Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

lilcrazyfuzzy · Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 3:38 am

See? Public forum, they can just read it all and act accordingly... bye bye lawsuit

mounatinpix · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 282 Location: Switzerland

ISP's back up all data on their servers as a matter of routine.

pixmac3 · Joined: 31 Oct 2010 Posts: 31 Location: Czech Republic

mounatinpix · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 282 Location: Switzerland

pixmac3 · Joined: 31 Oct 2010 Posts: 31 Location: Czech Republic

mounatinpix · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 282 Location: Switzerland

daisy · Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 967 Location: netherlands

You are right, that would be mixing interests.....sorry to have to turn it down Vita, thank you for our offer though!
I have got a different idea; I want to get as many of us as possible together and go to the Union for professional photographers and see if they are willing to create a subdivision for us, and represent our rights! If you think that is a good idea please add your name to the list here;
http://monsterprojeckt.wordpress.com/
Quite a few people allready have signed up but it is definately not enough to approach the union, i need higher numbers for that!

mounatinpix · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 282 Location: Switzerland

mavrick · Joined: 20 Dec 2005 Posts: 2847 Location: colorado

can someone summarize what has happened? i am not able to follow it all, but (to me) the tip of the iceberg here is that a massive fraud has happened.
has collosus been shut down?
have the images been removed?
is there multiple legal actions being taken in different countries?
are we all doomed in this biz????

btw daisy i've signed on with your project. thanks for being on top of this. in fact, i just want to say thanks to all the members of the community who are outraged and loading the barrels and shooting down the thieves. bravo!!

stevenoakes · Joined: 26 May 2008 Posts: 85

Rinder99 - the reason why we have to use code is because of Google analytic's.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

mounatinpix · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 282 Location: Switzerland

there's only a certain amount that can be said. I think though that it's safe to say that though there may not be a lot of activity on this thread today, there's a heck of a lot going on behind the scenes.

I'll attempt to summarize what can be summarized here, very briefly.

292000 images appeared on Pixmac with false ownership information. PJ flagged this here. Thanks, PJ. This is a de facto infringement of the real owners copyrights. The IP ownership was illegally attributed to 'Colossus'

The vast majority if not all of these images originated from BS through the partner program. (please refer to their website for full details of this, including the 2 APIS).

It transpired that Colossus is part of the supply chain from BS to Pixmac. Colossus is in fact a wholly owned subsiduary of Media Bakery, an official partner of BS.

Colossus in turn also advertised some or all of these 292000 images, the copyright ownership of which was hidden, which is very probably also an infringement of copyright.

All or part of this same collection of images also appeared on a partner site to Pixmac whose name I'm too tired to recall, but also with head offices in Prague (and with common members of staff).

When all this information became public i.e. hit this and another forum, the rightful owners of the images, were understandably furious.

There then followed a series of actions which I won't go into here.

The upshot was amongst other things, but not limited to
these 292000 images were taken off line, by Colossus, Pixmac etc.

This is a tacit acknowledgement that some if not all of these images were being displayed illegally.

Thanks to the cooperation of the CEO of Pixmac, who came into the debate guns blazing, but who has now adopted a very conciliatory tone, we now know that the watermarked images supplied to him by colossus, were stripped of all their metadata including the copyright data. This in turn is a flagrant infringement of the owners copyright. We are yet to learn here, openly, who asserted the ownership of Colossus to these images.

We have also learnt that there are an undisclosed number of POS of the BS partner program images who can 'download the entire library in 10 minutes' please see BS affiliate program for details.

These various POS and distributors have themselves varying contracts with their own customers, so that the TOS agreed to between the artists at BS are not necessarily respected right down the supply chain as each TOS vary. Sounds innocent. Right? No.
A prior poster did an experiment. He bought one of his images at the POS, and in the end received something like 3% at BS of the price he paid at the POS!!! I'm working late and from memory, feel free to scroll back the pages to check, and correct me if I'm wrong.

This gives you a slightly clearer idea of the sort of thing that is happening in the partner program. But it's not as simple as that.

think of how the image is delivered. Think how many copies are floating around in databases unaccounted for etc etc etc.

There's a lot more to it than that, but I guess 90% of the readers of this post have moved elsewhere by this stage.

I would add, however, that since this whole can of worms has been brought to light discussions are happening behind closed doors all over the place.

More information will soon be coming to light from these various conversations, I would expect. In the meantime, I would encourage everyone to think carefully about what's been written here, and to decide whether they are happy with it or not. If they aren't happy with it then they should decide whether they want to allow themselves to be constant victims, or for once stand up and make their feelings known.

As I said many pages back, this is the tip of the iceberg, that phrase has been echoed a few times since, probably for good reason.

PLease register with Daisy's blog for more information.

Thank you.

daisy · Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 967 Location: netherlands

Thank you so much for the overview Neil, very clear and it really helps to understand what's going on!

lilcrazyfuzzy · Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 4:24 pm

Thanks very much mountainpix for the recap

daisy · Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 967 Location: netherlands

please register for the blog to stay updated here;
http://monsterprojeckt.wordpress.com/

moderator · Moderator Joined: 17 Jan 2008 Posts: 454

Hello:

As many of you know, we have in good faith allowed posters and readers of this thread to engage in constructive discussion. Due to the repeated submission of inaccurate and speculative posts, as well as those that violate our policies, we are left with no choice but to close this thread.

Sincerely,

Anthony Correia
Director, Content Operations
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