My Corbis Nightmare
Yesterday, I wanted to buy a stock image from Corbis to use in a Web site I’m developing. It was a standard hi-res image of a man standing in front of a building reading a newspaper. This should have been simple…
For those that don’t know, Corbis is the largest respository of digital images in the world. It’s owned by our good friend, Bill Gates (though not Microsoft, I understand — Bill owns Corbis personally).
After I found the image on Corbis, I clicked it and got a pop-up window. I found a link called “Pricing” and clicked it. Simple enough — things were looking straightforward.
Then Corbis told me that I had to be logged in. Why? Annoying, but I guessed at my username and password to the best of my recollection. Wrong password. I tried the “forgot my password” link. I had to have the answer to a question (“What is your favorite name?”) that I must have set up when I created the account two years ago. Four guesses later, I got it.
The password arrived via email, and I managed to get logged in. I went back to my image and clicked “Pricing.” This is what I got:
This image is distributed as Rights Managed. To price this image, add it to your Lightbox or Cart and click “Find Price” to answer a few usage questions.
What is “Rights Managed”? For that matter, what’s a “lightbox” (no Wikipedia entry for it — I looked)? Is it a shopping cart? Well, no, because there was a shopping cart too. I found a link under the image that said “lightbox” and clicked it. Nothing happened. I looked around some more.
There was a lower frame in the browser window with a link that said “Create new lightbox.” Now, at this point I still don’t know what a “lightbox” is, but evidently I have to have one, so I clicked that link.
The resulting pop-up (thank God I wasn’t running a blocker — this site lives on pop-ups) asked for a “name,” “a client name,” and a “parent lightbox.” Evidently all I needed to enter was a name. I named my lightbox “THIS SUCKS.”
Now that I had a lightbox (but not a clue), I was able to add my image, and a thumbnail of it appeared in the lower frame. Score one for me.
I went back to my image and clicked on the “Pricing” link. Same message as before:
This image is distributed as Rights Managed. To price this image, add it to your Lightbox or Cart and click “Find Price” to answer a few usage questions.
But now there was a little button that said “Price this Image.” Awesome — we’re making progress. I clicked the button, hopefully.
I then got a little wizard. I had to a pick a “Category,” which appeared to be how I was going to use the image. I picked “Web/CDROM.” Then I had to pick a “Use Type.” My options were “Educational,” “Single-Use,” and “Multiple-URL.” Since this was going to go in the Web site banner, I picked “Multiple-URL.”
Another form appeared below the first. The heading was “Secondary Usage Parameters.” I could check either “Exclusive Rights” or “Multiple Uses.” I think this meant whether I wanted the image all to myself, or whether other people could use it too. I didn’t care, really, but there was a warning that read:
Selecting “Exclusive Rights” or “Multiple Uses” will restrict your ability to get online pricing.
I left both options blank. The rest of the fields in the form were required.
The next option was “Geo. Distribution” and there was a list of countries. Geographic distribution? This is going on the Web — it can be accessed anywhere. I picked “World.” (What if I had picked “United States” — would I have to geolocate my visitors and block the foreign ones?)
Duration? Well, forever, I guess. But “two years” was the longest, so I picked that.
Industry? Real estate. Simple enough.
Language? What the…. this is a picture! There is no language! I picked “All.”
Exposure? “1-4 Web sites”
I said a little prayer and clicked “Apply Usage.” Here’s what I got:
Online pricing of Rights Managed images is not available for the usage you have selected. Please contact your Corbis account representative to obtain pricing.
I slowly cocked the revolver and placed it against my temple…
First of all, what does “Rights Managed” mean, anyway? (Yes, I searched Wikipedia…nothing). Second, I don’t have a “Corbis account representative.”
I looked around the page some more, and to my amazement, I found a link in the header for “My rep”. I clicked it and was taken to what looked like, by all appearances, a standard contact page. In fact, the email address was “sales@corbis.com”. Yeah, that looks like my rep all right… [insert eye rolling here]
Since I had come so far, I sent an email anyway asking for pricing on the image and giving the ID number. Here’s what I got back:
For pricing & licensing information or research on Corbis images, please contact our sales support team at 1-800-260-0444. When you call, please be prepared to provide the image number(s) you are interested in as well as the usage specifications. To receive pricing, you must be registered at our Professional Use website. A sales support team member will be happy to register you over the phone or you may do so online.
Are you kidding me with this? I’m done with Corbis for good. I will find another man standing in front of another building reading another newspaper — this particular guy isn’t worth the trouble anymore.
Does anyone know a good site where I can purchase simple stock images?
Comments
photos.com
Want me to come take your picture. You bring the newspaper, I'll bring the camera.
Here's another one.
The publisher I work for uses images from these two for both print and web work: http://www.gettyimages.com/ http://www.eyewire.com
Wow, this sounds like Corbis service sucks.
Sometimes I find copyright-issues and unclear rights are getting those into trouble who are willing to pay.
I went to Cinemanow.com and paid 5 dollar or so for a digital video on the rise and fall of some dot-com-boomer. I downloaded the thing, paid for it, then clicked to see if it would work. It worked, but apparently now I only had 48 hours to watch it -- and I bought it to see on the weekend, and that was a wednesday. (OK, so apparently I only rented it. I am still unsure wether or not the rental period starts the time I download, or the time I buy.)
In any case, I later downloaded one more movie, paid for it, but then it said "File couldn't be found", but apparently the payment was still going. That was the last time I used that site.
Windows Media Player Digital Rights Management (or whatever it is called) has some serious restrictions on what I can do, e.g. I also can't make screenshots of videos I watch in Win Media Player. E.g. I could not burn a movie on CD and watch it on another player, depending on the rights I have. (I could not do it with Cinemanow.com)
Then you got issues with DVD and region code. I buy a movie on Amazon.com (I'm in Germany) let it be delivered to my home, only to run into possible problems with the region-code restriction (DVDs from USA and Europe carry different region-codes to play only on local or region-free players.) Well, apparently my PlayStation 2 is region-free, as I could watch the movie (I would have cancelled my Amazon.com order but I couldn't.)
Other issues are when I want to copy CDs I bought to my computer. Sometimes, the CD prevents me from doing that. I will not continue to buy from bands who allow this to happen.
I'm no user of KaZaA and I don't like to download illegal stuff. I mostly use public domain images if I can, or just draw them myself, or make a photograph. I wish services offering material would clearly separate between users who want to buy (and serve them well) and those that want to steal (and not serve them so well, but not risk their service to others by trying to prevent those intending to steal).
Well, good luck finding a better stock photo site!
You can use the 'other' image company: http://gettyimages.com
There's a bunch of others I find quite good:
http://sxc.hu (Free Stock) http://image100.com
http://www.imagesource.com http://www.zefa.de (OK, another rights controlled one, but has great works and links to more :))
HTH, jr
http://www.morguefile.com/ - free stock
Sorry to hear that you are having problems. It really is standard industry speak, and Corbis are bad at explainations.
Rights Managed: The usage of the image is agreed at sale and the purchaser has to renogiate for any other usage including extra copies if the copies are limited to a finite number.
Royalty Free: You buy the right to use the image where you want and how often you want.
Lightbox: A place to put potential purchases much like the amazon wishlist.
Oh and yes I work in the industry for digitalvision
an alternative to Corbis and Getty
check out these sites: http://www.plainpicture.de and http://www.360-berlin.de : very good stock photo archives, good service and lower fees than corbis or getty!
Here's another alternative: http://www.superjuli.com Very attractive prices - inexpensive!!!
Holy crap - talk about a hellish online experience!
I worked for Corbis for years. No one seemed to know or care much about actual photography. It was all about the money. Management was extremely uneducated (Bob St Clair (very poorly spoken), Tony R. (bean counter)., can you read this?) and very unprofessional. Clients images were stored poorly, and no input from the worker bees was taken seriously. I was a manager with Corbis and I was not allowed to refer to any contract worked by name , it was manadtory to refer to them as TEMPS. It was the worst experience of my 25 + years in the photographic/editorial profession. I still have nightmares that I'm working there (seriously!). I encourage all in the industry to avoid them; either as clients or source providers.
Try Acclaim Images at http://www.acclaimimages.com/
I own them. We are much easier to use and our photos are much better than photos.com or the other low-priced sites. We have over 60 photographers contributing and SOME GREAT PHOTOS!
Fred
Check out http://subscriptions.corbis.com
Actually, Corbis bombards publishers like me (real magazine, paying real photographers small sums for pictures which are not copies of every other picture around) with offers of $14.99 use-forever 'Corbis Bizpresenter' pictures. Big rival Getty occasionally fires off a link to a 'use it free' image too. The content of anything offered free is either so strikingly irrelevant or meaningless, and the range of the cheap Bizpresenter stuff so specific to people who have to make identical Powerpoint presentations and are stuck for anything to put in them... that basically Corbis has never successfully done business with me. Nor Getty. Nor any of the people who send me offers of Royalty Free CDs. In fact I used to get loads of these to review in the context of my magazines when it was a new idea. Even with them free, I never found a single image on any of them which I wanted.
Hi; Here's anothr stock photo source that no one else has mentioned: www.alamy.com. Htere are both Rights managed that is to say pay for what you want. Or Royalty Free, which is pay one time for all. I'm sure that you'll find what you are looking for.
Try http://www.mira.com -- artist owned and managed.
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