I'm just getting around to doing my taxes this week, and I noticed on my 1099s that both the SS and Bigstock 1099s say that they are from "Shutterstock, Inc." Bigstock forms used to come from SS SPV LLC.

Has Bigstock been fully rolled into Shutterstock, at least in terms of tax purposes and income reporting? Based on these 1099s I'm just going to report all of the combined income as coming from Shutterstock. Seems like I have to, there is no 1099 from Bigstock or SS SPV LLC.

... We still believe it is important to reward the creators, which is why we will continue to give you an industry-leading royalty rate of 60% on images exclusive to 500px, while moving to a 30% rate for non-exclusive images...

How do they release this garbage without even fact-checking it? "Industry-leading," yeah right.

Great news. And something to keep in mind when people say "there's nothing we can do."

It is great news, but I don't think we can honestly say that anyone here had anything to do with the closing. This was all about the Adobe deal and the fact that DPC doesn't fit in with Adobe's business plan. That's all.

Pond5 has been pretty terrible about actually promoting their non-video products. They still heavily emphasize video and appear on the surface to be a video company. Vectors get the least attention, I think. They've lumped into the "Image" category and even within that they seem barely noticeable.

So it's no surprise that my sales at P5 are miserable. I get one sale every few months.

I don't upload there anymore and won't unless they ever decide to actually promote vectors in some meaningful way.

I'm done fighting these companies and I'm letting this EL thing go. At least we still have ELs, when some companies are making it pretty obvious that they are willing to bend to buyer pressure to offer more extensive usage rights with standard license purchases already (i.e. Creative Market).

When is the last time things actually changed for the better in this business? I feel like we're always just fighting against some new change that hurts us, in some futile effort to just maintain the status quo. But the status quo hasn't even been the status quo in years.

At this point, I think the best I can hope for is to just ride this out as long as possible and have it as a secondary income. The days when I made a living doing this are long gone, and I'm not going to stress about every change that comes along to cut us further out of the profits. It is what it is. Nothing will change that.

LisaFX was right. When she left MSG over the DPC issue, I didn't see it her way. I do now. The best we can do is stretch this out a little longer, and sometimes that means staying opted-in to things we don't always like.

I'm really bummed about this. I have been a vocal advocate for CM since their launch. I really liked the business model, the fair royalty rate, ability to customize products and pricing, etc. But this policy just goes completely against everything they seemed to stand for with treating contributors fairly. What good is a fair royalty rate if we have to accept these resale licenses under what should always be an EL?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/01/08/teenage-john-boyega-once-did-a-getty-stock-photoshoo_n_8937588.html

It's true. The actor who plays one of the staring characters Finn in the latest film did some stock photo modeling back in the day. He confirmed it's actually him via Twitter.



http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/student-portrait-royalty-free-image/157529619

you may have done better without the bundles being offered, you never know, they might have been your no1

Maybe. But I have no control over whether a company offers bundles or not. I can just opt not to participate in them or opt not to do business with that company. I think it would be foolish for me to not work with CM and drop my #2 earner just because they offer bundles.

And I know you're not saying that, my point is just that despite having a bundle offering, the company still does well on individual product sales, and bundling alone shouldn't keep people away from a good company.

I'm glad to see the EL option finally. Buyers have been asking for it for a long time, and now people don't have to offer a makeshift EL as a "product" itself. Which always seemed weird to me anyway, that people essentially were making their own ELs but creating a new product and simply selling a generic EL to apply to whatever other product the buyer had purchased to go with it.

This is playing out exactly s expected, and still with no real solution for contributors. Envato still wants to pretend that they're not an agency, but as indicated months ago they are now going to be issuing 1099s like they are an agency. They can't have it both ways, either they pay contributors or they don't. But it seems that they are intent on playing both sides of the transaction and reaping the benefits, while contributors get left holding the bag when the IRS comes knocking wondering why US contributors are seemingly underreporting income.

I quit Envato when they announced this a while back, and this recent news only reaffirms my happiness to be gone from there. I have no patience for companies who dream up creative accounting schemes that get pushed on contributors even when there are obvious problems.

If it makes you feel better, I didn't get accepted there. So, I guess some files is better than none. 

Do they take vectors yet? I talked to Lee about it years ago and sent over a chunk of my portfolio, but haven't heard anything since.

Yuri who?



His "review" reads like either sour grapes or fear of a legitimate new competitor emerging. My guess is it's a little of both.

Being ignorant of licensing terms and the complexities of stock image licensing is one thing. Taking credit for creating an illustration when it's really stock is entirely different, and it sounds like this Creative Director was happy to take credit for designing these t-shirts until he got caught.

Sadly it happens a lot. I had an issue recently with a guy who claimed ownership of one of my stock images and tried to sign over the rights to it to a company. I also saw one of my stock graphics in a gift card design that was featured in a design magazine, and of course someone else's name was listed as the illustrator and designer. I'd rather see it go uncredited than to see someone else take the credit for it.

I'm not a copyright expert by any means, but to me it sort of feels like copyright infringement, not so much in terms of licensing but in the sense that someone misrepresented artwork that they didn't create themselves and implied ownership. It might not be the kind of thing that SS would do anything about, but it still infringes on the original artists' rights.