Alamy

To be fair, we don't know - we take the image(s) down whilst under review and re-instate if the contributor can provide proof of permission, which does happen in some cases. This is about giving the contributor the opportunity to respond in the appropriate way. We're able to, and do, defend against many of the complaints we receive that are baseless without even contacting the contributors involved. Alamy

Valid point made - let's not derail - keep this on topic. As suggested above, if you'd like to discuss the topic of image type for tabloids and attitudes towards it a thread in "Lets talk about pics" would be the place. Thanks all Alamy

Going to have to lock this, sorry. Topic of the thread: photographing protests, being approached by protesters and asked about taking photos. Topic has since strayed into: news propaganda, liberals vs conservatives, Covid19 spreading and various other veiled (and unveiled) snipes between members.

To be clear - discussion here is fine, but campaigning to sign petitions for action against Shutterstock is not appropriate and will be removed. Thanks for your understanding. James A

We're not saying you're not Allan!

Only 6507 posts to go before you have to change your name to Ikea

And yet it has been achieved!

Hi All, Given that this is centered around a general industry discussion, I think we can forego the code words for now in this thread. I appreciate the desire to stick to the rules but for the purposes of this thread I think it's of benefit to the conversation that you can talk freely and clearly about the industry. What we don't want to see is the promotion of our competitors here for obvious reasons, aside from that all is acceptable. Cheers James A

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/12736-the-importance-of-being-accurate-with-marking-images-as-exclusive-to-alamy/

On the back of some of this, we've made a few tweaks. Related to off-topic and arguing etc, we've now got a warning points system. https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/13008-forum-mini-update/ Hopefully we won't need to use it much and it will help keep things constructive. Cheers James A

Hi All, We've made a few tweaks behind the scenes on the forum to adjust a couple of things - nothing major, and all designed to keep this place as productive as possible. Posts with 10 or more positive reactions will now be highlighted within the thread, this is designed to make the more popular posts stand out There is a new warning system now for users who break rules or cause conflict. Accumulating points may lead to temporary bans on posting for short periods of time You can now add animated gifs to posts. It's just a bit of fun and is also pretty standard across social platforms If we spot users who never contribute to the forum other than clicking the red or green arrows, or targeting specific users, then they may have their ability to click these reactions removed. All other read/write privileges will remain the same We've tweaked a few of the group levels/status titles depending on how many posts you make - just a bit of fun, but to now have the rank of "part of the forum furniture" you'd need to amass more then 10,000 posts Cheers Alamy

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/13008-forum-mini-update/

Hi All, We've made a few tweaks behind the scenes on the forum to adjust a couple of things - nothing major, and all designed to keep this place as productive as possible. Posts with 10 or more positive reactions will now be highlighted within the thread, this is designed to make the more popular posts stand out There is a new warning system now for users who break rules or cause conflict. Accumulating points may lead to temporary bans on posting for short periods of time You can now add animated gifs to posts. It's just a bit of fun and is also pretty standard across social platforms If we spot users who never contribute to the forum other than clicking the red or green arrows, or targeting specific users, then they may have their ability to click these reactions removed. All other read/write privileges will remain the same We've tweaked a few of the group levels/status titles depending on how many posts you make - just a bit of fun, but to now have the rank of "part of the forum furniture" you'd need to amass more then 10,000 posts Cheers Alamy

Had a bit of a recalculation as due to inflation, the old numbers we're a bit out-dated. 10,000+ now gives you the title.

Amazing how off topic this went along with a load of posts we've now had to moderate and remove! For those who want to continually snipe and troll we may have to put a temporary ban on you posting so we can keep the peace. Really don't want to do it, but that's the next step. For those that contribute nothing to the forum apart from lurking in the background and hitting the downvote button, then you may well find yourself being restricted in doing so unless you are willing to contribute to the discussion. Let's be good to each other! James A

Well said! We've got limited time to moderate the forum during the current world situation so the benefits of the forum rely on the content being fed into it by you all. Thanks to all of you who continue to use the forum for it's intended purpose. It can only take a small % of unsuitable posts to bring the level down significantly so please just report anything that needs reporting and please don't engage with any controversial comments. Cheers all James A

For clarity, we are working with a greatly reduced team and are seeing record levels of registrations and test submissions. Your initial upload was 17th of April which is just under 3 weeks ago. You've emailed us to enquire twice, and the autoreply to this email specifically mentions about long wait times for QC submissions on the top line. Your test reached the front of the queue today and 2 of your test images failed quality control. You are of course welcome to resubmit however the wait time for test submissions currently remains at 2-3 weeks and will likely be the case for the next month or so. If you are having issues understanding the QC feedback we'd recommend posting here and asking your fellow photographers as many are very experienced in working with us and can offer you useful advice. We're sorry we're unable to offer the usual level of speed and support at this time. Alamy

Due to currently working with a reduced team, QC times will be longer than usual for some users. For users who are new and sending their first test submission, the turnaround time is currently 3-4 weeks however we hope this will be much shorter within a month or so. Thanks for your patience. Alamy

Due to currently working with a reduced team, QC times will be longer than usual for some users. For users who are new and sending their first test submission, the turnaround time is currently 3-4 weeks however we hope this will be much shorter within a month or so. Thanks for your patience. Alamy

Hi All, Sorry for the confusion on this latest batch of cleared then uncleared sales - it looks like a distributor miss-allocated some payments which has caused this. Those sales will clear again but we can't give a date at the moment for when exactly. Best Alamy

To add some clarity to the artwork element to this: The spirit of the clause in the contract is around flat artwork. Mostly around those artworks that have images in the public domain. We're not talking about walking route signs nailed to trees, a blanket your grandparent knitted or just about anything in a 3d space. It's not possible for us to exhaustively define what is and isn't artwork - but this is the spirit of it. If you have images of artwork that are in the public domain that do not show a wider context then these cannot be marked as exclusive on Alamy. If you have any image that is on another reselling site, outside of your own personal one, this cannot be marked as exclusive to Alamy. For further clarity, you can mark images of stained glass windows as exclusive to Alamy provided you do not licence them on any other stock sites. Thanks, Alamy

Hi everyone, The stained glass window subject accounts for only 2% of problematic images we've found concerning the exclusive declaration. We've read your feedback and have taken it on board, and can agree that it's a big enough grey area for us to now not to take action on. For those of you who did get the email from us regarding stained glass windows being marked as exclusive being problematic, you can disregard it. The spirit of the clause in the contract is around flat artwork. Mostly around those artworks that have images in the public domain. We're not talking about walking route signs nailed to trees, a blanket your grandparent knitted or just about anything in a 3d space. It's not possible for us to exhaustively define what is and isn't artwork - but this is the spirit of it. If you have images of artwork that are in the public domain that do not show a wider context then these cannot be marked as exclusive on Alamy. If you have any image that is on another reselling site, outside of your own personal one, this cannot be marked as exclusive to Alamy. We don't currently allow customers to openly search within exclusive or non-exclusive. We do have a way of sharing the exclusive / non exclusive declaration though with clients who are interested in that and it can affect the deals we make, so it is important. We're sorry that this situation has caused confusion at this time. The vast % majority of images concerned with this issue are completely clear cut with no grey areas, but we appreciate that the edge cases can make things unclear. To summarise, then: - We won't be taking any action against images of stained glass windows that are marked as exclusive - The spirit of the clause here is to prevent images of artworks without context that are in the public domain being marked as exclusive to Alamy - We'll work harder and do better at making this clearer across our published guidance and terms in the future Best regards Alamy

To give more context to the marking of images exclusive on Alamy. Images can never be marked exclusive that are available via third party licensing, such as any another stock agency or image site but excluding the Contributor’s personal website and print sales. In addition images that are solely of artworks and copyright free artworks that would fall within the public domain cannot be marked as exclusive. This can include images taken of murals, stained glass windows, album artwork and postage stamps that feature solely the artwork. We’ve received legal advice on these matters and in most cases the key element comes down to the amount of context in the image. Any direct slavish copy of a 2-dimensional artwork that has fallen into the public domain, are not afforded their own copyright protection due to the lack of originality. So if there is no surrounding context to the artwork at all then the image would not be eligible to be classed as Exclusive. We have not included statues or sculptures in our definition of artwork for exclusivity as they are 3-dimensional. If featured in the wider context then images of artworks may be eligible but should be taken with as much context as possible e.g. in the wider context of a church in the case of a stained glass window. We have been as lenient as possible, but the exclusivity elements introduced in February 2019 are contractual terms and need to be followed by contributors, and to be fair to all Contributors Alamy has to enforce these terms. If you've received an email from us on this we can give you a detailed list of the images that have been flagged.