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На днях получил такое письмо. Могу дать адрес желающим.
Hello Everyone,
You’re receiving this mail because you signed the petition protesting against the 30% withholding tax measures being implemented by shutterstock and because, as you probably know shutterstock has conceded some ground. (For those who didn’t receive shutterstock’s circular mail time stamped Friday 29th or Saturday 30th May –depending on your time zone, please let me know and I’ll forward it to you. )
To summarise, shutterstock has admitted that it made mistakes with its first mail on withholding tax, secondly and more importantly it has made a step in the right direction, by not charging us withholding tax on non-US sales. This is progress.
However, there are issues still outstanding. Here are some :-
- don’t want to let the IRS have possession of my personal information
- don’t want to pay potentially over $100 just to have a pen pusher stamp a piece of paper because of some else’s problem.
- don’t want to pay taxes to the US economy
- Don’t want to pay double tax on my income
- don’t want to spend the next 4-6 months worrying whether I’ve put the right NA on the right line of a form I don’t feel that I should have to be filling in anyway.
- don’t want to lose up to 30% (depending on %age of US sales) of a ridiculously small download price because shutterstock has messed up their business case.
- don’t like the way shutterstock has treated some of us : some people have had their accounts deleted and their funds sequestered by shutterstock, simply for expressing their dismay at the current crisis.
- Feel like there has been a breach of contract
There are many more grievances out there
There are two main ways that we can go forward as a group of petitioners.
1) We can consider that the petition has already done its job, we have forced shutterstock to rethink its position on withholding tax. Job well done.
2) We can take this further forward because we feel that shutterstock should make further concessions.
If a large majority of people either don’t reply to this mail or vote for no further action, then I won’t take this any further on your behalf.
If a sizeable number of people reply to me that they feel strongly about continuing this action, then I am happy to take it further.
So please let me know how you would like to continue this process by replying to this mail.
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Petition Results To Date : 30 May 2009
No of signatures : 357 (-2 spoilt) = 355
No of images to remove from Shutterstock : 156,383
It must be noted that numbers were given in less than one half of the signatures, so this figure could be as high as 300,000 maybe even more.
Shutterstock management understands better than most that the removal of say 250,000 images from their database and placed with their competition is going to cause them serious financial difficulties. This is where the power of our petition lies : strength in numbers. I suspect they will be paying close attention to what we decide on doing.
____________________________________________________________________________
If you would like to continue protesting. This is how I suggest that we continue, open of course to suggestions.
1. We use all means possible to make the petition known, and continue in any way we can to argue our cause. The more people sign this petition the greater will be the impact with shutterstock. We have already seen that we can move shutterstock. Given enough will-power, (if it still exists) we can go further.
2. We hand in an ultimatum to shutterstock, that unless they re-think their current policy, we will start to delete our images in a coordinated way on a certain day. I would suggest that on a given day we delete say 25% of the number of images stated in the petition. This will serve to show that we are acting together, and that there is worse to come, unless they listen to us, and make further concessions. A few days later and a further 25%. And so on.
3. As a group representing a huge number of images, and a large earnings potential. We may have a strong negotiating position with other agencies. We may for example be able to negotiate higher earnings as a group, or other advantages. I am in the process of exploring these issues. This is an option open to people and in no way a commitment
4. Some of us may feel that a class action for breach of contract is justifiable in the circumstances...
5. We use all public means possible to apply pressure on shutterstock, to make them understand that they must take responsibility for this situation, and not try and pass it on to non-US contributors
Any other ideas?
Some general points.
If anyone feels that they can handle this situation better than I am doing, then feel free to take over control for the benefit of the group. For people who don’t know who I am, and aren’t sure whether they can trust me. I am a contributor with shutterstock, who like many others was appalled by the chaotic and arrogant way which they handled the situation. I suggested creating the petition, and have now been handed the administration of the petition through lack of anyone else volunteering. I don’t stand to gain a single cent more than anyone else here by my involvement in this petition (just for the record).
Your mail addresses are hidden in this mail (BCC), and I have not divulged any one of them without your express written permission.
Please remember that there are over 350 people with differing opinions here. We cannot hope to satisfy everyone’s every request. I do hope that we can however, satisfy the majority of people here. That at least is my aim.
I apologise to non-english speakers for the length of this mail. I realise that there has been a lot of legalese written over the last few days, and it must be very difficult to absorb and follow. If any issues here are unclear, please let me know, and I will try to clear them up, in the best way possible in the circumstances.
We do not have all the e-mail addresses of the petitioners. This is mostly our fault as organisers. The situation has evolved quickly, and we didn’t realise that our main form of communication on the forum would be denied to us so rapidly. Because many of us have been banned from the forums. So if you know someone who has signed the petition without leaving a mail address, please either send this mail to them, or ask them to send me their e-mail address so that we can keep them up to date.
Feel free to use the petition forum to express your opinion to people using our petition.
If this letter is quoted with my name directly to shutterstock, then given their recent aggressive behaviour they are likely to close my account and sequester my money as they have done with others already. Feel free to quote this mail in part or entirely, but also, please remove my name and mail address. I would like to recover at least my may and june earnings.
Finally I would like to thank everyone for actively taking part in this democratic process. I think we have already, by our actions, made things happen which will benefit the whole non-US community at shutterstock. This is something that each one of you can be proud of.
Well done, and thank you.
И сегодня.
Hi Everyone,
This is a polite reminder to anyone who would like to reply to the previous mailing, and haven’t yet done so, to reply today.
First of all I’d like to thank those people who took the time to reply and have sent me their suggestions.
Here are the results so far:
People who signed the petition to date : 364 – 2 spoilt = 362
People who consider that the petition has done its job and want no further action : 5
People who have replied suggesting that they want to continue further protest : 22
If we don’t receive replies to the original mail indicating that a large majority of people want to continue the protest in a coordinated way during today Tuesday 2 june, then I will withdraw from administering the petition, as I deem that there isn’t sufficient will power to continue.
If anyone wishes to take over administering the petition from me, then please let me know, and I will send all the necessary details, e-mails etc.
As before, if you choose to forward this mail to friends or colleagues, please remove my name from it.
Thank you.
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