Author Topic: Corbis markets through other websites? Funny :) (Read 7233 times)

Morphart · « **on:** November 09, 2011, 15:46 »

Searching an image for a client, I just noticed something I find peculiar.

Corbis images are marketing images sent by the photographer they represent on OTHER websites... such as Fotolia?
http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/royalty-free/42-18083490/nurse-listening-to-patients-heartbeat]
[url]http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/royalty-free/42-18083490/nurse-listening-to-patients-heartbeat[/url]

Username Corbis:
http://www.fotolia.com/id/12864433
http://www.visualphotos.com/image/2x3380056/nurse_listening_to_patients_heartbeat

Maybe nothing out of the ordinary, but to me I found it funny to see a Stock company selling off image to other ''competitor's'' Microstock busines... unless Corbis owns Fotolia and I do not know it?

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #1 on:** November 09, 2011, 16:12 »

Heck, Getty sells on Corbis. Photodisc collection, iirc.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #2 on:** November 09, 2011, 22:50 »

Yes interesting says Corbis 26,381 results on FT.

lagereek · « **Reply #3 on:** November 10, 2011, 01:33 »

Yeah, its like one big happy family, selling, vending, wheeling and dealing, business under the table, over the table, flee-market-selling, pawn-broker activities, soon they will be on the bash as well, 50-bob a throw. Then.... when the going gets bad, they stab each other in the back. Nice, aint it?
and ALL because of our products.

Morphart · « **Reply #4 on:** November 11, 2011, 08:01 »

Quote from: lagereek on November 10, 2011, 01:33

Yeah, its like one big happy family, selling, vending, wheeling and dealing, business under the table, over the table, flee-market-selling, pawn-broker activities, soon they will be on the bash as well, 50-bob a throw. Then.... when the going gets bad, they stab each other in the back. Nice, aint it?
and ALL because of our products.

Hell are we bad to offer such evil products

I was just wondering... Corbis has an account on Fotolia... He sells an image for a crappy price. ''Corbis'' user gets the money. What do the Photographer get? 50% of 15% ?

.... Or nothing at all, Corbis just throw it in their pockets...

Would be curious about that

grp_photo · « **Reply #5 on:** November 11, 2011, 08:50 »

Corbis gets about 25% from FT. Photographer gets 20% from what Corbis got = 5% from the saleprice.

grp_photo · « **Reply #6 on:** November 11, 2011, 08:54 »

There are many agencies and sub-agencies that sell via the Infinite-coll. at FT but most of them not under their real name.

Morphart · « **Reply #7 on:** November 11, 2011, 20:15 »

Quote from: grp_photo on November 11, 2011, 08:50

Corbis gets about 25% from FT. Photographer gets 20% from what Corbis got = 5% from the saleprice.

Wow I have to ask... is it really worth it? Photographer gets runned over by this, I thought agencies like Corbis gave more importance to their photographers than that.

Anyways it's their business, I guess I just learned something, they are all playing in the same field.... and we are the balls

louoates · « **Reply #8 on:** November 12, 2011, 11:23 »

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS BEYOND THIS TOPIC: I fear that eventually most images anywhere on the internet will be available FREE to anybody with internet access. The copyright laws now are practically worthless -- violated by millions of folks knowingly or unknowingly. This is to say nothing of sales by related microstock site "partners" that never get credited to the photographer. Put me in the pessimist column, but human nature being what it is, I believe that theft is just as prevalent in microstock as in any other business.

Eventually, in my crystal ball, there will be free images across enough sites to put most stock image sites, as currently organized, out of business. I see sites providing, at most, only a thin share of ad popup earnings to contributors. I would imagine that eventually most social networking sites will demand that all images posted will carry with it release permissions for those sites to market those images themselves with no compensation. It doesn't seem much of a leap in logic to believe that soon software will be able to automatically cull good images from millions images and auto keyword them.

OM · « **Reply #9 on:** November 12, 2011, 15:36 »

I see from the views/downloads on Fotolia that those 'Infinity Collection' images do sell a little but I do find that a little strange because Fotolia promotes itself as being cheap whilst in search a number of these infinity images come up on every page and for an XL download the cost is anything but micro.

Why would anyone choose to pay such a high price for an RF file? Some images are very good but there's also a lot that have been almost duplicated in micro and could be had for a 'normal' RF price elsewhere in Fotolia/Shutterstock etc. Beats me.

grp_photo · « **Reply #10 on:** November 12, 2011, 16:48 »

Quote from: Morphart on November 11, 2011, 20:15

Quote from: grp_photo on November 11, 2011, 08:50
Corbis gets about 25% from FT. Photographer gets 20% from what Corbis got = 5% from the saleprice.

Wow I have to ask... is it really worth it? Photographer gets runned over by this, I thought agencies like Corbis gave more importance to their photographers than that.

Anyways it's their business, I guess I just learned something, they are all playing in the same field.... and we are the balls

For RM (and I have only RM so far with them) you get 37.5% (with the new contract before it was 40%) and they don't sell their RM-stuff through other agencies. I had last month a sale with them that netted me 1600,- Euros (my share) so yes it's worth with them.

Morphart · « **Reply #11 on:** November 13, 2011, 00:36 »

Quote from: grp_photo on November 12, 2011, 16:48

Quote from: Morphart on November 11, 2011, 20:15
Quote from: grp_photo on November 11, 2011, 08:50
Corbis gets about 25% from FT. Photographer gets 20% from what Corbis got = 5% from the saleprice.

Wow I have to ask... is it really worth it? Photographer gets runned over by this, I thought agencies like Corbis gave more importance to their photographers than that.

Anyways it's their business, I guess I just learned something, they are all playing in the same field.... and we are the balls
For RM (and I have only RM so far with them) you get 37.5% (with the new contract before it was 40%) and they don't sell their RM-stuff through other agencies. I had last month a sale with them that netted me 1600,- Euros (my share) so yes it's worth with them.

Yes for RM as in other Stock sites is worth it as it includes limitations for the buyers, but on this thread I am referring to RF images (26k of them) which are sold to other stock websites (such as fotolia), marked as Corbis as the Other (no copyright information of the Photographer), as for revenue to photographers... who knows... Fotolia pays Corbis... No clue if Corbis does his part back.

grp_photo · « **Reply #12 on:** November 13, 2011, 04:51 »

you are right but you can easily test, I have RF-Images from a comparable agency at Infinite, I simply bought two of my own Images at FT (smallest size 10€ each). It was reported correctly in my statement (same amount of a few cents each) therefore I know that FT pays 25% to their partner-agencies. It's a depressing way to reduce photographers commissions even more.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #13 on:** November 13, 2011, 13:32 »

Quote from: louoates on November 12, 2011, 11:23

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS BEYOND THIS TOPIC: I fear that eventually most images anywhere on the internet will be available FREE to anybody with internet access. The copyright laws now are practically worthless -- violated by millions of folks knowingly or unknowingly. This is to say nothing of sales by related microstock site "partners" that never get credited to the photographer. Put me in the pessimist column, but human nature being what it is, I believe that theft is just as prevalent in microstock as in any other business.

Eventually, in my crystal ball, there will be free images across enough sites to put most stock image sites, as currently organized, out of business. I see sites providing, at most, only a thin share of ad popup earnings to contributors. I would imagine that eventually most social networking sites will demand that all images posted will carry with it release permissions for those sites to market those images themselves with no compensation. It doesn't seem much of a leap in logic to believe that soon software will be able to automatically cull good images from millions images and auto keyword them.

The only thing that will help is a change in the laws, to include some penalty for misuse or image theft. Otherwise your prophetic peek into the future will become reality.

louoates · « **Reply #14 on:** November 13, 2011, 15:39 »

Race, I'm afraid that genie has been free of the bottle for some time. The moment that digital images were downloadable from the internet was the beginning of the end of copyright protections. It's a matter of overwhelming numbers. With the billions of images available in ever-larger file sizes all that's standing in the way of universally free (and quite useable) images is a sophisticated search engine. Oh, wait, I believe Google image search will do that quite nicely.

Morphart · « **Reply #15 on:** November 14, 2011, 21:32 »

Quote from: grp_photo on November 13, 2011, 04:51

you are right but you can easily test, I have RF-Images from a comparable agency at Infinite, I simply bought two of my own Images at FT (smallest size 10€ each). It was reported correctly in my statement (same amount of a few cents each) therefore I know that FT pays 25% to their partner-agencies. It's a depressing way to reduce photographers commissions even more.

Depressing it is, thanks for testing it out for us. Still 10 EUR, 2.50 EUR for Corbis and... 0.75 for you? And on top of that you get no recognition for your work as it is under the Corbis user.

Better not think about that. Anyways there is always a bad and good side to any business... but I never saw this side before this is why it surprised me.

There is something ''wrong'' in this

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #16 on:** December 05, 2011, 16:36 »

Regarding my earlier comment, I just came across this image, one of a series of mine (they're all on there) on Corbis. It's a Getty image:
http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/royalty-free/42-27326806/couple-fooling-around-in-a-christmas-tree
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/couple-fooling-around-in-a-christmas-tree-lot-with-royalty-free-image/81356862

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #17 on:** December 05, 2011, 16:43 »

So you get no credit on Corbis, the image is $40 cheaper for the large size, and I assume you get less in royalties (percentage) because there is a cut for both Corbis and Getty in that deal.

In the internet age, why does this whacky model with many layers of distributors still persist? This isn't even an issue of internationalization (i.e. site in a local language) - it says quite clearly that Corbis international distributors can't have the image.

Morphart · « **Reply #18 on:** December 05, 2011, 18:21 »

Quote from: jsnover on December 05, 2011, 16:43

So you get no credit on Corbis, the image is $40 cheaper for the large size, and I assume you get less in royalties (percentage) because there is a cut for both Corbis and Getty in that deal.

In the internet age, why does this whacky model with many layers of distributors still persist? This isn't even an issue of internationalization (i.e. site in a local language) - it says quite clearly that Corbis international distributors can't have the image.

Holy !@$% ... This is starting to look more and more like an agency Orgy... and contributors are not invited.

I can understand why they do it ($$$$), but I don't find the copyright part very honest of them. I does give your images more views, but are you really getting paid what you should... not mentioning that they keep the credits for themselves...!

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Author Topic: Corbis markets through other websites? Funny :) (Read 7233 times)

Morphart

Sean Locke Photography

RacePhoto

lagereek

Morphart

grp_photo

grp_photo

Morphart

louoates

OM

grp_photo

Morphart

grp_photo

RacePhoto

louoates

Morphart

Sean Locke Photography

Jo Ann Snover

Morphart

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