In the week since...

It's been a whole week since my last post, and things on iStock have not really calmed down much.  There are still plenty of folks who are very upset about the changes coming in January 2011, more buyers who have left (or have made noises as such).

The big hub-bub the last few days has been the dilution of images.  iStock began an import of images called "The Agency Collection" the other day, and, according to them, it went wrong.  The images that were temporarily accepted were a mish-mash of different stock images, some of which were of a very questionable nature.  One that I saw, whose link is now deactivated, was of some hair brushes in a drawer.  The problem was that a logo was quite prominent on one of the brushes.  Another image (also deactivated) of an "occupied" sign for a restroom, had extremely hard shadows and the glare of a flash on the restroom door.  Apparently, different agencies have differing image quality guidelines.  I'd prefer to not link any images because all of the offending images (and some were pretty offensive, quality-wise) that were accepted on iStock are now deactivated, and I really don't want to direct traffic to other stock agencies.  If you feel like wading through the message thread, here's the link.

During all this, it seems that an exclusive contributor was found to have images available under a royalty free license on a few other agencies.  The fact that this contributor was also an image inspector added to the egregiousness of the matter.  Chaos ensued.  Again, I really don't want to link to the images as I'd prefer to not direct traffic to the other sites, but you might be able to get an idea here.

Right now, it seems like there's great confusion over:

1. who can submit what to where
2. how can exclusive images wind up on other agencies,
3. how much will contributors be paid if images are allowed on other sites,
4. if iStock will adjust their "redeemed credits" to make it even harder to get into the higher brackets

To paraphrase Ricky Ricardo, "iStock, you got some 'splainin' to do..."