us all from.

I've never understood this belief that any site that gets big can only do so by screwing over contributors. Or that every agency owner is motivated by greed and nothing else and will sell at the drop of a hat. Or that any would-be agency owner is of the same mindset.

Why is it so hard to believe that a company can exist as a top tier company under a fair trade system? Or that a company can be sold and not exploited? To be fair, StockXpert didn't go downhill until the 2nd sale, the one in which Jupiter was sold to Getty. Jupiter didn't cut royalties or change prices. Everything stayed the same.

I really can't believe that anyone would rather not bother with new companies just because they might change things on us later. If that's the general attitude around here, then we truly don't deserve anything better than what we've got today. We deserve to keep the current mess of companies if we can't even be bothered to make the slightest effort to support better deals with other companies.

I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of apathy has already hurt us. Maybe an opportunity has already been missed due to lack of contributor support. Maybe it was Stockfresh. You said that they're not interested in running a stock site any more. Maybe they were more interested a few years ago but the lack of support from the microstock community killed their enthusiasm. Maybe Stockfresh could have been a game-changer. But we'll likely never know. In the face of one of the worst things to ever happen to microstock (DPC), people still don't want to bother supporting companies offering a better deal.

It's amazing, really. They come in here offering 50%, fair prices, limited subscriptions, and they get spit on. Maybe we really are exactly where we deserve to be.

You're simply dead set on believing microstock cannot be affected by a boycott, though boycotts have been effective against all sorts of businesses, governments, prejudice, you name it...

Of course boycotts work in other industries. They just don't seem to work in microstock. We can't organize and rally around a boycott with much more than a quarter of the contributor base, and we're in an industry where these companies could lose half of their contributors tomorrow and still stay in business. A successful boycott in microstock would require a lot more than 50% of us to take part, which will never happen.

...You're also dead set on believing that if we can't shut a site down within five minutes any effort we make is completely useless...

You're right there. Any effort to shut down a site is useless. Shutting down a site is impossible. No way could we ever organize a boycott or protest big enough to do that.

...I'm just very glad so many others here don't share your defeatist attitude.

If "defeatist" means that I've given up on the idea of shutting down DPC through image opt-outs, a strategy that has already failed as the image count is rising at DPC, then sure, I'll wear that badge proudly.

Well yes, of course companies have changed direction, changed ingredients, pulled products, gone out of business, etc. etc. because of boycotts...

Stock companies? Microstock?

...As I said before, it's not either/or. You can opt out AND do something else. But why post in a thread about a positive group effort and repeatedly tell everyone their efforts are going nowhere (despite evidence to the contrary)?...

What evidence? Has Fotolia announced something I haven't heard about recently?

...And BTW, what's with the double standard? You're convinced DPC can do just great even if we opt out half their images, but StockFresh can't possibly compete unless they have another 7 million.

What double standard? I've said that I think DPC wouldn't change anything if we opted out half of their images (14 million). I've also suggested they could get by with 10 million, meaning that I think a company has a comfortably large enough collection at the 10 million mark. I think Stockfresh is under-supported with around 3 million images.

Not sure where you're getting the idea that I have any sort of double standard with regard to these companies.

And I'm not commenting on the Rosa Parks comparison. It's ridiculous to even mention in the context of a stock image boycott.

OK, Mike, it's just a different point of view, then.
To me, DPC looks like a cancer that threatens the entire microstock body. It may not be possible to destroy it, but ignoring it and moving on to something else is not a good option, in my opinion.
I guess you see it as a minor problem that won't cause too much trouble if it is left to get on with whatever it will do.
I still don't understand why you started off joining in the campaign against it and then switched to announcing it was a lost cause and people should switch their attention to trying to activate a moribund site run by people who took our images, sold the previous site for $10m or whatever, and then set up another site and asked everyone to supply once more the images the site owners had already cashed in on once.

I neversaid that DPC was a lost cause, I said getting enough images opted out to force a change wasn't going to work. I've always said that I would support other efforts to force DPC to change, although I don't know what would work. Throwing some huge effort behind supporting good companies is one way to try something different, but I've always been open to other ideas on how to push back at DPC.

I never said it was a minor problem. In fact, I've said the exact opposite here, that I consider it the biggest threat to our ability to earn in microstock.

I joined the campaign to get as many images opted out of DPC as possible because it was certainly worth a shot. I saw where it went and I have a pretty good idea of where it's going. So I think something different needs to be done.

I like Stockfresh, but I also have said that I'm open to other options if the majority of people wanted to rally behind a single company. A lot of people like GL. I'm good with that. I also don't share your concern about the Stockfresh guys having sold their previous company. They didn't sell with the intention of it getting shut down. It was supposed to simply change hands. But that's a discussion for a different thread.

I'm fine with differences of opinion, but you seem intent on twisting everything I say (or don't say) to suggest that I'm in favor of DPC and I'm against any effort to change it. That's not a different viewpoint, that's just simply slander.

...You noted first that the number of files was slightly more at one point than it had been a week earlier and therefore discounted a one-day drop as being irrelevant because, you said, the effort had failed. You added that we should wait a week or so to see where things were going. 10 days later the tally was LOWER than it had been when you came up with that test of achievement, but you didn't acknowledge it....

I also didn't comment every time it went up. I wasn't ignoring anything, I just don't feel the need to comment on every change in numbers. For the record, I was right, though, the number is going up. But feel free to keep quibbling over the minutia of what I've said.

...
You tell people that the effort they are making is a waste of time, that they've only reduced tally by 6 million images (when it's 7 million) and that simply will have no effect on Fotolia at all. You dismiss the letters Fotolia has sent to people asking them to reconsider as signifying nothing, you say there is only a 21% difference between Fotolia and DFC, when it is actually 24% difference. And hyou tell everyone that if they do start having an effect on Fotolie they will simply be forced to participate, which is merely speculation...

I didn't come up with the 6 million number, I was just going by what others had stated here. And although technically it is in fact less than 7 million, rounding up is appropriate. I stand corrected.

But that's a far cry from "sabotage". And my point is still perfectly valid. Reducing the DPC collection by 24% is far from what would force Fotolia's hand to do something more significant. DPC can live on perfectly fine with 24% fewer images. I'd wager they'd still keep cruising along just fine with 50% fewer images really. How many images do you think they need to lose before they have to change course? I guarantee it's a lot more than 24%.

...
In short, you underplay every achievement of the boycott campaign and play up every difficulty it faces. If you don't want to sabotage the campaign then you have adopted the most defeatist attitude imaginable and seem to want to share the misery with all those who are still being positive...

Simply not true. I think I actually have a more positive attitude than most around here. I'm not interested in wasting time fighting these companies, it just doesn't work. I'm interested in positive action. Supporting good companies, collectively rallying around 1 or 2 of the most "fair trade" companies and trying to push them up the ladder. I believe that positive actions will have a far greater effect on the bad companies by putting pressure on them to act in the interests of contributors.

If you want to talk about underplaying efforts, you should look into my past threads here. Every time I (or anyone) has suggested that we band together behind a good company, those efforts are thwarted by naysayers, disgruntled contributors who were rejected by that company, or people just looking to be negative about things in general.

My attitude is not defeatist. It is progressive, as in, let's progress to the next plan and try to do something different. Frankly I think it's more defeatist to ignore the reality that opting out images isn't working but to simply keep on that losing path. Defeat is all but guaranteed if the majority of folks here are content to ignore reality and just keep hoping for the impossible.

...
I'm sure we all know how heavily the odds are weighted against the campaign succeeding. But we also know that the one absolute guarantee of DPC coming out on top would be for everybody to adopt the negative attitude that you have expressed for the past three or four weeks.

The one way to guarantee that DPC comes out on top is to ignore the hard facts. There is absolutely zero chance that DPC goes under 20 million images. I think they'd still be functional with 10 million (many companies operate fine with even less). So it is a near certainty that opting out images won't force any significant change. If more people had my attitude and were willing to move on to other efforts, then we might have something. Unfortunately very few people are interested in silly things like facts around here. And far fewer are interested in making change happen in a way that doesn't involve boycotts or opt-outs.

Again, we've done this all before. It doesn't work. I'm simply suggesting that we need to try something different. And that suggestion seems to be interpreted as sabotage, negative attitude, and defeatism.

Mike, why are you constantly trying to sabotage this effort? It's as if you want Fotolia to succeed in further devaluing the market.

Sabotage? Are you serious? I got people to opt out, after I did so myself. I blogged, tweeted, and posted on facebook about this. I communicated directly with Mat about this in hopes of getting him to understand why this is such a bad thing for contributors. I've been a part of this effort and have never supported DPC.

Furthermore, I've stated all along that I support efforts to change the course of things in this business, as long as those efforts are going somewhere. I still would support any effort to stop DPC if it were even remotely possible to have an impact, but unfortunately this opt-out effort isn't working and it's a waste of time. However I have always (and still do) welcome different strategies to effect change.

I highly resent your implication that I'm trying to sabotage anything, that I want DPC to succeed, or that I want to devalue anyone's work. The fact that your accusations are getting up votes is even more disturbing. Really makes me wonder why I keep coming back here.

There is a definite mood change from contributors, the masses are not happy any more thats for sure.

Sorry but that's just false. The "masses"? 21% of Fotolia's images have been opted out of DPC. I don't think 21% qualifies as "masses" when it's not even the majority.

Well, in the United States, it's about the same as using the n-word. If someone had used that for their user name, I could see someone else not liking it.

I had never even heard of it until this thread, and I highly doubt it's in the same category of words as the n-word here in the US.

There's even a restaurant with the name in California. If it were equal to the n-word, I'd expect some pretty negative press and an angry mob outside the restaurant.

Because mobilizing an effort like that is a lot harder for everyone.

It's much easier to opt out all your images (3 minutes) than to upload hundreds, or in my case, thousands of images to a new site. That would take me many, many hours, and I want to see a financial return for all that time. And if I have to pitch in with marketing because they're not doing it, I want to be paid for that, too.

And that right there is why there's no point in even trying to mobilize any effort like what I suggested. Everyone wants something but they don't want to assume any risk themselves. Apparently not even if we managed to come to some sort of community consensus on what the most fair company in the business is and that everyone should make an effort to support that company.

I'd rather spend hours doing something that might actually make a difference than 3 minutes doing something that has been done before and never seems to work.

Gotta love how someone reporting some good sales gets down-votes. Speaks volumes about this "community" these days. Can't even be happy for someone else's good fortune just because things aren't going your way right now.

Well, now I need to know what Stockfresh did to have people shun them. 

They sold out. Which, on the surface, I suppose is a valid concern, that they'll just do it again and we'll be left holding the bag.

Except they didn't truly "sell out" like some folks would have you believe, selling to Getty and getting StockXpert shut down in the process. They sold to Jupiter, which was then sold to Getty and StockXpert got closed in that deal because StockXpert and iStock were too similar. Getty already had iStock, no need for StockXpert.

I honestly don't believe that the StockXpert crew thought that they'd end up in the hands of Getty or that StockXpert would be closed. They probably thought that in the hands of Jupiter, StockXpert could go on for a long time. Who knew that Jupiter (and everything they owned) would go to Getty shortly thereafter?

And really, who cares anyway? You can't fault them for selling to Jupiter, and really who can be upset about what Peter and company did with StockXpert while it was still up and running? We made a lot of money with StockXpert. I was making about $500 per month towards the end. Sure I would have liked to see that continue. But I don't blame Peter for what happened. I have no idea what they got in the Jupiter deal but I imagine that few of us would have turned down that kind of money either, if given the chance.