
VCG has acquired 500px - prostoalex
https://iso.500px.com/vcg-acquisition-announcement/
======
bwang29
This is almost a sad day for the photo community. VCG has been suing Chinese
startups and companies for licensing rights for a while [1], many of the
licensed photographs appear in "free" or "CC0" websites. A year ago, we
received a request of paying a 50k RMB penalty for a set of images downloaded
from free CC0 websites as well as a set of images previously appeared in
PetaPixel which then quoted from 500px in 2014 (this was before VCG's
investment in 500px) - however VCG claims they have copyrights on them. The
way to waive this penalty is to buy VCG bulk licenses or sign agreements with
VCG to purchase their products (if you buy stuff from us, we won't charge you
from the previous infringement issues!). When asked about why these photos
show up in full resolution in free websites in the first place, they didn't
provide a clear answer. One reason is that it is difficult to shutdown
"pirated" and free image hosting sites created under individuals. For all
these penalty or payments collected, VCG almost never repay the contributor or
photographer. But I guess neither does their counterparts in the U.S. (this is
a much larger issue that I won't expand here).

So if company A used 500px's image in 2014 before VCG's investment, and
company B quoted company A's article, and you re-tweet or re-blogged company
B's article, VCG (who now has copyrights in China for 500px images) might go
after you to collect penalty but never contact A nor B.

Advise to startups : to make sure you don't infringe any copyrights, do a
reverse search on VCG's database (especially you have market in China) as well
as Getty's/shutter stock's database and never trust unsplash-ish websites
(they also have no model releases that will get you in trouble). These stuff
could bite you back in years if you have a photo floating somewhere in your
public Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account.

Now that VCG has acquired 100% of 500px, what would (or could) happen is they
will crawl anyone who has referenced 500px photos in China and start to
threaten to sue in exchange for opportunity to gain more subscribers for their
media library. Last year a couple of social media accounts on Wechat was
forced to shutdown by this [2]. VCG quotes different penalty for different
images, and it is usually 1000 RMB per image.

[1]
[https://xueqiu.com/8818667120/74351790](https://xueqiu.com/8818667120/74351790)

[2]
[https://www.zhihu.com/question/48400883](https://www.zhihu.com/question/48400883)

~~~
dchest
"Public domain" image stocks absolutely don't guarantee or even check that the
images they host have proper licensing, indeed. I've seen some images that had
Creative Commons Attribution licenses posted on these without any attribution,
"relicensed" as CC0. So... they did nothing wrong according to copyright laws?

~~~
unicornporn
If you've ever thought about using Unsplash images, consider how clueless (and
honest) they are when it comes to model releases and legal releases.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZevNRITnWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZevNRITnWU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M_OZWtpokc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M_OZWtpokc)

~~~
dchest
That's true, never ever use photos of people from free stock websites/creative
commons photo dumps. Paid photostocks require photographers to submit scans of
signed model release forms. This is unfortunate for tiny/unprofitable
websites, but — really — a few dozens of dollars for a stock photo with a
guarantee of model release and a license is absolutely worth it.

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BadassFractal
500px is a decent place to share photos and see other people's photos, but it
is plagued by a total absence of non-photographer audience.

It's photogs looking at other photogs' work, vs. Facebook / Instagram that
actually have an audience outside of the creators themselves. Let's say you
shoot fashion. On Instagram you have models, MUAs, stylists, studios,
agencies, brands and all of their non-creatives friends. On 500px, nothing,
just photographers. It's somewhat akin to writing music that only other
musicians will hear.

Oh and lots and lots of bots saying the same comment on every post.

Not really surprised they've been slowly slipping out of relevance. There's no
particularly great reason to be on that specific platform.

~~~
untog
>500px is a decent place to share photos and see other people's photos, but it
is plagued by a total absence of non-photographer audience.

Isn't that the whole reason for them to exist in the first place? I think the
problem here is the expectation (maybe internally at 500px as well) that every
site has to hockey-stick its way to enormous success. A social-enabled
portfolio site for photographers sounds like a very sensible idea to me.

~~~
BadassFractal
Sure, but then you're just another one of those sites, and there are plenty of
them already. Not clear how 500x stands out compared to the rest of them.

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colmvp
For me, it's not surprising that they got acquired. Ever since the co-founders
left/got ousted, the reviews of the leadership/management have been pretty
dismal. And most of my professional photographer friends usually just use
Instagram to market themselves or still use Flickr for showcasing super high
res versions.

A shame, I was hoping it'd be successful and benefit Toronto's startup scene.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Sidebar...

I mostly envision 500px as a B2B platform. That is, showing your peers your
chops. You don't see too many wannabes there. The exception to B2B being the
elite level shooters who do workshops, etc.

On Instagram, everyone with an index finger and an iphone is a photographer.
It's a large audience and images get views / likes, does that make it a good
marketing fit?

I haven't heard Flickr mentiined in too long. Shame really. It was Instagram
before Instagram existed. Kinda.

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geuis
Only had 20 photos on there. I have no desire to leave them in the hands of a
Chinese-owned company.

There's no built-in way to batch-export your photos, if you don't have a
backup. You can visit this link
[https://500px.com/settings/store](https://500px.com/settings/store) and if
you click the middle column of images, they should automatically download one
at a time at a high resolution (3000px+ w/h). If the images are smaller than
that, you have to click into each one and use the dev tools to focus on the
image and find the link. Stupid and uselessly, they disabled right-click.

Make sure you do all of this in a non-Chrome browser. In Chrome the images are
rendered as webp and there isn't a super easy non-techie way to convert webp
to anything else. If you use Firefox for example, its easy to right-click on
the image from the link in the dev tools and save as a jpeg.

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askvictor
I'm curious to see a comparison of photo sharing sites, their intended
audiences, and relative strengths and weaknesses, from the people who actually
use them. For example, I really like Google Photos for sharing my own photos
with family and friends, but it doesn't seem to have got into the pro market
much (why?)

~~~
adventured
Elite creators usually don't like to hang out creatively where the general
masses do. It's true in art broadly, it's true in music, it's true in
photography. New scenes - think grunge or punk rock - don't usually happen
where the old scene is. There's a certain element of snobbery ('this is our
thing') and cultural rebellion inherent in that, and I don't mean that in a
harsh way, it's just the way it has tended to be historically. Separation from
the mundane status quo.

If you're one of the 100 greatest living photographers, the odds are you're
not overly interested in hanging out where average Joe is posting and sharing
927 pictures of the family vacation to Disneyland. People like communities
filled with people at least somewhat like themselves. Even the cool factor
inevitably plays into it (mass market sites inherently lose that), no matter
how much a person may resist that lure. Once upon a time, Yelp and Flickr were
small, tight-knit, snobbish communities that the masses had never heard of.

If a site goes fully mainstream, it'll start to bleed off its elite creators
(assuming there are alternatives). They'll seek out a new scene, they'll try
to get away from the mundane that inevitably sets in, and the dilution of the
qualities of the community that initially attracted them.

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acomjean
wait...

that site sounds familiar.

I did have an account there. I should probably find my login and delete my
images. It was fun, but in the age of image sharing everywhere, I didn't use
it much (I uploaded 5 images). I had more friends on flickr and later
instagram, so thats where I ended up.

With Flickr->Yahoo->Verizon and instagram->Facebook, there seems like a lot of
consolidation in this space.

[https://500px.com/acomjean](https://500px.com/acomjean)

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e40
I was recently debating using them or smugmug, ended up going with the latter.
So glad I did...

------
lettergram
> VCG is among the top image licensing companies in the world, the __go-to
> choice __for creative and media professionals in China, and an award-winning
> leader in copyright protection.

Nothing in China related to companies scream "choice"

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myth_drannon
VCG invested $15mil in 2015 and acquired it in 2018 for $17mil. That's an
accounting that I don't understand.

~~~
e40
I guess it depends on how much they acquired for their $15M in 2015. Let's say
it was 49%, then that would say the company grew a little.

~~~
greglindahl
Companies like to tout the largest possible acquisition price, so usually
$17mm would be the total acquisition cost. Which is a down round severe enough
that the last round's investor liquidation preference would mop up all of the
money.

Just a guess, I don't know the details of this deal.

------
aaronbrethorst
_Clicks on link, presses Cmd+F, types in "journey"_

    
    
        We’re so honored to share the journey with all of you

~~~
a13n
Building a company is a journey, what's the big deal?

~~~
jeeyoungk
I think the grandparent commenter is referencing
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

That said, I think this is a bit different than other acquisitions as it is
not an acqui-hire and the product (hopefully) will not shut down.

