I just receive this sitemail:

I was wondering what you might sell your usage for your "lightbox XX" and "lightbox XXX" collections for as a whole group?  Just let me know.


Thoughts? I'm bit confused about what he wants. He can just buy entire lightboxes, no?

Yes, of course he/she can. You have nothing to do directly with prices or sales. Now things are getting even wonkier. Tell him you don't set the prices, istock does, and that there is a buy this lightbox button at the lower right-hand corner of each of the light boxes for his/her convenience.  

Unfortunately, at this point, I have no choice but to try and make a whole lot of money. Its not what I want of course, who would? But I was lavish with my money and blew it all on lens caps. So now I have no choice but to hope that if and when I put a picture up on iStock that it sells. I know it's a lot to expect and please pardon me for my greed.

P.S. - If you are not in it for the money either like I was, and just want a new lens cap, then no need to invest all those thousands of dollars in equipment, spend bundles of money on models and props, and hundreds of hours shooting, retouching, keywording, and uploading pictures to iStock because I will send you a lens cap for free, OK?

Unfortunately, there's no real instant loss to the supplier by a theft of intellectual property, so the analogy isn't accurate.  People who do this were not going to license the content legitimately, so you're not losing out on that money.  The people in Russia they will sell the cds to weren't going to license the content legitimately.

Also, how do we know if a theft is/has occurred that it is a legitimate theft even? We saw the system register a download and place the money in our accounts. If they later claim it was theft and want to take the money back I think they would also need to produce evidence of the theft and how it occurred. Either way though, I think they are still liable.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286152&page=1

Just keep an eye on your downloads from IS today.  Someone is rampantly downloading large sized files at a $1 per credit price.

By the way, none of my rampant large sized downloads were at $1 a pop or less. They all averaged around $7-$9, depending on size. Although, the royalties do seem lower than what they normally would be on downloads of the XXL and XXXL file sizes.

Since you're new here, you might have missed we have a category for image fraud, which is the category the post is in.  Most people come to the front page of the site which lists all the recent posts so it would have been easily seen.  On the other hand, maybe it would be more "topical" in the "IS" category.  So, I've moved it.

Thanks for the additional input about the site and good I think that you moved it.

Most computers have a functionality called "copy and paste" which would easily let you copy and paste your thoughts to the thread so that people discussing it don't need to look in two places.

I hope you are not being sarcastic in trying to school me on C&P. Anyway, if you read what I wrote more closely, then I think you will see that I mentioned it was more of an issue of not wanting to spend the time re-tailoring the post to add it to an existing post since it was written from the perspective of a first post. It I just C&P the post into yours, then I think it would read a little funny from an existing post perspective, wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, as I said, please feel free to do what you like this post. Scrap it all together, lock it, whatever makes you happy. Again, I think there is some good content in my original post worth noting in terms of the potential catastrophic outcome of a potential massive cyber theft and worth bringing to the attention of other iStock contributors who could also be affected by something like that. So far you have only been interested in the fact though whether I have posted my message in the right place or not.

Well, enough said I think. Have a happy new year...

I haven't seen any posts about this yet here on the forum, but there is already a longish thread about it on the iStock forum about the strange number of bulk XXL and XXXL downloads occurring in people's portfolios yesterday over Christmas weekend.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286152&page=1

One person having had 26 maximum sized Vetta sales all in one day. We are talking about possibly a $2,000 purchase for the photo buyer on that one alone. It could just be an end of the year buying spree for many buyers who are either planning on closing down their accounts, or who want to use up their buying budgets for the year, but to do that on a Sunday over Christmas weekend seems odd when most designers would not be working. Of course that is what we are all hoping it is though and nothing more than that. The disheartening issue is that iStock has not chimed in yet at all to say whether there is some sort of glitch in the system or not.

On the other hand, if this is an attack of Cyber theft then the ramifications of it for iStock could be huge and would explain why they are not saying anything about it for the meantime until they get some legal advice about how to handle it. It could be corporate image suicide for them and they may in fact not be able to pinpoint the source yet or are able to stop it at this point and possibly be the reason why they have kept quiet until they feel they have a handle on it. I hate to think it could be a disgruntled employee who has access to corporate buyer accounts with large credits in them and is using those accounts to download quality hi-res images for a bigger espionage plan.

The most serious of outcomes could be that someone has strategically chosen this time to hack into the system and download lots of large files when they know the iStock Admins are away and not on hand to take action within the iStock network system to stop the looting. What the thieves could be planning to do with all these high quality images is scary and they could use them to launch pirated CD-ROMS filled with our images and sell them for dirt cheap in countries like China and India for example where they would have no qualms about buying or using pirated intellectual property for commercial use. Think of the billions of people that could obtain free use to people's work on iStock in just those 2 massive countries alone.

If that were to happen, then both the financial and PR backlash for iStock could be huge. It could result in a large class action lawsuit from contributors who sue iStock for millions for compromising their intellectual property. Ultimately, iStock would be held responsible for the financial ramifications of an attack of theft like that and it could be millions as I said.

All of this is very scary. Yesterday I had 4 XXXL downloads in a row myself all on the same type of image and all occur within minutes of each other, which follows the same pattern everyone is talking about in the above iStock forum post. These 4 images of mine have never sold before in a pattern like that nor at those sizes consistently.

I am just hoping that all of these downloads are legit and that iStock Admins chime in very soon to let everyone know that everything is alright. Otherwise, if the outcome is the potential nightmare I just was talking about, then it would explain why iStock has been very quiet so far and that a big old hurricane could be about to hit the shores.

Let's us all keep our fingers crossed and pray for some good and comforting news from iStock. It would be great if my biggest fears are all false and alleviated very shortly and that this is/was just some sort of strange photo-buyer buying spree which put a bit of extra Christmas jingle in all of our pockets.