Terms of Service

Uploading & Selling Photos

1. By uploading your photos to ClusterShot you are not giving away your ownership of them. We are just putting them on display for the world to see. You, as the photographer, are marketing the photo and making the sale. We are just facilitating the process.

2. At any time you can remove your photo from the site. It is your photo you should be able to do whatever you’d like with it. We will publicly remove the photo immediately upon request. The only catch is that we will notify those who have bought your photo of your intention to remove the photo and give them one last chance (usually a week) to grab a copy of it before we remove it entirely from our site.

3. We are going to have to store a copy of your photograph. We thought about designing a system that would allow us to not store a local copy of your photos but the trade-offs were not worth it. In order to provide the services we are offering we need to store your photos. If you are uncomfortable with this, we advise against using ClusterShot to sell your photos.

4. We will provide a reduced resolution version of your published photos to TinEye. TinEye is a reverse image search engine that allows you to find out where and how a photo is used on the Web. Adding your published photos to the TinEye index allows others who have a copy of your photo—or have found a copy of your photo on the Web—to find your attributed photo on ClusterShot. This helps to establish the authorship and ownership of your photos. If you are uncomfortable sharing your photos with TinEye it is best that you do not use ClusterShot.

   The data we will share with TinEye:

   • your name as you’ve entered it on our site,
   • your username on ClusterShot, and
   • reduced resolution copies of your published photos (600 pixels along the shortest side).

   Please see TinEye’s Terms of Service for more information.

5. Respectable photos only please. We do not have an absolute rule about what photos are acceptable and what are not. No explicit pornography, exploitation, etc. ClusterShot, Inc. reserves the right to hide or remove any photos that we believe are in violation of this loose principle. If we remove a photo of yours and you do not agree with our decision, please let us know. We are reasonable people and will listen.

6. Upload only your own photos, or those you have permission to sell (i.e. your mom’s). Do not steal photos off the Internet and pretend that they are yours. If you are caught doing this, your account will be terminated and we will restrict your access to ClusterShot. We will also pass along whatever information we can to the rights holder in order to assist them in possible legal action.

7. Price fixing. Under no circumstances will we tolerate a user collaborating with other users to price fix images of a certain class, subject, place, or style. We believe we will not have to do anything because the open-market nature of ClusterShot should take care of it all. If the market is failing and we detect price fixing, your account will be suspended.

8. You are invoiced for photos you sell through ClusterShot. When you have sold enough photos, we will invoice you for our 12% commission. If you do not pay an invoice within 30 days of issuance, ClusterShot reserves the right to limit future sales through your account. See collecting payment for details.

9. Be good and do not do anything malicious. Malicious actions are not tolerated, and may lead to a removal of photos or the deletion of your account.

Privacy Policy

Things we will do with your personal information:

• Store it – We have to keep your photos, your email address, your PayPal account address, and your account information. We use this information to pay you when your photo is sold, and to provide you the basic service of the site.
• Display some of it – We display basic user information to prospective image purchasers. This information includes things like your name, your avatar and your account description. These are all attributes that you have control of through your account.
• Allow you to remove it – Delete your account and we'll erase you from the system. It will be like you’ve never existed. One thing to note: we do have to keep any photos of yours available to those who have purchased them for a short time.
• Share a minimal amount of your information with trusted partners – We know we can’t build everything that you want and need; for this reason we may develop partnerships with other companies whom we trust. We’ll always let you know who these companies are, what information we’re sharing with them, and what our relationship is with them.

Things we will not do with your personal information:

• Sell it – In any way, shape or form.
• Use it – To send you spam, or to send you shameless self-promotions (unless you ask for it).
• Distribute it without you knowing beforehand – You've trusted us with your personal information and your photos. We don’t take that responsibility lightly. We will not share your personal information with any partners, sites, or people without you knowing about it.
• Store it in an unsecured manner – We do our best to keep things technically safe. Your account information is in a secure, professionally maintained database.
• Secretly store it after you have removed your account.

If you have any questions about your privacy on our site please contact us.