What are your thoughts on the ShutterStock Enhanced License?

Looks good to me.

Doug

I'm still undecided on that.

While it looks okay on the surface I still want to give it more thought.

The fact is, people are already using the images they buy for mousepads, etc, some even have been selling them as prints on ebay, without authorization.

SS has it set for a limited number of runs, but again, who will police that? They obviously aren't policing the usages based on the old TOS.

Myself, I don't have a problem with that for things like isolated objects and stuff, but I have for some time been considering pulling my other stuff from SS, and this has me thinking about it again.

Yes, it's more money in your pocket if they sell the stuff. But do I want my granddaughter's pictures on somebody's t-shirt? How do I know what else is going on that t-shirt? The converse is, for all I know she's already on someone's t-shirts. I'm already selling her image for .20 a shot and don't really know where it's being used. The new license at least allows for us to know what the use is.

The thing that is bothering me I think is that it is not based on an individual sale - they want to do it all or nothing. I would like the option of saying yes that image could be used for that or no, please don't. If I opt in, all my images fall under the same blanket; if I opt out, I don't get any images used in that venue.

I find that to be disturbing. What if I posted a pic of my daughter and someone decided to stick it on rolls of toilet paper (I'm sure you've all seen those rolls with dollar bills on them ) - I don't have the chance of saying no to that usage (yes, I know that's pretty unlikely, but there's a lot of perverts in the world).

Of course, I don't have the chance of saying no, now either.

It's going to take me some time to decide, and it's going to take some careful thought. On SS, most of them think it's great - yeah, more money I'm in. But I don't think they've given it much thought. I think many of them are hobbyists who don't really care about the principle, and just care about how much money they get. Money is good, sure, but it's not the be all and end all if you give up your principles to get it. It's no better than prostituting yourself. That's one of the reasons I am reconsidering this whole microstock issue. Based on my own principles, I should be removing people pics and fine art stuff from those sites.

At least previously the TOS was supposed to offer some protection against these kinds of uses.

And the other thing is that I'd like to see a time limit as well - perhaps a year, if they haven't used their run amount in that time they can't use it later.

I don't know. I need to consider things a little more before I say yeah or nay. For the moment, if they go live before I've decided I will opt in, but may remove images I have a concerns about.

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Gracey - I think you hit the nail on the head. I've been thinking a lot about the changes and I'm not sure my decisions are going to be based on money alone. I realize with RF you lose a lot of control of your images but I think that Shutterstock's new license may be a bit over the top.

Why not sell the image outright for say $200 - $500 in the first place, give up copyrights (which is essentially what you are doing with the SS license) and walk away?

Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me - especially if that picture is going to be used in a "gray area" way where you may not want your name associated with it.

If the extended licence allows reproductions for print, which will be an option so ive read..

If I were to buy an image with the extended licence would I theoretically be able to upload in to Istock and re-sell it?


Hmm


Doug

No Doug, I don't think so.

When you submit an image to a stock site of any kind you must own the copyright to the image - they (the purchaser) are licensing the usage of the image, but they don't own the copyright - sort of like a lease agreement - they can use the pic, but they don't own it.

Theoretically, they could do it, but if they were caught you'd likely sue them, and iStock could have them charged with fraud. Not worth the risk for most people , though there's always someone that's, ummm intellectually challenged :lol: .

SS has added the proviso that they will work on programming so that we can opt out by image rather than by photographer. That's a relief to hear. It won't be in place by the time they go live, so some of us will still have to make a decision by then (a couple of weeks I think they said), but if we choose to totally opt out of EL now, we can opt back in by image when they get it instituted.

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