Quote from: Roscoe on April 26, 2023, 02:54

Nuances. Surprised. Aren't you?

Speaking about "nuances". Take this:


 

Basically, besides the traditional linear position on private property (left-right), we need one more dimension to define the type of government i.e authoritarian vs libertarian.
But I must admit that while conceptually a two dimension matrix is how we should look at the political spectrum, the nuances in the above matrix are going a "bit" too far for me.

Maybe one day, I will check what Posadism and Soulism are about 

Quote from: Annie on April 25, 2023, 13:59

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 25, 2023, 12:28

I used to watch BBC news late at night for a more balanced view of what was going on in the world. I don't know if it's still like that? US media has become polarized and nothing is without bias or manipulation.

At least with the BBC, you don't get caught up with all the American political biases. Left. Right, Left Right. Left Right. As non-Americans, we are getting so sick of it.

There are so many big global issues at the moment that shouldn't fall into either of those categories, especially in order to be resolved.



...

Thanks Roscoe for some very good links.

.

I also think contributors here are pretty left biased

Quote from: pancaketom on April 25, 2023, 11:39

Quote from: Diana Herrmann on April 25, 2023, 10:51

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One�s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control."

�Theodore Dalrymple

This goes for the US culture wars, racial division, age divides, and political extremes. Those who only watch Fox and the others who only believe NPR are destined to become single minded with dehumanized closed minded values. Easy to control by the ones in power of their group.

I would say equating Fox and NPR would be one of these lies.

You mean the left wing, government supported TV and radio channels, compared to a private business, that's terribly biased to the right, is unfair? To whom? Fox? 

I used to watch BBC news late at night for a more balanced view of what was going on in the world. I don't know if it's still like that? US media has become polarized and nothing is without bias or manipulation.

Quote from: Lina on April 22, 2023, 05:32

Quote from: Brasilnut on April 21, 2023, 05:57

Overall, super disappointing if they're not shutting down whole accounts. One theft/infringement should be enough to constitute a material breach of the contributor agreement. I'll try to reach out to AS on Twitter about this...can't on SS as they blocked me on there.

Yeah, probably all images are stolen. I was too lazy to search for all images, just found bicycle on Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/vectors/bike-bicycle-motorcycle-cycling-7342379/
and butterfly: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/moth-butterfly-insect-wings-7725211/

Indeed, all stolen.

So, small update is that both AS and SS have removed the stolen images from four different accounts, but have unfortunately/frustratingly left the accounts intact with the remaining images (all stolen presumably). Some of these accounts have 200+ images.

I've requested for the fraudulent accounts to be shut down on the DCMA email thread but have not received a reply. Also radio-silence on my tweet to AS. Dead end it seems and wasting my time.

@Mat Hayward: If you're reading this, could you please clarify what is AS's official policy on finding an account with stolen images, in particular whether a full account can be closed upon discovery of at least one stolen image via a DCMA complaint of a copyright holder.

That's a good question. If nobody will even donate $1 after 22,000+ downloads what hope is there? Images that don't get featured get few downloads. So this sort of proves the first hypothesis that people who download free stuff are some of the most selfish types out there (that's why they're downloading for free, duh ) No excuse that they're students or academic or not-for-profit entities...what's $1 these days?

Secondly, the thieves taking images and re-selling is predictable. This could be an interesting avenue to reel in thieves but not really worth my time. If SS paid me for this would be cool but that will never happen and I won't work for free especially for them.

I'll continue the experiment since I want to have at least 100 images spread and wait at least one year before jumping to conclusions. I've begun very very reluctantly uploading more quality images (downsizing the resolutions) so let's see if this will make a difference.

To be continued...

@stoker

People who upload to these sites aren't looking to make money from donations but get their work exposed which may lead to opportunities down the line. The PR of these agencies have sold them a false dream.

This has been discussed here before. There was a contributor who had obviously managed to crack the shutterstock algorithm, because his images were on the 1st to 3rd place in all search results.

This also seems to be the case with these pink ones. Otherwise it can not be explained why someone with such a tiny portfolio and content that there are also two other tiny portfolios almost identical, can be found so far in front in the search.

Just my experience on Adobe, so far 278 accepted gen ai files, 31 downloads.

But I also spent 1000 euros on credits for various ais for commercial use.

I started uploading in early December, so maybe for such a short time it is not that bad. Also I don't have extremely generic files that would sell in high volume.

I am trying to do something different. Not using Midjourney, so hopefully I will have a collection that looks a little different to what others offer.

But for the money, perhaps doing it all Midjourney style is best, I don't know. It is probably the look the buyers want until they get tired of it. But that might take several years, it is like the instagram filter craze.

Quote from: Roscoe on April 16, 2023, 15:37

Quote from: Wilm on April 16, 2023, 09:59

Quote from: Annie on April 16, 2023, 07:43

Quote from: Wilm on April 16, 2023, 03:55

Quote from: Zero Talent on April 15, 2023, 19:02

Quote from: Wilm on April 15, 2023, 14:19

Today, the last 3 nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down.

In Finland, the biggest nuclear reactor in Europe just opened. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/finland-nuclearpower/after-18-years-europes-largest-nuclear-reactor-to-start-regular-output-on-sunday-idUSL8N36I06P

Yes, I know.

From a report on Olkiluoto 3 on ntv:

"The bigger catch in the current energy crisis, however, is another: contrary to appearances, nuclear energy does not make people quite as independent and free as some might wish. The Finns are aware of this, too. This year, they stopped the construction of another nuclear power plant with the participation of the Russian energy company Rosatom. The reason: a significant portion of the uranium for Finland's nuclear reactors comes from Russia, the country that attacked Ukraine and triggered the energy crisis in the first place.

Dependence on Russian electricity is one thing, but dependence on Russian uranium is another. Last year, Russia supplied about one-fifth of the uranium for nuclear power plants across Europe. Uranium is not on the EU sanctions list. The situation is no better in the USA: 99 percent of the uranium for 95 nuclear power plants is imported - mainly from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Finland wants to become more independent with nuclear power? It's not quite that simple."

Australia has about 30% of the world's uranium. Buy more from us!

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx

Actually, I cringe that I even wrote that (even in jest). When I was in my 20s, I used to protest against uranium mining in Australia. (of course, we have coal as well *sigh*)

In my heart of hearts, I've always been against stripping our world of its natural resources. What happened with wind and solar power? A few years ago, I thought Germany was a European leader in renewable energy. Or am I wrong, Wilm?

As far as Europe is concerned, that is correct, Annie. In a global comparison, Germany is in third place, behind the USA in second place and China in first place.
That refers to the amount of energy in TWh that is generated from renewable energy sources in these countries.

If you were to convert that to the amount generated and consumed per capita, the Scandinavians in particular would be way out in front.

In terms of our electricity consumption, 51.5% in Germany is now generated from renewables. However, the share accounted for by lignite and hard coal is still very high at 30.5% in the first quarter of 2023.

But that's just the topic of electricity. Electricity accounts for only 20% of our total German energy requirements. Energy demand for mobility, industry and much more changes the balance extremely.
Here, oil (33%) and gas (27%) are the main energy sources. In order to create more independence here, an extremely large amount of change must still take place. There is still a very long way to go.

Electromobility is being boosted, but other countries are much further ahead. In Norway, 65% of cars sold are currently electric. What's more, 98% of the electricity for electromobility in Norway is generated from renewable energy. These are values that we are very, very far away from here.

But electromobility also brings with it dependency problems. Rare earths, for example, are hardly available in Europe. Large deposits have been found in Sweden, but in general, Europeans are extremely dependent on imports. It's a vicious circle.

Germany being a global leader in the transition to renewable energy is two-faced and it has some very important nuances.

First of all, the  capacity of wind and solar they built up the last decade or so is remarkable, and an example to follow. I applaud that.

On the flipside, you see Germany still lagging behind significantly in bringing down carbon emissions of their electricity generation infrastructure. Despite the huge infrastructure on renewable energy, Germany's average carbon emissions of electricity generation infrastructure still looks bad and they really struggle with bringing it down. And the reason for that is very simple: coal burning. And sorry to say, also shutting down nuclear power plants, which have a very low carbon emission level.
You can easily check the carbon emissions caused by electricity generation here: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

Now, I'm not in favor of nuclear energy either, and all you said about it is true Wilm. But, I think the bigger picture is way more nuanced. When a country lacks the geological conditions to severely invest in hydro plants, like the Nordics for instance can do, or you don't have the possibility to explore geothermal energy, like Iceland can do, nuclear is the only non-fossil option for having a rather stable and trustworthy baseline of low carbon energy. Because, let's be fair, solar and wind are unreliable and building storage capacity that will get you through days or weeks of grey and windless weather is realistically not feasible.
Again, not in favor of nuclear, and certainly not in favor of building new nuclear power plants, but these are facts that can not be ignored.

Another fact that can not be ignored is that burning fossil fuels caused way more deaths than nuclear accidents so far. I'm fully aware that accidents in Fukushima and Chernobyl had a dramatic impact on the people living anywhere "near" of those disaster zones and the reported deaths are probably underestimated, but the impact of burning fossils is a totally different scale, both for humans as for nature. Mining accidents, drilling accidents, oil spills, gas leaks, wars fought because of oil, and fine dust particles that come with burning fossils as cherry on the cake. Disasters every now and then, deaths by fine dust particles on a daily basis.
See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

We can discuss numbers and studies, and I'm anything but an authority on the matter, but the bigger picture is what it is I'm afraid. Burning fossils, and certainly coal, has a devastating impact on all of us. And this is exactly what Germany keeps on doing, at a very large scale, and they will continue for another decade if I'm not mistaken?

The concerns regarding nuclear energy are 100% justified, but the way I look at now it is that bringing down our global carbon emissions became such a priority nowadays that not considering nuclear power as a necessary evil option to do so would be a mistake. In the end, we will need that solution for nuclear waste anyhow, and I know that sounds like a weak excuse (we don't need to put more crap in a shithole knowing we will have to clean it up someday) but the alternative is keep on burning coal and natural gas. Resources that already have a devastating impact, and are putting an end to the world as we know it.

Thank you for your factual contribution, Roscoe.

I am absolutely aware that the nuclear phase-out also has negative sides.

Germany, as the largest industrial nation, also has the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the EU. Of these CO2 emissions, by far the largest share is due to the burning of oil and gas. Even the continued operation of nuclear power plants would not change this much.

If you now pick a few countries and look at how high the share of nuclear power in the total electricity generation in the country was in 2021, you can see, for example, that this was 28% in South Korea, 20% in Russia, 19.6% in the USA and 14.8% in Canada.
In these 4 countries, CO2 emissions per capita are nevertheless significantly higher than in Germany, where the share of nuclear power was only 11.9%.

Of course, the burning of coal in Germany remains without doubt a major problem. And we would burn less coal if we continued to operate nuclear power plants - no question about that either. Above all, we need to consume less energy and drive the expansion of renewable energies much more strongly and quickly.

Thanks for enquiring Rob - I wonder how long it would have taken them to remove the collection if you hadn't asked?

It's really disheartening that Getty will hand over royalties to the bankrupt EyeEm - I understand their contractual obligations, but I have to wonder if they could have removed the EyeEm collection from sale immediately and started talks with TalentHouse/EyeEm to try and get the payments to contributors directly.

There were posts here about contacting Getty to remove EyeEm files as they weren't getting paid - months ago - and Getty refusing to. Really shoddy treatment of contributors.

https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/getty-takedown-request/

Quote from: eyewave on March 08, 2023, 03:31

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 16:27

You are getting a bit to emotional here and political as well. Totally unnecessary. The only point I'm making here is that if anyone with such a great audience place your art work it's worth thousands of dollars of promotion. Sure he doesn't pay for using your art but lot's of people will because he promoted your work and you will get a lot of attention of paying customers. And yes you can nag about things not being right but I personally would welcome something like this. And I will bet the artist in question will not be so unhappy as well. Even though she complains about not getting paid by Musk himself or being credited. C'mon think twice
But then still you can have another opinion. It's a free world still where we live, isn't it?

Can you tell me how in the world a microstock artist profits, when their work is stolen and published without mentioning the artist and linking to  their portfolio?

Let me try one last time

If you want to be succesful, with any product you sell, you have to reach a large audience. In that audience there are potential buyers. That is why we have advertisement on almost all media you use. You can make Coca Cola but if you don't tell people you have made this product nobody will buy your product.

So, if some lame ass with millions of followers tweets your photo then you get an enormous exposure.
In this audience you will have people that like this photo and will want to use it.
Among these people you have small players that might rip the photo of the tweet and use it and you get nothing. Not correct and a pity.

There will also be people that work for companies that have responsible policies and that obey the law of copyright. They will go and purchase the photo from the artist itself, or, in our case, from one of the agencies that sell our photo. Your photo will not be difficult to find and sales will be coming in.
Sales that never would have happened unless you would have spent a lot of money promoting your own work.

So that's why, even if it's fraudelent, wrong or whatever you want to call it, I (and again this is my personal opinion and you keep yours) would welcome any person that has millions of followers to expose my photo to his/her/it's audience, without them having bought the photo or credited me in the tweet.

Ask the artists in question if their revenues have gone up or down because of this. I am pretty sure that they will respond, if there are truthful, that it has gone up big time, even though they are whining about the wrongdoing.

edit:
So if this happens. You may want to sue the person, ask for a DMCA and get your photo as soon as possible of Twitter. I, on the other hand would let it stay there as long as possible. I might cause some trouble, to get even more exposure, but I would see it as a God given present.