Potential changes to the image restriction structure – we want your view!

[Alamy]

Hi All,

 

Your input is required, and there's a triple potential benefit to what we're proposing so we want to get it right. This post details a proposed change that we think will:

 

- Make the restrictions process far simpler for you, which means less time in admin mode and more time in photography mode

- Make the process of buying licences for customers even simpler, which means higher potential for more sales

- Simplify our back-end technical logic, allowing us to make improvements to the site and search engine much quicker 

 

For those of you who have been with us many years, you may recall the system we used to have where image restrictions were available for every possible end use. This system was overly complex and due to customer demand we needed to simplify it down to just 4 possible restrictions, with only 3 of the 4 being available to be selected. They are:

 

• Don't sell for advertising and promotion
• Don't sell for consumer goods
• Don't sell for editorial
• Don't sell for personal use including single copy, non-retail wall art prints

 

Even though this is a huge improvement on the old system, from customer feedback and activity, it’s clear that this restriction system is still overly complex, so we are proposing some simple changes that will make life easier and hopefully lead to increased sales potential as a result. We think this will work and is the right approach, but before we press on, we want your thoughts, feelings and feedback. This is what we are proposing:

 

• A removal of the restriction “Don’t sell for editorial”
• A combining of the advertising and consumer goods restriction to just be: “Don’t sell for commercial”.
• Keeping the “Don’t sell for personal use” the way it is now.

 

So essentially, it will mean all images on Alamy will be available for the editorial licence. You’d be able to restrict commercial use and personal use if you wish (which encompasses consumer goods, advertising and personal prints). Therefore there are no changes to the “editorial only” restrictions you can place now. This will make applying restrictions easier for you, whittling the restriction options down to two.

 

This will make things far simpler for the customer, allow us to remove some of the complex combinations of logic that have to be applied behind the scenes whilst essentially still allowing you to be able to restrict for what’s important to you.

 

So – what do you think? Can you foresee this causing you any issues? Do you think this is a good idea?

 

Let us know.

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

[EYESITE]

Seems very sensible, the most important restrictions for me are -

 

“Don’t sell for personal use” and "editorial only".

 

So thumbs up from me.

 

Many thanks

 

NCR

Edited December 13, 2019 by EYESITE

[Robert M Estall]

I don't have any issues with that set of restrictions, but I don't get involved much with subjects which call for thinking about restrictions. I don't do releases so I'm mostly in the editorial camp. As far as "Don't sell for personal use" my real concern about that area is the suspicion that some clients are gaming the system and being economical with the truth about their usage

[Bryan]

I don't generally apply restrictions but do indicate whether or not the image has releases, mostly they don't.  Rather hoping that is sufficient, but maybe not?

[Broad Norfolk]

I see no problem with this. Good rationalisation.

[John Mitchell]

Sounds good to me. I've never understood the purpose of the "don't sell for editorial" restriction.

[sb photos]

2 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

However, does this mean a more simplified structure to pricing?

And what does that mean to us.

 

This concerns me as far as will license prices drop even further along with the simplified licensing structure?

 

Personally I've made very few PU sales, and these have been for acceptable amounts. I'm happy for the contributor to decide wether to accept PU or not.

 

My uploads are all editorial, I have no issue with removing the don't sell for editorial.

 

Will be interesting to read all newer newer posts in case I've missed something.

[dlmphotog]

Sounds like a reasonable change.

No objections from me.

[Bionic]

11 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I would like to see a

Large

Medium

Small size RF section

and an

RM

Personal with restrictions on size 1200px wide

Editorial

Commercial section

Anyone?

I think to be honest that would certainly be my preference

[M.Chapman]

Sounds sensible to me.

I also agree with suggestions to combine Personal and Presentation use into a single category, and with tiered pricing depending on image size downloaded.

 

"So essentially, it will mean all images on Alamy will be available for the editorial licence."

 

This raises a question. How will you handle existing restrictions that have already been set (e.g. Don't sell for editorial - although I don't imagine that affects many images as I imagine it's very unusual for anyone to set this restriction)

 

Mark

Edited December 13, 2019 by M.Chapman

[Michael Ventura]

No objection from me.

[hsessions]

3 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I would like to see a

RM

Personal with restrictions on size 1200px wide

 

Anyone?

 

A good idea Alamy.

 

Agree with LawrensonPhoto about restrictions on size for the PU licences.  Size restriction makes sense and has been mentioned by others on the forum.  Have restricted PU on all my images for this reason and not knowing where the high resolution images end up after they have been refunded of course, and in my case the number of refunds were just a few too many.

Helen

 

[Charles Stirling]

I don't have a problem with this generally. I do wonder about the personal use at times as a few seem unlikely but a size limit would at least help on that. I can accept a student using a photo in essay isn't interested in paying much.

[Dyn Llun]

Simple is good. Certainly keep the restriction on 'personal use'. I don't think a minority of them are suspect, I firmly believe that 99% of them are and this loophole is being abused by too many 'commercial' buyers of photography. To let anyone have a full size file for them to do with what they wish in perpetuity for peanuts, or nothing if the fee is refunded, is ludicrous. However, if a very strict escalating size and price restriction was set as has been discussed elsewhere on the forum, I may, just may, opt back in. 

 

Pete Davis

https://www.pete-davis-photography.com/

http://peteslandscape.blogspot.com/

https://www.instagram.com/petedavisphoto/

 

[Matt Ashmore]

I don't really understand why you wouldn't want to your images available for editorial use. Is it a price thing?

 

I don't particularly have any issue with the restrictions.. I never use them anyway...

[Alex Ramsay]

Seems fine to me - most of the time I only use the personal use restriction.

 

Alex

[wiskerke]

Maybe add one: re-selling.

And maybe another: sensitive issues. Because even with releases that is a possible restriction that will always be necessary. That goes for editorial and commercial.

 

What happens with restrictions to regions/countries? Some agencies and individual contributors on Alamy have very broad restrictions, some narrow. Usually to protect their home market or to comply with regional legal issues. Like freedom of panorama or privacy issues like in France or Quebec, which also affect editorial. Those issues will increase.

And what happens with an image that's been restricted by a client for say, use as a cover or a billboard? This can now be set by Alamy, but seemingly not by the contributor. Which makes no sense because one's image could get restricted on another agency or because of a personal sale.

 

Anyway if the restrictions are getting too broad and too simple, we would need a kill switch on an image level, including those in the pipeline with clients. News agencies all have this, but like with Alamy now, it can only be set by the agency.

I would argue for some simple procedure: please restrict/kill my image xx. And a reasons tick box. So Alamy would still have their finger on the switch.

 

wim

[John Walker]

21 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I would like to see a

Large

Medium

Small size RF section

and an

RM

Personal with restrictions on size 1200px wide

Editorial

Commercial section

Anyone?

+1

[Doug]

I don't use the restrictions, but it seems like a good idea to me.

Doug

[Allan Bell]

23 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I would like to see a

Large

Medium

Small size RF section

and an

RM

Personal with restrictions on size 1200px wide

Editorial

Commercial section

Anyone?

 

+1 for the RM suggestion. I do not have any RF images.

 

Allan

 

[Nick Hatton]

Sounds fine to me, don't use any restrictions all sales welcome, I do do sometimes wonder about some PU sales.

[AlexG]

The proposed changes are a good idea, especially consolidating to a single Commercial category, and leaving restriction for Personal Use.

 

[Marianne]

Personal Use Sales:I'd like to be able to restrict personal use sales (since these are supposed to be to art.com) on both RF and RM images since, when I joined Alamy back in 2008, Alamy was not cannibalizing my print sales by selling a license that earned me $10 for a print that I sell elsewhere earning me anywhere from $21 (for a very tiny 8" x 6" print) to over $400, with the average print sale earning me well over $100, and often far more. In fact, in the past two weeks on Fine Art America alone, I've earned more than I have made on Alamy all year, so Alamy's personal use license is a threat to what is a lucrative market for me and many others. People buy travel scenics as fine art all the time.  When Alamy suggested that we change old unsold files and upload new ones as RF rather than RM, I went ahead and did that, and now find that some of my best-selling prints are available here to be practically given away as cheap personal use files for fine art prints. I think that this whole "personal use" concept goes against the spirit of stock photography, which is for commercial or editorial use and is a separate market than the fine art one. If you are going to license images as personal use for fine art I think we should have the right to opt out.

 

And for images that are available for personal use, you need to set more realistic and fair prices. Even shutterstock, which sells a small number of fine art prints via Fine Art America (none of mine are in that scheme), sells them by size and charges as much as $252 for a large print, with the contributor getting a percentage of the sale based on their ranking (25-38% based on lifetime sales). That Alamy has decided to sell our work via art.com for a mere $10-20 no matter the size, and that they have made this unilateral change without asking, has rankled since its inception, so now that you are asking, I have to say that I think it would be more ethical if you allowed us to remove any image from the "personal use" category - RF or RM. The fact that Alamy is charging so much less for our work than the microstock agency known for its low prices should certainly give you pause. (here's a random example of shutterstock on FAA). 

 

Presentation Sales:

Giving away a full size image for $10-20 is problematic, when a presentation image doesn't need to be more than 1800 pixels on the long edge. Shouldn't an image that is 7900 pixels on the long side cost more than a tiny screen size image? 

 

Commercial Restrictions:

I liked the old system because I had some friends and family who would model for me but who, as professionals, could not have their images used for commercial use within their industries. When things changed, I had to delete their photos since I could no longer properly restrict RM files. What is the point of RM without being able to restrict them? The changes you recommend now don't make things worse so they are ok but I just thought I should let you know that the original changes you made resulted in my no longer uploading much in the way of photos of people, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I had a huge backlog of images of people when the initial change took place and they are now just sitting on my hard drive. It's too bad.

 

Why not have a *miscellaneous* restriction where an RM image is flagged and let us put in the restriction? What If I license an RM image exclusively for a period of time or for a particular industry on my own? Then I have to delete it rather than just noting that, say, it can't be used in one location or industry for a year. I just don't see the benefit of RM licensing if all RM images can be treated just like RF. The old system was cumbersome, but if you now have a fourth category for *other - and it says see restrictions on image - people can skip them if they want easy, but if they like the image they can take a look and see if it's okay for them to use. 

 

Exclusivity

Use this to your benefit. Alamy is supposed to be the place that is different. That is your USP for both customers and contributors. You don't need to give away the store to get customers. You need to provide something that the other sites don't. With Getty dropping RM, you are in a unique position to capture the market for those customers who are seeking images that haven't been plastered all over the web. Every RM image uploaded could potentially be exclusive to Alamy since it's now one of the few sites left for RM. Think about ways to capture that market and how to let customers know that they are getting something unique. Having an "Exclusively on Alamy" collection - RM and RF - could be a good marketing concept. 

 

I hope that you consider these concerns and suggestions. Thanks for seeking out our opinions. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Marianne

[Bill Brooks]

Simplicity makes sense to me.

 

However

 

I would like to see personal use and presentation use restricted to 2000 pixels on the long side. This is big enough for 99 % of the genuine users of these categories, but not big enough for the 99% of a subset of users who may be gaming the system by choosing the lowest price categories regardless of use.

 

Even if it is for personal use. If someone wants a 8000 pixel personal use image as wall decor in their castle, then they should pay a higher price for the higher resolution.

 

There was a lawsuite in the USA where the art director of a large book publisher testified under oath that it was company policy to buy the lowest price category, and then subsequently use the stock image for any and all purposes, exceeding the license limits.

 

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/10-36010/10-36010-2014-03-18.html

See bottom of page 7

[Mr Standfast]

The reasons for the change in the OP make sense to me.  Thank you for asking!