I have a little request for everyone: Please let's stay objective, thank you very much!

The topic naturally stirs up emotions and fears - especially for me, the person affected by the account loss.

So let's stay calm and hope that Adobe will find a sensible way of proceeding here.

I got an answer from Adobe, which reads like this:

------------------------
"Your account was blocked after we noticed that you have submitted Generative Ai content that is not within our guidelines.

You have submitted files that refer to famous artists, people, characters from popular culture, and/or other existing subjects such as video games in the image, title or keywords. We take intellectual property rights very seriously and your uploads are a violation of these rights and thus violate the upload guidelines.

Your account will remain blocked until further notice."
------------------------

I have again politely written to the Adobe employee asking to be allowed to remove the problematic material so that my years of work are not destroyed.

Unfortunately, even after Adobe's reply, I don't know what exactly the problem was - maybe I have a wrong keyword in there somewhere that I wasn't aware of - you can't know everything.
I probably violated the guidelines somewhere unknowingly, but in any case never consciously - I really do think about every image and I probably didn't pay enough attention every now and then....

I really hope I get a chance to purge my account of problematic material, so maybe I can at least get my normal photos, videos and illustrations back in the account - that should be possible.

@Adobe, @Mat:
There has to be a way to give a long-time contributor that chance here, doesn't there?

Thanks for the tips...
With the cars I always remove the beginnings of logos and then also look if the contours are "too similar" to a model I know.
But of course I'm not a legal expert here....

I really hope to get an answer from Adobe soon, so I can get any problem out of the way as soon as possible...
I just want to get the opportunity and of course I'm ready to clean up according to Adobe's specifications!

I have now spent almost the entire night racking my brains about what I must have done wrong.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe I didn't fill in the AI box correctly on one set of images. That shouldn't happen, but one is not free of mistakes....

I really hope this doesn't cost me my account with a good 30,000 assets.

Hopefully the response from Adobe won't take so long.... Fingers crossed!

Hello Jo Ann,

thanks for the link!
I'll try that and hope I don't get on Mat's nerves with the problem.... for me this is a very big problem....

Thanks,
Michael

Edit:
Tried the discord, but they "do not discuss blocked accounts there"...
I asked them how long the answer from the contributor support may take - "We've heard anywhere from a few days to a few weeks; there's no way of knowing how long it will take. You just have to be patient and await their reply."

And my income of August is also frozen there... I am simply at a loss

Hello Mat,

-Only check the box �People and Property are fictional� if the asset includes people or property. For example, if you generated a landscape or food DO NOT check this box.

I just looked to check if I could see if I had mistakenly enabled this on some images here, but you can't seem to see that on the submitted images anymore - or did i miss something there?

Thanks,
Michael

I just noticed that I have not had any OD sales since the middle of May. About 5% of my sales used to be OD's, but now there are none.

Have others noticed the same trend?

Just checked my last 3 month - about 1 in 40 sales was OD, that rate is decreasing for me too.

I guess I will make sure that I always upload my ai files to Adobe first. I usually upload to both Adobe and Dreamstime on the same day. Maybe I will add a one day delay.
But at least they listen to reason if you send them screenshots.

That is what I am doing now too - uploading today to AdobeStock, and one day later to other platforms.

And yes, good to see everything was removed and they listened to the screenshots and my arguments :-)

Now I will go and check the "thief"-account for more images stolen from my images...

Edit: The account is now gone completely too - thanks for that Adobe, very good! :-)

To keep you up to date on the copyright infringement of the AI images from the initial post:

Of the 4 images I reported to Adobe's DCMA page, 1 has so far been deactivated by the "thief's" account - the copy of this image: https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/a-sad-piggy-bank-with-cracks-and-a-plaster-indicates-insolvency-created-with-generative-ai-technology/586900593

For two images I have received the message that the upload date at Adobe from the "thief's" account is before mine and therefore no action will be taken.
Thereupon, I have once again picked out conclusive screenshots (for viewing see below) from my MidJourney account and sent them as a reply to the email from Adobe.
That was 8 days ago - so far there has been no response.
What is annoying is that the picture with the door on the field is my second best selling picture.

Adobe wanted to look at the fourth image, but that is still online at the "thief"-account too.

I'm afraid I'm not going to get anywhere here and before I risk losing my Adobe account because I'm too "demanding", I think I'd better leave it like this... the "thief" account keeps selling merrily - at my expense and probably the expense of some of you too.

In future, I will upload all AI images to Adobe first and not to other sites beforehand, even though this is certainly not the best solution.
One feels quite alone with such a problem and I think a reaction time of 2 weeks should be sufficient for copyright infringements.

If anything else comes up, I will of course post it here.

Have a sunny day,
Michael

Update:
I took the 4 images from the post above to Adobe for reporting via DCMA form and got a response for 2 images which reads:
"Thank you for your message. We are unable to take action on your report: The asset you allege is infringing has an earlier upload date than your asset.
 
Please note that generally: Copyright protection attaches upon the creation of a work, which in many cases can be inferred from the subsequent publication date. If we have overlooked the infringement that you are trying to report, please let us know. Otherwise, we will consider this case closed."

I don't always upload my images to Adobe first, but also to other sites like Dreamstime, Vecteezy (Pro), etc. and because the person obviously stole the images there before I uploaded them to Adobe, they don't see any reason to consider these images stolen here yet.

I will try to report that to Adobe and see what happens.
So far, after a good week, all the stolen images are still online.

@Mat:
In case you are reading along, I guess I need help here, because I can't accept that someone just steals all of our (and my) pictures and gets away with it :-)

Have a nice day@all,
Michael

Quote from: JustAnImage on July 17, 2023, 12:25

(c) How can I ensure that the income generated by the stolen images goes to the original authors? Or alternatively, the income from such accounts could be donated to a good cause.

Buahahaha. Sorry, I couldn't help it. You know that agencies keep that money for themselves, right?

That's perfectly fine - I didn't feel any different when I wrote the question.

But nevertheless, I will ask.

And then we'll see if we can find out the name of the operator through a legal enquiry, so that we can do some digging.
And yes, I'm fully aware that there's not much chance of success - but if you don't poke a little at the wasps' nest, nothing will change.

And now it's time to pack my suitcase - tomorrow morning I'm going on holiday for a few days :-)

Hello Adobe, Hello Forum,

I just found a mirrored version of an image of mine on another account on AdobeStock.

Since I'm not sure where to turn, I'll try my luck here:


My original image - image index 586,900,593
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/a-sad-piggy-bank-with-cracks-and-a-plaster-indicates-insolvency-created-with-generative-ai-technology/586900593

The stolen image - image index 590.829.123 mirrored horizontally and scaled down from 5376px to 3000px width on another account:
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/a-sad-piggy-bank-with-cracks-and-a-plaster-indicates-generative-ai/590829123

Attached is a screenshot directly from my Discord midjourney channel (MPfoto71) proving my creation of the image (see below)


And another one on the same account:

My original image - image index 595.643.165
- https://stock.adobe.com/at/images/golden-spiral-digital-artwork-created-with-generative-ai-technology/595643165

The stolen image - image index 590.834.695 mirrored horizontally and scaled down from 5376px to 3072px width on another account:
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/golden-spiral-digital-artwork-generative-ai/590834695

Attached is another screenshot directly from my Discord midjourney channel (MPfoto71) proving my creation of the image (see below)


Just found a 3rd stolen image:

My original image - image index 597.491.021
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/stock-photo/id/597491021

The stolen image - image index 590830519 mirrored horizontally and scaled down from 5376px to 3072px width on another account:
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/stock-photo/id/590830519


Image No 4:

My original image
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/a-mountain-of-sweets-on-a-white-background-created-with-generative-ai-technology/592778532

The stolen image
- https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/a-mountain-of-sweets-white-background-generative-ai/590828779



I now have a few questions running through my head:

(a) Who do I have to write to in order to have this stolen image removed?

(b) If the account https://stock.adobe.com/de/contributor/211210945/paraseem is blocked, will it be blocked completely, as it is quite likely that there is more stolen material there?

(c) How can I ensure that the income generated by the stolen images goes to the original authors? Or alternatively, the income from such accounts could be donated to a good cause.


Does anyone here know how to get the stolen images offline?

Unfortunately I'm on holiday for 5 days from tomorrow morning without internet (in the wilderness) and can only continue reading here on Sunday...

Thank you,
Michael

PS: I would recommend that you also take a look to see if any of your pictures are affected - unfortunately I haven't had time to search yet, but I will of course do so.

I'll try again: How do I delete an image that was put into the Data Catalog by SSTK?

I just got my answer from Shutterstock support, as I was asking them the same question together with a second question:

The answers are as follows (translated with Deepl.com from german to english)

Question 1 was: How can I delete an image, which has been only allowed for the data catalog?

Answer from Shutterstock: "Secondly, regarding the possibility to remove content from the data catalogue; however, this will not be possible, We have added an option in the account settings to decline the inclusion of your content in future records. I invite you to read the following article for more details: Shutterstock Data Licensing and the Anbieter Fund"

Question 2 was: Where can I see the rejection reason why an image is only put to the dataset section?

Answer from Shutterstock: "Shutterstock has introduced Data Licensing, a new earning opportunity that will include content that would not normally meet the criteria and technical requirements of our regular Creative Marketplace for computer vision training. The selection criteria for content to be added to our data catalogue will be based on submissions that do not meet Shutterstock's technical specifications and quality standards. You will not be able to appeal this decision or submit the asset to the Creative Marketplace for consideration as usual, as it will be rejected because the content has already been accepted."

To sum up briefly:
-> you can no longer delete images from the data catalogue (not even at some point in the future), you can only withdraw consent to the data catalogue before submitting images
-> no detailed reason is given why an image "only" ends up in the data catalogue
-> You cannot resubmit images that have been accepted into the data catalogue because they are now considered accepted.

All in all, the data catalogue solves some problems for Shutterstock regarding multiple submissions, support, etc.
Very clever from the company's point of view - another slap in the face for us image submitters.

Have a nice day