Comments on: All About Microstock Comparison Websites

By: Camden

Camden — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:55:06 +0000

shotspy.com is great actually, because you can search and compare photos and/or video. And everything is microstock so you know none of the images or clips will be expensive…

By: Lee Torrens

Lee Torrens — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:27:00 +0000

Adding ShotSpy.com to the list.

By: Christopher Futcher

Christopher Futcher — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:12:54 +0000

I agree… and am doing that myself. It’s hardly worth my time.

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:14:46 +0000

Lee,

I’d like to add to the thread but can’t see a ‘Reply to this comment’ link.

Yuri has images with McPHoto that have the wrong licence but also a small number that appear to be his directly. As with another famous microstocker I emailed this week I expect it will be an error by an assistant.

That thread was back in 2008 and the pics are still there so not sure how hard they tried.

By: Lee Torrens

Lee Torrens — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:31:52 +0000

We discovered some of Yuri's photos with both licenses in the comments of this post, which turned out to be a distribution issue and not an intentional breach of the Alamy agreement. If you've found some similar, I'd suggest there's no harm in calling out the contributor and publishing the file numbers as was done in that thread. The 'crowd' is the best resource for spotting and highlighting errors such as these.

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:50:20 +0000

My sentiments exactly. I’d suggest that it will make people think more carefully about the most appropriate way of marketing their images rather than trying to cover all bases.

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:48:21 +0000

Here is an extract from the Alamy contract:

2.2 You cannot submit identical or similar images to Alamy as both Royalty-Free and Rights Managed. The licence type on Alamy for an image must be the same as the licence type for that image and similar images which you have on other agency websites.

So why is it that some of the most famous, I mean the most famous, microstock photographers are breaking this clear rule?

By: Lee Torrens

Lee Torrens — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:05:57 +0000

I’m sure the admins at iStockphoto are also using this tool to police their exclusivity agreements.

And yes, I agree that it’s great that technology will help the industry keep people to their word.

By: Lee Torrens

Lee Torrens — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:04:25 +0000

My apologies. I presumed the second comment was in reference to pricing. Yes, all clear now.

Regarding Alamy (again ‘presuming’ that’s the agency you’re referring to), I wasn’t aware that they explicitly prohibit listing images as Licensed (effectively RM) if they’re RF elsewhere. I’ll take a closer look.

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:42:33 +0000

I tell you one thing I find amusing. That’s seeing that some so-called exclusives on a very big micro site actually have pics on Dreamstime according to PicScout!