Well with my luck I might have overlooked something but I need to know how and when exactly were we supposed to get the $12 license paid out if one of our images was picked for Google Drive usage?

I thought I read something somewhere that the EL price of $12 was credited to the contributors sometime last October/November (2012). No idea if this is correct or what.

I found one of my images on Google Drive free to use and the one and only EL I ever sold on IS was in April 2011. 

There are no other credits anywhere in the list of this image.

Now, as bad as everything already is with IS's and our situation what the heck am I supposed to do? Get an attorney? Just write contributor support? PM some hot shot at HQ and hope for the best?

Some serious ideas would be appreciated.

Are others affected by this phenomenon as well? Did anyone find their photos on Google Drive and did not get paid for it/them?

Well...If you are willing to accept that getting 12$ for unlimited use of your work is OK, talk to their contributor support before you call your attorney.

Did non-exclusive get the same amount as exclusives?  I would of thought non-exclusives would get less but perhaps they thought anything lower than $12 was an insult

Quote from: sharpshot on January 16, 2013, 05:12

Did non-exclusive get the same amount as exclusives?  I would of thought non-exclusives would get less but perhaps they thought anything lower than $12 was an insult

You didn't understand it. This was no iStock deal, this was a Getty deal. It just happens that some images on Getty are sourced from iStock but for those image sold through Getty iStockers are paid the same as any other Getty RF photographer (20%). There is no contributor exclusivity on Getty.

I understand that but haven't the non-exclusive images come from Thinkstock via istock?  I thought non-exclusives were paid the same percentages they get with istock for images sold via Thinkstock.

Any deal that Getty is getting money in their pocket for, made possible by my (and your images), but that we do not collect a royalty on, is a scandal and deserves attention.
My legal team and I do not quite know what to do here. Is the current situation as follows: The photographers will not get any royalty from the Google deal, images are licensed for free? Are there any news out there that we have not heard off? Is this license not basically a very liberal "extended" license for which we should receive normal pay? How is it possible for Getty to avoid this?
I am meeting with Getty Executives Monday the 28 in London to discus this among other things. Are there updates on the matter of significant character.

Is the current situation as follows: The photographers will not get any royalty from the Google deal, images are licensed for free?

You get 12 bucks one time and then you're not quite the owner of your image. You kind of donated it to Getty.

Any deal that Getty is getting money in their pocket for, made possible by my (and your images), but that we do not collect a royalty on, is a scandal and deserves attention.
My legal team and I do not quite know what to do here. Is the current situation as follows: The photographers will not get any royalty from the Google deal, images are licensed for free? Are there any news out there that we have not heard off? Is this license not basically a very liberal "extended" license for which we should receive normal pay? How is it possible for Getty to avoid this?
I am meeting with Getty Executives Monday the 28 in London to discus this among other things. Are there updates on the matter of significant character.

Don't forget to join deactivation day on February 2end.  It would mean much more if it wasn't just us small contributors making a stand.

Any deal that Getty is getting money in their pocket for, made possible by my (and your images), but that we do not collect a royalty on, is a scandal and deserves attention.
My legal team and I do not quite know what to do here. Is the current situation as follows: The photographers will not get any royalty from the Google deal, images are licensed for free? Are there any news out there that we have not heard off? Is this license not basically a very liberal "extended" license for which we should receive normal pay? How is it possible for Getty to avoid this?
I am meeting with Getty Executives Monday the 28 in London to discus this among other things. Are there updates on the matter of significant character.

If I am in you place
Just in case, I would take a baseball bat with me for easier negotiation.

Any deal that Getty is getting money in their pocket for, made possible by my (and your images), but that we do not collect a royalty on, is a scandal and deserves attention.
My legal team and I do not quite know what to do here. Is the current situation as follows: The photographers will not get any royalty from the Google deal, images are licensed for free? Are there any news out there that we have not heard off? Is this license not basically a very liberal "extended" license for which we should receive normal pay? How is it possible for Getty to avoid this?
I am meeting with Getty Executives Monday the 28 in London to discus this among other things. Are there updates on the matter of significant character.

Basically Getty's view about the deal is what formally would be covered by an "Extended License - Electronic Items For Resale" in iStock terms. Someone wants to include images in an application to be used. Someone could come up, buy this license on iStock for 125 credits plus the size - so maybe 135-150 credits per image. Having a steep discount for large volume customers is not unusual, so selling credits at maybe $0.50 per credit would make it $67-76 per image, from which the photographer could get anything between 15-45%. In the worst case it would be $67 * 15% = $10.

I guess this is about the lines that you will here from Getty, though they will express it in Getty license terms, not iStock.

Obviously these were terms when most applications would run on the user's computer, so there was no simple way to get the images out of there. With Google Drive, it is quite easy to use the images outside of Google Drive - but this again would be the fault of the user because he didn't carefully read through all the Terms of Use which would probably prohibit using the images outside.

In addition, all metadata was stripped from the files, so there is not even an indication that these images are copyright protected. While using images without credit to the author is common for commercial uses, having images show up as not copyrighted is a doubtful practice.

Good luck for your talks.