Exclusivity

[Starsphinx]

I guess I have been bitten too many times to trust humanity to behave the way they should.

I can see several unpleasant ways exclusivity may be abused.  At the same time, I can see that Alamy does not seem particularly bothered about abuses and leaves several easily plugged holes draining income.

Others may be comfortable with that - I am not.  I tend to be laid back and trusting and go with the flow right up until something is pulled - in stating the drop from 50 to 40 Alamy woke up my instincts for self-preservation.   With everyone on 50% hey lets chill and if Alamy is OK with the leaks, not my problem.  Make that cut and its OK what do I get in return.  The exclusivity thing of putting me in direct competition with fellow contributors as to who gets a bigger share of the spoils and I am going to want to know what is being done to make that scrupulously fair so I know if I accept 40 for non-exclusives all non-exclusives are the same and if I do go exclusive I am not going to be accused of dishonesty by a customer or some other contributor.

[John Mitchell]

57 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

I guess I have been bitten too many times to trust humanity to behave the way they should.

I can see several unpleasant ways exclusivity may be abused.  At the same time, I can see that Alamy does not seem particularly bothered about abuses and leaves several easily plugged holes draining income.

Others may be comfortable with that - I am not.  I tend to be laid back and trusting and go with the flow right up until something is pulled - in stating the drop from 50 to 40 Alamy woke up my instincts for self-preservation.   With everyone on 50% hey lets chill and if Alamy is OK with the leaks, not my problem.  Make that cut and its OK what do I get in return.  The exclusivity thing of putting me in direct competition with fellow contributors as to who gets a bigger share of the spoils and I am going to want to know what is being done to make that scrupulously fair so I know if I accept 40 for non-exclusives all non-exclusives are the same and if I do go exclusive I am not going to be accused of dishonesty by a customer or some other contributor.

 

The worms in the can are already starting to celebrate. If nothing else, this whole commission kerfuffle has taught me that, if anything, it's high time for me to think about being less exclusive and put more eggs in more baskets. Thanks, Alamy. You were right!

[Starsphinx]

2 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

The worms in the can are already starting to celebrate. If nothing else, this whole commission kerfuffle has taught me that, if anything, it's high time for me to think about being less exclusive and put more eggs in more baskets. Thanks, Alamy. You were right!

I am in the middle of rearranging my workflow - with the help of the 3+ terabytes of junk backed up on Amazon

[Phil]

2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

It would be the ones honest enough to not mark images exclusive being handicapped if Alamy do not intend to monitor police and enforce exclusivity. 

 

Alamy seems unable/unwilling to prevent and/or police current likely large-scale infringements and unreported/un-invoiced image downloads. Based on that just how could they expand into policing exclusivity in any effective fashion??

 

Likely just use tick-the-exclusive-box and use photog self-policing honor system - yup.

[Starsphinx]

14 minutes ago, Phil said:

 

Alamy seems unable/unwilling to prevent and/or police current likely large-scale infringements and unreported/un-invoiced image downloads. Based on that just how could they expand into policing exclusivity in any effective fashion??

 

Likely just use tick-the-exclusive-box and use photog self-policing honor system - yup.

In which case how can there possibly be any sort of trust relationship between them and contributors?

[Phil]

18 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

In which case how can there possibly be any sort of trust relationship between them and contributors?

 

A practical way might be for Alamy to pursue reported & proven cases of exclusivity violation and to sanction the Alamy contributor violator in some public fashion. 

 

That might serve to build needed trust and incur trepidation in those who may abuse or consider gaming Alamy exclusivity.

 

[geoff s]

Apologies if this has been mentioned but I've been away for a while and come back to this whole contract sh*tstorm...

 

Alamy can the 'exclusive' button be included in the default preferences options please ?

 

Thanks

[Inchiquin]

14 hours ago, JeffGreenberg said:

 

agency 1 has spouse 1 image;

agency 2 has spouse 2 image given as gift by spouse 1 to spouse 2;

spouse 1 can truthfully state, "I have placed image ONLY with agency 1"

 

 

There can be only one copyright holder. So if spouse 1 has gifted the copyright then he/she is in error. If not, then spouse 2 is in error. Assuming agencies require an image supplier to own the rights then one or other will be in breach of contract.

 

Alan