I received this message form an employee of a large company that is looking into using microstock photography agencies, but is currently not allowed to by their legal department. From my research the answer seems to be "thats why its microstock", it is photography for the masses, not the complicated.



Does anyone have any more information on this topic? If you know someone that runs a stock photo agency please forward this to them as it seems that many people would like to purchase images from our agencies, but can't because the licenses don't transfer to clients.

Excuse me, but I am having problems following the logic of this thread. Here’s my understanding from the information you supplied.
1. A large international company with an in-house team of legal advisers would like to purchase some ‘less expensive’ stock photos (Well I suppose paying a few pennies for a stock photo is technically ‘less expensive’ than commissioning a photo shoot for £5,000)
2. The Company is asking you, a seller, (I am guessing you are a stock image seller) to make enquiries on their behalf to the microstock houses on complex legal issues when they could contact the house directly.
3. The international company has not given any indication that they would be prepared to pay for the special legal contracts if any could be agreed.
They have clearly written the wrong letter. The right letter would be along these lines:
...We have seen examples of your work in the microstock houses and your approach closely ties in with our ideas for a marketing promotion. We would like to offer you a commission based on Industry Standard rates to deliver a set of images and if you are interested please contact us to discuss this further. Note that there would not be any licensing issues as we would own the copyright for these images…
Now wouldn’t that solve everyone’s problem?