Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxenburg has sued
DepositPhotos,
Dreamstime and other stock photo licensors alleging that their business models infringe Uniloc’s U.S. patent number 7,099,848 filed by Russell P. Reeder and Raymond M. Haynes on December 28, 2001 and granted on August 29, 2006.
On December 17th
Instagram proposed dramatic changes in its "terms of service" that would give the company the right to sell users' photos without payment or notification, effective January 16, 2013. This sparked immediate outrage and revolt among Instagram contributors. Many started removing images from the site. The next day Instagram reversed itself and pledged to “remove” the language that sparked the revolt.
If contributor attitudes as expressed on web forums are any indication iStockphoto is headed downhill fast. Most of the discussion seems to be taking place on the
iStock official forum and at
Microstock Group. In this article I’ll try to examine the issues and summarize some of the points being made by various contributors.
There is a continual drive in the stock photography world to produce more images. But more images don’t necessarily result in more revenue – particularly if prices are continually lowered in an effort to try to license those images.
I’ve been asked, “What’s the average price that stock images are being licensed for today?” Most RM and traditional RF image contributors would agree that on average fees have been steadily declining over the last few years. The question is how much. In the last few weeks I have gathered sales data from a few of Getty’s Image Partners and major individual contributors. While this survey is in no way scientific, I believe I can draw some reasonable conclusions about the degree of the decline.
At the PACA International Conference in October, Christie Silver of McGraw Hill School Education Group provided details on where her team found images for a major reading program they have been working on this year. She also provided insights as to how educational publishers will be sourcing images in the future and pointed out that the main focus of all educational efforts these days is digital.
As we near the end of 2012, I’ve just received a copy of Alamy’s financial statement for 2011 that was filed with
Companies House in the UK in August of this year. In 2011 Alamy’s gross turnover was £14,853,670 (about $22,913,400). This was up $1,042,600 (about 4.8%) from $21,870,800 in 2010. However,
2009 revenue was $22,864,000 so in 2011 they were barely able to climb back from 2010's lost sales.
Due to an urgent need for North American imagery produced with a fresh approach
Image Source has announced that they will be offering a royalty rate of 60% for all imagery produced in North America and accepted between Dec 1st 2012 and through to Dec 31st 2013. The bonus royalty rate will apply for the lifetime of those images”, added Anthony Harris, the Group’s Chief Operating Officer.
Is it possible to earn money by giving your images away for Free? With Stipple the answer is Yes! 40% of searches on the Internet today happen outside of search engines like Google. People discover what they are looking for via blogs, Tweets, Facebook and in general, just browsing around. With Stipple when they find your image they can also find you.
If you think there is still a decent market for textbook usage of stock photos – think again. The following is a summary of a conversation yesterday between a picture researcher for a major U.S. textbook company and renown travel photographer
Wolfgang Kaehler.