Don’t believe a word Alamy said, the reason for this I remember when they got caught out trying to sell pictures cheaper than microstock.

Remember the statemement ( We can cannibalize microstock ) ? When questioned on this they said it was only for encyclopedia publishers and only takes up about 1% of our customer base.

And then a few months later those images were being sold not just to encyclopedia publishers but to major publishing houses. Now a few years later RM images are being sold effectively as RF images with 5 or 10 year licences.

Alamy were making the same pathetic excuses back then and are doing so again now, but Alamy know there suppliers put up with anything and already have their trousers ready to be shafted yet again.

Comment 1: john, 5 March 2015, 10:26 pm

I appreciate the point that publishers want to keep their options open in case a book becomes a resounding success. I note that Alamy says that this is the exception, not the norm. But to leave the option open-ended is obviously a bit of a sticking point with photographers. The uncertainty does not allow them to issue an exclusive licence in the future and they have no way of knowing or confirming whether an image is likely to be reused or whether it is essentially free to license unfettered.

Surely it would not be too difficult to either:

(a) put a clause in the buyer’s contract saying the reuse option lapses if not exercised in, say, two, three or five years depending on what is reasonable in the circumstances; or

(b) contact the buyer in say, two years to ascertain whether they intend to republish – a negative answer freeing up the image with the photographer being advised as such.

Option (a) would involve no further checking up by Alamy except, perhaps a courtesy email to inform the client of a pending lapse and an offer to relicense. The photographers would know the cut-off point based on the date of the sale.

Comment 2: Martin Cameron, 6 March 2015, 09:59 pm

“Downloads – We track all downloads from Alamy and regularly undertake costly and thorough audits of our customers. Our work with PicScout will further strengthen our handle on this. It’s incorrect to suggest we’ve a laissez-faire attitude to customer downloads.”

“We’ve a record of every download and we do have sophisticated processes for follow up and monitoring. We undertake lengthy and costly audits of our customer base looking at download and sales activity. We track our downloads to sales ratio and it’s at a level that doesn’t give any cause for concern and the suggestion that millions of images have been flooded onto the market by Alamy unchecked is simply untrue. It’s true that we have sold millions of images for our photographers but we haven’t achieved this through an uncontrolled stream of images onto the market.”

The above two paragraphs are from Alamy’s reply. My experience is that this is pure bullshit. In my experience Alamy had no proper record of downloads and no method of chasing uses against downloads. If they did have a robust system why, on three occasions, did they require copies of tear sheets from me to show uses they had not billed for? I have communicated with other photographers who, like me, have waited over six months with no follow up between download and use. In one of my cases the image was the cover of the Guardian’s g2. How hard to spot is that?

Alamy also quote Tony Stone in reference to retrospective licences.

“In the stock industry granting a licence after an image has been used is nothing new. From the earliest days of stock, companies such as Tony Stone would track down customers asking them to confirm use. In many cases the customer would have already used the image.”

Tony Stone never waited months to chase clients over uses. TS, Zefa, Image Bank and other ‘proper’ agencies would chase as soon as a publication date was reached. Often they would demand voucher copies to be sent by motorbike messenger that day for uses to be verified and invoices to be issued. Never would they wait six months or more before writing licenses.

In my short period with Alamy I found them to be lacking in any proper sense of RM licensing.

I left some time ago.

Bob Croxford

Comment 3: Bob Croxford, 7 March 2015, 01:17 pm

As a supporter and defender of photographers’ rights, ImageRights laments the continuing erosion of the rights and protections afforded photographers by their commercial distribution partners. These rights and protections are critical to the livelihoods of photographers individually and to the vitality of the profession and to the arts overall. Yet, perplexingly, the terms of service that their selling agents are forcing upon them (for example, retroactive licensing of infringers, and retention of licensing rights in perpetuity) effectively degrade – not by law but in practice – the copyright status of their works to that of public domain or creative commons works.

We see firsthand the damage these increasingly industry-wide, retroactive licensing practices wreak upon photographers, in some cases costing them thousands in damages, not to mention losses after the infringement due to the time and resources spent by both themselves and their legal representatives on the undermined claim. Clearly such distribution industry participants have opted to mollify their customers (and conveniently brand new customers in some cases) at the expense of the contributors who make their business possible.

As a result of these pervasive but unwritten historical practices, and now as we see here in these brazenly codified policies, ImageRights has been and will continue to be forced to turn away photographers with copyright infringement claims, not based on the lack of wrongful conduct, but merely because the image at issue has been distributed via a particular commercial conduit.

As in the case of Alamy, most agencies are run by decent people who quite often are photographers themselves. ImageRights understands that agencies are subject to competitive and financial pressures and must adapt to sustain and grow their businesses. We are disappointed though that too often such sustenance and growth comes at the expense of the product creators for the benefit of product consumers. We implore those involved in setting policy and terms of service to reconsider the larger, potentially devastating impact that such practices have on the rights and indeed on the very outlook of the photographers they serve.

Comment 4: Joe Naylor, CEO of ImageRights, 7 March 2015, 02:32 pm

I’m at a loss to understand why any professional photographer would surrender control of their pricing to an agent.

In this internet age, every individual photographer has the ability to sell directly to clients anywhere in the world. It appears all the agents are only in the business of obtaining market share by being cheaper. This is not surprising as they have little or no quality or rarity differentiation. The only way big agents can compete with each other is by being cheaper. This is easy for them to do as the cost of the product they sell is Zero.

Unfortunately the people bearing the brunt of this price war are the photographers who actually have to buy cameras, run cars and pay money to take photographs.

Any photographer who can differentiate his work from the micro-stock mass market should sell directly. Any photographer who cannot differentiate his work from the micro-stock mass market should either change his photography or give up and accept that it is a hobby. That isn’t meant to be critical as I myself take many photographs that have little chance of a sale but I take them for artistic rather than commercial reasons. I still wouldn’t give my non sellers to an agent though!

Fortunately these days services such as photoshelter and photodeck make selling directly a doddle. Its no more work to open your own photodeck website than it is to upload to an agent. The the only difference is you set the price and you keep 100% of the sales.

Sell direct, its a no brainer really !

Comment 5: Jonathan Webb, 7 March 2015, 03:07 pm

Alamy will and have issued licenses for work no longer available.

Four years after downloading an image from Alamy I discovered a publisher using an image. The publisher had been invoiced for then actively sought and was given a refund.

Discovery of use was over one year after cancelling a contract for Alamy to license my work.

The publisher went back to Alamy, who were more than happy to sell a license, one that was impossible for them to sell.

So in my experience Alamy do not police downloads, requested refunds or use.

Nor do they honour a reasonable timeframe to recognise when a contract to sell the photographers work is truly over.

Never again would I deal with them. The new contract reinforces this decision as being correct.

Comment 6: Simon, 7 March 2015, 04:00 pm

Having recently terminated my relationship with Alamy prior to these changes coming into effect, this response only reinforces my decision. Especially when I read the following:

“Alamy: The rights originally sold will inform the photographer as to the possible rights issued in the future. For example, if the image was sold for an editorial book, the re-use would be for an editorial book.”

My issue with this is that it is not publication title specific, by not stating a publication title it gives Alamy and the publishing client an open ended conduit to buy/resell our image/s to that publisher. Whilst still remaining within the remit of editorial. At the very least any resell should be confined to a resell within a month of the end of the original licence period. And again, this then leads to the topic of ridiculously long licence periods of five and ten years and more. I have worked extensively in the wider licensing world and these wide, non specific licenses would get licensing execs fired and licensing agents sued by rights owners.

“Alamy: Regarding ‘Alamy should NOT be issuing a retrospective licence after the infringement has been reported.”

This is reliant upon a free flow of information, how are Alamy to know that an image bought this afternoon has not recently become the subject of an infringement claim. The only way to police this is to put a tab on the image manager for a photographer to say an infringement has occurred and for Alamy to contact the photographer should a purchase be imminent, this would allow both parties to manage the system. In reality it would be difficult to enact.

“Alamy: With regards to infringements, we recognised that we weren’t doing as good a job as we’d like to so we’ve invested in this area and Alamy is now working with industry leader PicScout on a programme to track down infringers and that’s why we’ve introduced this clause.”

I believe what a lot of people would like to see is agencies such as Alamy publicise that if an infringer/non reported use is proved, that the min price payable by the client would equate to the full calculator price or a multiple of, after any fees for the likes of picscout/legals I.e no discounts. If something like this was promoted on the home page perhaps non reported use would reduce.

The key thing is that like some of the licenses Alamy have given out, the clauses in this contract are not specific enough and open to interpretation, any contract that needs the level of debate and justification that this one appears to be drawing has to be viewed as being in question.

Just my thoughts,
Ian

Comment 7: ian shipley, 7 March 2015, 04:14 pm

One other key element not covered in this, is the transfer of payments to photographers who have left Alamy when a picture is re-licensed. Will payment be paid in full and at the time of payment or will it still be subject to the minimum payment threshold of c75 dollars. This could build up to a tidy little sum sitting in the pot. Again things like this need to be covered off to make this a robust and credible contract.

Comment 8: ian shipley, 7 March 2015, 04:24 pm

Alamy have got back to us with a ‘thats not what we meant’ statement.

I'd say close to 100% of the arguments in court are due to ‘thats not what we meant’ as opposed to ‘thats what it says’. If they had said this and worded this all better we wouldnt be having this argument and alamy wouldn't have lost a hell of a lot of goodwill.

The Alamy statement does nothing to address any of the concerns. James/Alan may interpret their contract wording as one thing, I may interpret it as another. That’s not a contract that’s heresay.

If they had announced they were putting a 10 quid personal payment option and giving us the opt out (yes it was in there before but was for substantially more) then there wouldn't have been an issue. I now have to go and apply restrictions to every image.

Unfortunately for reasons unsaid, that will rule me out of the distribution system and the magical 20% raise that they touted on a recent blog. My stats don’t back that claim up so its no real loss.

The great thing about this debate is that it has got a lot of people off their asses and started the gears moving into what we all do post-Alamy.

I am genuinely sure that Alamy mean well, I notice a lot of other top sellers have seen huge cuts in income from sales recently and perhaps they are feeling the pinch but we will have to wait on their published accounts to discover that.

I’m sure the last thing they wanted was a contributor rebellion from the precise area of sales they tend to neglect and brush over but who genuinely keep the lights on at Alamy but some simple forethought and an explanation of the change of terms along with the wording would have helped. I’m sure running it past a lawyer would also have helped.

I have still had no response from Alamy regarding my request in writing to see who have legally licensed my images and any outstanding sales/downloads. I have fulfilled my legal obligations in making the request and as Alamy have as yet failed to comply with that request I doubt there is a court in the land who will uphold any change of contract that requires me to be psychic.

This is a huge black hole and not to supply it hiding behind data protection etc is just bullshit of the highest order. Other agencies supply it and I'm registered with the ICO as a data controller and this is business critical information. These are my copyrighted images after all. I own the IP. Alamy don’t. This is business.

Alamy has also included a term in the contract about small recovered damages being donated to Charity. Alamy is closely linked with charities so perhaps that could be seen as a conflict of interests.

I’ve recently emailed Alamy about keyword plagarism which is mentioned in the current contract and allowed under the new one. They have refused to take action under the current contract (is the new one in force yet?). Small change except I’ve emailed them about the same user a few years ago and others have. There’s written evidence that Alamy don’t enforce their own contract rules.

I genuinely do like Alamy but this coupled with the recent changes to default every search to a hand picked ‘creative’ set of images, some of which break the terms of the previous contracts - which has perhaps led to the massive decrease in recent sales - does leave a very bad taste in the mouth.

At the end of the day it’s business and I earn a significant amount of income from Alamy but as this drops and as the goodwill to send them new material has all but evaporated beyond already scheduled and costed work.

It will be interesting to see how the Alamy running total decreases but more interesting to see if/how their returns are affected in their annual accounts. Perhaps we all aren’t that big a deal, perhaps we won’t make much of a difference and perhaps they think we need them more than they need us… …we will see.

Comment 9: Joe, 7 March 2015, 07:08 pm

What is an “Alamy Customer”?

I supplied clients with images many years before Alamy started. For a few years, when I was with Alamy we both supplied those clients.. Since I left Alamy I have again supplied some of them.

In my book only the licences that Alamy actually made during the course of my contract should be subject to any control by Alamy whatsoever. No licence should be renewed by Alamy after the end of the contract.

Comment 10: Bob Croxford, 7 March 2015, 07:33 pm

Joe, I agree with you. The keywording issue is a bigger issue for those of us who take the time to research and keyword images correctly. To then have someone do a cut and paste is akin to a kick in the teeth. Now I can clearly see that it is in Alamy’s interest to allow this plagiarism, as it then presents a wider selection of possible images to the buyer, but it is at the expense of my research and time for no return.

Comment 11: Ian shipley, 7 March 2015, 08:16 pm

Unfortunately Alamy’s response seems to read something along the lines of ‘yes that’s what’s written in the new contract but it is only a clearer version of what was in the old contract, and you can trust us we won’t necessarily enforce it that way’.

The problem is, in court, it would be enforced exactly as it’s written in the contract, whatever I might argue at the time and even if Alamy are genuine in their current reassurances.

So it does little to make me want to stay with Alamy – it just doesn’t seem worth it along with the increasingly daft rates images sell for and other niggling things like the infuriatingly clunky Manage Images and the fact that my extended captioning/keywording can now just be plagiarized by someone who can’t be bothered to do their own.

Comment 12: Rudolf Abraham, 8 March 2015, 12:43 am

I’ve sent an email to the owners of Alamy in regard to me not agreeing with the terms of this contract. After 13 years with this agency, I’ve decided it’s in my best interest to terminate my existing contract and delete all of my images. I also hope that all of their sub-agents will delete my images as well.

Linda M

Comment 13: Linda M, 8 March 2015, 08:43 pm

I’ve never had many images with Alamy but will be withdrawing all those I do have with them. I made a few sales for a few hundred dollars total over a couple of years (off less than 50 images).

I know many others – perhaps everyone who is with Alamy? – have received today an automated email telling me my click-through rate is in the top 10% of the entire Alamy collection. Is this a desperate attempt to stop people from leaving?

That alone is enough to make me withdraw what few images I do have and I am sure will leave others feeling the same. Far from encouraging people to stay, I think it will (rightly) reinforce the feeling that Alamy is simply not a good place to do business with, for ethical or financial reasons.

Comment 14: Rosie Collins, 9 March 2015, 02:01 pm

Well, maybe I’m just being unreasonably cynical, but it does seem like an odd coincidence (I emailed Alamy regarding concerns over the new contract last week, and I’ve commented on this page as well as the EPUK open letter page) – this morning I received the following email from Alamy:

‘Just a little heads up that you’re trending on Alamy! Your Click Through Rate (CTR) is in the top 10% of the entire Alamy collection. Customers love your content so why not boost your sales by submitting more images.

We use a clever system to monitor all customer activity. Your CTR is there to show how popular your images are on our site. Even for those small collections, it’s comforting to know that our customers can find you…’

Now, ironically, my images have had a bit of a spike in CTR over the past month, something I was already aware of, but I’ve never had a similar notification in the past. It would be fascinating to hear whether any others in the same camp (ie who have made it known that they are dissatisfied with the new contract and are considering leaving) have, purely by coincidence of course, received similar emails this week…?

Comment 15: Rudolf Abraham, 9 March 2015, 02:19 pm

I’ve had the same “Top 10% CTR” email from Alamy. I haven’t got many images with them, and my CTR is as low as ever. So it’s simply not believable. (BTW: The email’s link contains a tracking code. Nice move, Alamy – I guess contributors who appreciate some privacy won’t be offended at all…)

Regarding Alan Capel’s response on this page:

“We are now working with PicScout to track down and get payment from infringers.”
“We aren’t stopping photographers from chasing their own infringements.”
“We’ll show that we don’t allow retrospective licensing to be a ‘get out’ for infringers.”

Could Alamy please elaborate on just how they’re trying to deal with all this? I’m not an expert in legal matters, but common sense tells me that a non-exclusive agency such as Alamy should NOT “track down and get payment” from infringers. After all, the respective image could have been purchased from another non-exclusive agency, or the photographer’s own website.

Also: How are Alamy planning to “show” that they don’t allow retrospective licensing for infringers? The only thing I can think of to achieve such a high level of transparency between an agency and their contributors would be a “infringement live reporting” tool in the contributor’s dashboard. As far as I can tell, any less than that won’t be “showing” anything.

Comment 16: Bjorn Holland, 9 March 2015, 03:31 pm

Alamy has never been transparent. I was with a HUGE agency that showed REAL TIME stats for images that were viewed (showing the client's name) when they were downloaded and the client name and publication name, date used and issue and size in addition to the amount.

I don’t know why Alamy is so naive to think that eventually we won’t find our work online or in print. Many tools are available, most are free. Even if our name gets stripped out, they will be found.

Why do they put us through hoops? We’re not stupid and if we really wanted to contact the publication, it’s a no brainer.

But I’ve already ‘left the building’ and requested my images be removed.

Comment 17: Linda M, 9 March 2015, 03:38 pm

Yes, I’ve had the same “Top 10% CTR” email too. As I was another of the ones who emailed West and Capel directly about the contract issues, it seems like an awfully big coincidence. So much so that it’s making me more, not less, likely to leave.

Comment 18: Jon Sparks, 9 March 2015, 04:05 pm

So it turns out that Alamy didn’t in fact issue a retrospective licence as stated in the EPUK letter. At the time of the transcript Alamy wasn’t aware that the photographer was pursuing the customer for infringement, but as soon they were they pulled out and cancelled the licence.

Seems strange that the photographer didn’t recount the full story. Was it his intention to paint a misleading picture?

Comment 19: Alex, 9 March 2015, 05:37 pm

Yes, me too – I received “Top 10% CTR” email this morning – a timely coincidence as a few days ago I cancelled the majority of my images – and mentioned the EPUK letter when doing so!

Comment 20: Gail Ward, 9 March 2015, 05:52 pm

“Seems strange that the photographer didn’t recount the full story. Was it his intention to paint a misleading picture?”

I had a conversation with Alamy about retrospective licensing for a non-buyer who had infringed my copyright and they seemed to think there was nothing wrong with it morally or ethically. I’m sure I could dig out the details.

Astonishing don’t you think?

Especially astonishing for a company that describes itself as “We´re a little bit different. We’re proud of doing things differently and philanthropy is an important part of our company DNA.” Is philanthropy still good if you’re giving very unfavourable terms to the very photographers who make that possible?

Comment 21: Dee, 9 March 2015, 06:18 pm

If Alamy were serious about tracking infringement and encouraging clients to pay they would at the very least (i) charge at least a small download fee to start with that might go towards payment of the full fee when the image is used; and
(ii) charge a client double if he/she used the image first and offered to pay afterwards, to encourage clients to pay in advance and offer an incentive for speedy reporting; and
(iii) charge a client a much higher multiple, say four to six times, if the image use wasn’t reported within a specified period such as a couple of months and Alamy and the photographer discover the unreported usage. The multiple might increase the longer the image use is unreported by the user.

This would be enforceable as a matter of contract law versus the client. It’s astonishing that Alamy don’t do this, just as a matter of basic business sense from their own point of view, and symptomatic of the contempt that Alamy holds its contributors and their property in.

Comment 22: Simon, 9 March 2015, 08:07 pm

I just received the same email…sigh.. My response will be that, like Linda, I won’t be signing the new contract and will remove my work. That will give them sleepless nights I am sure!

It’s Alamy’s lack of transparency which bothers me. Due to the extraordinarily low rates, I placed restrictions on my work a couple of years back as I would rather not sell for peanuts. I then received an email from Alamy asking if I would remove the restrictions so a particular image could be licensed. I responded, as you would, how much was the client willing to pay for the license. Their response “I can’t disclose how much our client would be paying for this particular use, so I understand that you are not prepared to lift the restriction for image B5GG6E”.

Exactly why can they not disclose the fee? I would find out eventually and they lost out on a sale because of this lack of transparency (and I lost the price of a coffee!). I have little good to say about Getty, but at least Getty discloses who bought the image and more details on the licensing arrangements than Alamy ever would.

Comment 23: Sheila Smart, 10 March 2015, 12:30 am

Alamy’s attitude towards professional contributors has always been a problem. If they could get content from the hobbyist end of the spectrum I’m sure they would be happy to be rid of the irritants who raise legit concerns.

Retroactive licenses HAVE been issued to infringers making the perceived value of an image so low that legal action for redress is simply a waste of time. Further muddying the water with their contract adjustments now means that many legal IP companies are unwilling to take on cases if the image is held (even non-exclusively) in the Alamy library.

Non-Alamy readers may wonder why this is not a subject for the Alamy Forum – the draconian censorship and locking of topics is the reason – a little more listening and a little less waving of the headmaster’s cane would certainly help.

Comment 24: David, 10 March 2015, 11:54 am

I am so glad I am part of the 90%.

On the other hand I have made 2 sales since this announcement – coincidence?

Comment 25: Tom, 10 March 2015, 06:05 pm

I’ve already terminated my contract with Alamy and have gone through and deleted all my images. I very much doubt the mini exodus will make a dent in Alamy’s armour because amateurs will continue to pour images into the site in the hope of some breadcrumbs from the few sales they will get.

It’s possible that if enough of the best contributors leave that the library will become increasingly low-grade and not worth publishers’ time trawling for gems. Only time will tell if this is the beginning of the end for Alamy. Getty look like they could fold at any moment. What happens to the stock image market then? Interesting times indeed.

Comment 26: Tim Gander, 11 March 2015, 08:06 pm

What is the point of using PicScout when they are giving huge discounts to infringers!

I just don’t trust Alamy anymore… And for that reason, I’m out!

Comment 27: Phil, 11 March 2015, 08:10 pm

I’ve been wondering for a long time if Alamy was worth the time and effort for the very little returns I was getting. I’ve decided to terminate and delete my images as well.

This won’t make much difference to Alamy, I’m sure, but won’t really make much difference to me either.

There is no reason for the secrecy for reporting the details of downloads and sales. How can we tell if a non-exclusive image has been infringed if we don’t know who Alamy sold it to?

Also, some of the terms attached to uses are unbelievable. Getting peanuts for a 25 year license doesn’t motivate anyone to go out shooting.

Thanks for your hard work on this Simon & David.

Comment 28: Alex Todd, 11 March 2015, 09:04 pm

Having read David Hoffman’s piece ‘Why I’m leaving Alamy’ (published on 11 March elsewhere on this site) I was disappointed to see the monumental change in Alamy’s attitude over the years. I am not sure whether Alamy is planning to make additional comments or (living in hope) change their new contract terms, but their continued silence does not induce confidence. If there are no further developments I intend to leave at the end of March. I genuinely liked Alamy’s ethos at first. Cutting the percentage to pay for their American presence was the first change that irked me (why should I pay for their commercial expansion?) The five year licences for pocket money are pitiful, and these latest terms and conditions are a slap in the face. Why stay in an abusive relationship?

Comment 29: Martin Cameron, 12 March 2015, 12:50 am

Thanks to David’s excellent analysis of Alamy’s response we have decided that we will also withdraw, unless Alamy dramatically re-word their new terms within the next ten days.

We have both been with them since the start and have made quite a lot of money. But Alamy have always been frustrating. Does anyone remember one of the first publicity shots by Alex at Alamy suggesting that we should search in the back of our wardrobes, pull out that shoe box of old trannies, scan them and send the files to Alamy.

We thought that Alamy had arrived at just the right time to be the market leader in high quality, professionally managed images and that everyone would benefit. We pleaded with them to edit properly from the outset. What an opportunity missed. What a mess.

Despite having done absolutely nothing to our images nor uploaded new ones for five or six years, we are still making a useful amount of money. So we had more or less decided to take the easy route and do nothing. But David’s analysis, and Linda’s suggestion that the difficult decision is so often liberating, have changed our minds. The crux of our decision however is the realisation that those images and any revenue from them will no longer be ours to pass on, unencumbered, to our daughter. If we stay, Alamy will always have the first call on the best of our pictures that they have long after we have gone and despite any contrary intentions our heirs may have.

Our images, all RM, have already been licensed with ridiculously long terms which will outlive us. Those are lost anyway. Do we want to give away a fair proportion of our life’s work to someone else on Alamy’s terms?

Comment 30: Peter Bowater, 12 March 2015, 08:42 am

Having read the original EPUK response to Alamy, this Alamy reply to EPUK and David Hoffman’s well thought out and well written piece Why I'm Leaving Alamy, I find myself in no doubt that I will be joining the Alamy Exodus.

My feeling is that Alamy is merely trying to pacify dissenting voices rather than address the genuine concerns of its contributors. I am worried by lines like:

“This is not a new clause just a strengthening of the definition to make it clear how we are working.”

To me this reads like a back-handed way of saying the clause doesn’t actually say what we want it to say, so we are changing it to say what we want it to, but we are doing it in a way so we can try and back-date it.

It’s things like this that have caused me to loose all trust in Alamy. I feel they are blowing smoke while the office intern is out buying mirrors. I think they are hoping to insinuate just enough, without actually changing anything, so that everyone just shuts up and wanders away from the debate with hands in pockets looking at the floor mumbling grumpily.

Well, sorry Alamy, deal with the problem or I and many like me are gone. Then you may very well find yourselves revising down your claim…

“Over 50 million high quality stock images, vectors and videos from Alamy, the world’s largest stock photo collection.”

Comment 31: Paul David Drabble, 12 March 2015, 10:40 am

Damn…. And I thought I was special, you know top of the tree, a real 10%er, but now I just wonder if Alamy got hold of EPUK’s mailing list and just told everyone that would be likely to leave that they are the ‘greatest’.

Hmmmm….

Comment 32: Jason Bye, 12 March 2015, 01:57 pm

It will be interesting to see if I get the trending CTR email as I have just sent Alamy notice that I intend to leave unless there is substantive change to the contract and behaviour (so I will be leaving).

If I do get it then it is a scam as my zooms have been negligible for months!

Comment 33: Martin, 12 March 2015, 05:57 pm

Alamy’s response to detailed questions and comment has been decidedly woolly and unconvincing. The language reinforces that Alamy is the centre of the universe and photographers rather silly and untrusting people. “When have we let you down ??” is implicit in Alamy’s tone. Well as a contributor from the outset it might take a while to answer that one. Percentages have plummeted, sales have plummeted: I lose out when Alamy offers a bulk discount but I do not share in the bulk sale. I’ll give it a week or two for them to see sense but cynically I believe they’re trying to see off less profitable contributors and still have millions of pics to license for pennies. Is anyone outside Alamy convinced these T&Cs need to change ?? So why not leave them be ? Over to you Mr.Capel.

Comment 34: Derek Simpson, 12 March 2015, 10:47 pm

If you are leaving Alamy we have a step by step guide at Alamy: Finding the exit.

Comment 35: Hoffman, 13 March 2015, 01:58 pm

…..and this is what you are up against:

“Dear Sir,
Thank you for your email below. In fact I was able to speak to someone at Alamy and explained the situation in detail to them. They have issued a full licence for the use of the photograph. This was backdated to March 1st 2014 so covers the period of past usage of the image. Apologies for the oversight in not having this in place at the outset but I hope the matter has been resolved.
With best wishes,”

I normally ask ImageRights (IR) to deal with copyright infringements – and on the whole they have been pretty good – however I came across this small company and feeling a bit sorry for them offered to supply a license for the unauthorized use that they had made of one of my images. I asked for a modest £80.00 license fee and as they had been using the image for a considerable time felt that I was being quite reasonable. Had the matter been handled by IR they would have been faced with an end bill of ten times that amount.

The para in quotes above is their response.

In this case I have contacted Alamy who were unaware that action for copyright infringement was ongoing – the image was not obtained from them. They have now cancelled the license and refunded the fee.

HOWEVER it is my contention that the default position for Alamy should be clearly in black and white – Retrospective/retroactive licenses are simply NOT issued under any circumstances.

Comment 36: David, 14 March 2015, 09:17 am

No wonder the Stock Picture industry is in such a state with pictures selling for much less than they cost to produce.

This is because Photographers on Alamy put up with anything, all RM images on Alamy now are being sold effectively as RF.

And yet the majority of Photographers on Alamy say nothing, and just carry on as normal, if the Photographers don’t start standing up.
All that’s going to happen is there will be more price reductions on images sold on Alamy, until eventually all images on Alamy will be sold on subscription.

You have two ways of selling a product on quality or on the cheapest price, Alamy have chosen the cheapest price. So this means for years to come Alamy will keep dropping its prices for images, until most Photographers are put out of business.

The choice is a straight one either do and say nothing and wait until you are eventually put out of business, or make a stand and say you won’t put up with it.

I have heard some Photographers on the Alamy forum say diversifie, this will never work because if prices for images keep dropping no Photographer will stay in business.

Unless they subsidize it with something else, like most Pro Photographers are doing at the moment by running workshops.
These workshops help the Photographers to survive but make the Stock Picture industry even worse, because they make more competition and a lot of Photographers on workshops sell pictures on Alamy or on microstock.

So the choice is make a stand or go out of business now or in a few years time.

Comment 37: john, 14 March 2015, 11:51 am

Looking at the reply from Alamy it seems that they don’t understand how upset we the contributors are.

Perhaps they don’t care, they are big enough and have enough images on file to allow themselves to operate as normal even if a few contributors leave.

I will be another leaving and from talking to other photographers who contribute there I will not be alone.

If you can not trust your agency then you really have to make a stand. It’s a shame as I was a cheerleader for Alamy mainly because of the things they said they stood for but sadly they now seem to have decided to just roll over the contributors.

If only a proper agency run by photographers for photographers existed, I wonder how that would work?

Comment 38: Jessica, 14 March 2015, 09:42 pm

Alamy have explained why the contract changes were necessary and EPUK is making a mountain out of a molehill.

The biggest gripe seems to be that Alamy can grant re-use licences even after a photographer has terminated his contract. Well I fully understand Alamy’s position and its example of a book publisher wishing to produce a re-issue makes perfect sense. Would EPUK rather Alamy say to a large multinational publisher and longstanding customer “oh sorry, you’ll have to remove the image by photographer X because he’s left us”?

Can EPUK not see what effect this would have on Alamy’s relations with that customer? What if the re-issued book has already been printed and the publisher is wishing to pay for an extension. What should Alamy do then? Refuse to grant an extension on the one image that was removed but grant it on the others in the same book? Or maybe they should sue their good customer?

It seems that EPUK is full of old dinosaurs who cannot accept the changes in stock photography that have taken place in recent years. Many of its members speak of a “race to the bottom” as if the agencies are in a race to charge lower fees. Maybe they haven’t heard of competition in a free market. It’s not Alamy’s fault that licensing fees have dropped. They can only sell images for the going market rate; if they charge more, they’ll sell far fewer images and total revenues will fall.

Those photographers who have left or are leaving will have a negligible impact on Alamy’s sales so I wouldn’t think Alamy will be very concerned. The vast majority of Alamy’s other contributors will be completely unaware of this brouhaha and will continue to contribute and to grow the supply of images. And, no Alamy won’t be left only with a lot of rubbish amateurs as some EPUKers naively believe. I, for one, will certainly not be leaving.

Comment 39: Alex, 19 March 2015, 12:00 pm

Photographers who have left Alamy have no more interest in Alamy’s relationship with its customers as they do in any other business that is not representing their work.

Yes, Alamy should say that photographer has left and tell the client that it will have to approach the photographer directly if it wants to relicence a previously used image, Alamy could have course add “but we do have these similar images …” Alternatively Alamy could ask the photographer for permission and to ensure they can pay the photographer for that reuse – it is not clear, but I need to reread the contract again, how, or indeed whether, the photographer gets paid for that post termination reuse.

If the photographer is not paid, and Alamy cannot be sure it will have current contact details, then they will be at risk of creating a possible infringement. It could create a lot of due diligence work for Alamy seeking out former contributions in such circumstances.

If the publisher has gone ahead and printed the book without having licence in places then more fool them. It would then be a retrospective relicence for an infringement – completely different ball game.

As things stand the photographer is giving up control of their images if Alamy can (re)licence them after the photographer has left for whatever reason. Imagine a divorce where one’s ex could insist on using your home because you had bought it together.

Comment 40: Martin, 19 March 2015, 12:22 pm

@Alex. I don’t have a dog in this fight, have never had any images with Alamy nor any other agent, but I am afraid it’s you who are being naive.

The past 15 years have seen the stock industry ruin itself c/o predatory acquisitions, attempting to undercut competitors in pursuit of market share, promoting subscription models that were supposed to work for agencies and clients but without regard for photographers.

This is not an outcome of a ‘free market’ so much as pursuit of short term gains by corporations at the cost of long term sustainability. Commoditisation and monopsony in pursuit of monopoly. With negligible marginal costs of sales, the agent doesn’t care whether they sell 1 image at £1,000, 10 at £100, or 1000@£1. If they think they can sell 1,100 at £1, that’s a gain for them. But ROI for the photographer is destroyed.

Inevitably, professional suppliers cannot continue to supply as returns fall below their cost of production. They withdraw and adapt else go extinct, and that is what you are seeing here so I think you have your dinosaurs muddled with your mammals. This loss of viable ecosystem ensures the stock business will end up only supplied by flighty non-professionals with incomes from elsewhere.

Most absurdly, it hasn’t worked out well even for the agencies, all of whom are in trouble with the possible exception, for now, of Shutterstock. They’re becoming vast stale oceans of non-exclusive cliché, differentiated only by price plans.

The trend, not unsurprisingly is to try and have the cake and eat it too. Agencies, like rights-grabbing publishers, know perfectly well that owned content is far better for their bottom line. But paying photographers to create owned content is now too expensive, given the pricing models the agents have pursued. So changing contract terms to take a bigger slice of cake has become fashionable.

These Alamy changes are just another step down the same staircase, but what has concentrated peoples’ minds is that it’s a last chance to jump off with full ownership and control of your work intact. After 1 April, that is gone.

If you don’t see this as a race to the bottom by men in suits, that’s fine. EPUK doesn’t claim infallible vision in fog. But none of this is personal, it’s business. I am sure you’re correct it won’t dent Alamy at all. Nobody is trying to dent Alamy, just hoping to persuade them to re-think. And if that’s not possible, to jump and save themselves.

Comment 41: Tony SLeep, 19 March 2015, 03:47 pm

Spot on.

Comment 42: Martin, 19 March 2015, 04:24 pm

I gave up on them recently. I don’t care their low sale volume. I contribute to other agencies that pay my bills. Alamy fit perfectly in my workflow and when the miracle of a sale happens the 50% is nice. My problem is that in the last 3 to 4 months they are radically rejecting all batches when they find a pic that doesn’t meet their QC. E.g I submit 12 batches with different dates, if they find a pic with problems they reject all 12 batches. I find this a disrespectul attitude toward photographers.
Their reply to my complaint with a template-like email reading like this: keep trying and don’t get discourage because we don’t have time to check every batch.
I am sorry but my time is money…and you are not my main course!

For more read: http://yelo34.blogspot.com/2015/11/alamy-response-to-rejections-complaints.html

Comment 43: Roberto Machado Noa, 28 November 2015, 12:06 pm

I terminated my contract a few months ago but was shocked to realise the effective perpetual re-licencing granted by Alamy. I do appreciate that a certain duration would be good for their customers (and the photographer would gain from income too) but to set that duration to infinity is a problem. Alamy have said that, in effect, the re-licencing is the exception, with the general short-lived nature of publications. So why the need to the perpetual option? Also, the photographer can not offer any of their previously licenced images to another agent on an exclusive basis. So the photographer will lose out on potentially many sales of an image.

One of my other reasons for terminating my contract with Alamy was the underhand way they introduced the DACS claim. This was buried within their terms and I missed it. The point of contention was that if you didn’t opt out by a certain date then that was it, you were opted in permanently. Alamy would muzzle in on my DACS claim year on year. I had a relation with DACS several years before alamy saw this as a money grab opportunity.

I think Alamy used to be honourable in the scene of the stock industry but I have lost that faith in them.

Comment 44: Dayve Ward, 6 May 2019, 11:18 am