ManfredG

... but without the "volume" Good photographers on microstock have images being licensed several 100 times.

This article is a bit confusing, please also read all the comments.

Wrong keywording / keyword spam is (in my opinion) one of the major problems at microstock agencies. But ok, you get what you pay. - But on Alamy it quite certainly is a way to distract customers. (Though I must admit that even traditional agencies who do keywording themselves often make way too much errors.)

Me too. But it's not the Alamy change alone. It was a reason to think generally about stock photography, looking for other agencies. (Alamy is not my only stock agency, but the only GENERAL stock.) And all this together was quite disillusioning: Stock is dead. Full stop. (At least for those who want or must really earn money.)

Believe me, I live in Germany and have followed all the GDPR discussions very carefully. I fear you did not understand that correctly. - But do what you like to do. 😉

I can talk only about Germany. There are certain rules whether you may publish images with people without release. In most cases it does not matter if used "editorial" or "commercial" !! Even uploading to any website is a violation of law. This has always been so in Germany and much more now due to the GDPR in the EU. Please inform about the laws in countries you take photos !! Otherwise you will get troubles sooner or later.

As always, it depends on the country and its law were the photo as been taken. You might get troubles as soon as you put the image on Alamy for sale. (For example photos taken on castle grounds in Germany) Just do not offer photos taken on private property unless you are 100% sure about the legal situation in the specific case.

www.amazon.de ?

This is not true. You are talking about the microstock industry. But there is much more stock aside it. Nearly all premium agencies I know about offer 50:50 or at least 40:60. (And RM only) When Getty left the premium segment and went RF/microstock there was a chance for Alamy, but obviously they did not take it.

I think most PU sales are abuse, nothing new. And Alamy just do not care. Restricting PU for your images probably also results in removing them from distributor sales. (As all restrictions do.)

I read this clause very clearly as: The photographer may not sue Alamy for making an error. - That's a very different case.

An unreleased photo is used for a big marketing campaign (or e.g a book). The property owner (or the person shown) might demand to stop the campaign and destroy all printed materials. The damage may easily be 5-digit. Usually this will not happen, but the owner will charge a (maybe pretty high) amount of money for the "license".

Is just does not work. There are many photos you just cannot put to a stock archive. Under certain restrictions they may be used in a newspaper report about current affairs, but never in stock. Generally you should always know the legal situations in the countries you take photos. (And in your own country of course.) But the situation is difficult in the other way too. Here in Germany (usually) I am allowed to take pictures of buildings when I am on public territory and sell these pictures for whatever I want. (Please beware that there are some pitfalls of course. And this rule doe

One extra point: In the UK and US there seems to be the opinion, you can upload and use everything as long as it is editorial only. I don't know whether this is really true. But here in Germany (and certainly in many other countries of the world) there are many situations where you must not publish images in any way without permission of the property owner.

BTW: None of the other (RM) agencies I work with offer options to restrict the use of images. All the contributor can and must do is to state whether he/she has a release or not. The "editorial only" option is relatively new at Alamy and was introduced a couple of years ago after heavy demand of contributors. (During that time a very complex and fine tuned set of options existed to restrict usage. - Having exclusive usage in mind.)