2.5 million downloads for free through microsoft!?! Is this legal?

Before anyone says there are other threads about this, they are all locked. And even though many others have complained about the same situation, I think my situation has gone overboard. 


My attention was called to this today, one of my images here is on the microsoft office site for free download to anyone. I was not asked if that image could be used for free download. I put it here to earn. And now I find out that more than 2.5 million people have downloaded it for free! I must say I feel cheated by this. With 2.5 million copies of this image afloat everywhere, the image will be so overexposed that less people would want to purchase an overused image.  I have been an exclusive member for years and this is the kind of protection I get? 


http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=love&ex=1#ai:MP900433103|pn:PN000064367|

There are a few of us with this topic posted in the January Bugs thread. Time to address this long running issue!

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350221&page=1

What's in this deal for the contributor? Even if Microsoft bought the largest size and paid the most expensive EL that is nowhere near enough to compensate contributor for 2.5 million free downloads.

Here is one of the original threads Microsoft Partnership for Exclusives


and this one but the links don't work any more The Microsoft/iStock Connection...

Yeah, we hever got the promised update from HQ on it either:  


http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=341839&page=4


http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=343059&page=1

Amazing that I just recieved a response to my complaint letter I wrote to Customer Support Months ago about this subject. I can't share exactly word for word, because of legal reasons on their email. But they did say there are problems and that they are working on them....Ha Ha...Like I belive theat. Too many problems here at IStock...It's one screw up after another!


I see this as a breach of our contract. Wonder what a lawyer would think!

Yikes, even at seven cents (which is the lowest payout I think I've heard of) that's $181,701.24 . . . or have I missed a decimal.

/
/I have counted over 1.2 MILLION downloads of my files. No copyright name next to them. No license to click and agree to before downloading. And the customer doesn´t even have to register with his name and address before downloading our files.


I am waiting for a reply from support as well. But I am also considering to involve a lawyer. Irrespective of whatever istock and Microsoft agreed upon, Microsoft sells software and understand copyright perfectly well. They would never allow anyone to download a free promotional program or app without agreeing to a license first or without having their trade name visible.


I don´t know about US law, but I know the laws here protect the copyright owner. 


I don´t like to take the legal route, it is so unbelievably, terribly expensive and takes up so much time.


But over 1.2 Million free downloads without my name or a visible license - what exactly is istock expecting me to do?

(Edited on 2013-01-07 05:03:50 by cobalt)

Obviously, if it applies to all of us, there should be no secret.

If anyone gets a lawyer, I see a class action suit in the making.  Everyone together.

I am lost for words. This is unacceptable. No wonder the sales are down when anyone can access our images for free. Over 2 million free downloads beg for legal action.What is going on istock?

For one thing, the fact that in at least some of the cases, all copyright info has been stripped away and the images are shown to be in the public domain??  

It's interesting to note that iStock is not the only agency to provide free images, look at this http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/MP900440294.aspx

Looks like the pages on this part of the MS office site aren't indexed, so a reverse image search won't work for this particular site. If people want to browse for their photos (rather than just searching keyword by keyword), it looks like "istockphoto" is a consistent tag for these partner photos. Here's a link to all images w/ that keyword: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=iStockphoto#pn:PN000064367|


What's up, iStock? I did a reverse image search on one of the photos available on this site - a peacock photo - and it was available full size on someone's blog! Imagine how many people unwittingly re-post the full size images to their sites because there is no obvious license or usage information through this MS partner site. Now anyone that knows how to reverse image search has a decent chance of getting a free, full-size image because of this. What a horrible, short-sighted way to get some traffic. How can we opt out?

(Edited on 2013-01-05 18:31:23 by tjhunt)

(Edited on 2013-01-05 18:31:55 by tjhunt)

^ I found multiple commercial uses using Google Image Search and using the MS image #

We have to have an opt out of this.

is this even legal to give away our images?

We have asked.  Multiple times.  Repeatedly.  We could never get an answer from HQ.  Other contributors pointed out that this falls under allowable promotional use in our ASA, but we never got an official answer.  

You already have one __ drop your exclusive status. Not sure it would remove existing images but at least it would stop any more being migrated there.

Expect an answer like "Your concern is understandable. We are looking into this matter and will inform you in our next newsletter (which, of course, doesn't happen). Until then, this thread is locked."