This is a short article to raise awareness of an increasingly common and disturbing trend in public photographic competitions, which is to get you to sign away many if not all of your rights to your pictures as a condition of entry....

If you are contemplating entrering a competiton, no matter how reputable you think the organisation is, ALWAYS read the small print, before even looking at the prizes. Watch out for clauses like this:

"Where you are invited to submit any contribution to xxx (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) you agree, by submitting your contribution, to grant the xxx a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub-licenseable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, make available to the public, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to your contribution worldwide and/or to incorporate your contribution in other works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in your contribution, and in accordance with privacy restrictions set out in the xxx's Privacy Policy. If you do not want to grant to the xxx the rights set out above, please do not submit your contribution to xxx."

Note these terms apply to ALL submissions, not just the winning ones.

Also, watch out for the same organisation, after getting you to give them your images to do whatever they want with them forever, without paying you a penny, still ask YOU to carry the can if the pictures cause them legal issues, with an indemnity clause.

There is little doubt that such competitions are often run with the intention of harvesting a lot of good images from (often good but naive) amateur photographers to form a private image library which that organisation can do whatever they want with, even re-sell, with no payment, or even acknowledgement, to the photographer. It means that they do not have to pay out to money to professionals directly or via stock libraries, and these photographers lose sales and livelihood. This is worse than royalty-free, it is just free! (the actual prize is pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things, the cost of just a small handful of library image purchases)

You may wish to read this discussion on the BBC Points of View website relating to the BBC terms and conditions for entering their photographic competitions, most recently the BBC's national photographic competition "A Digital Picture of Britain", as highlighted by Pro Imaging, who represent professional photographers rights. There is also a letter to the BBC from the The Association of Photographers Ltd on this issue published in Adobe news, with further comments. The issues are pertinent to all such competitions.

Good terms and conditions will stipulate that the images will only be used for the purposes of publicising the competition, plus optionally a reasonable narrow and specific related use, such as publication of a book etc. Copyright should remain at all times with the photographer, and any use not in the agreement must be renegotiated.

Even if you don't personally care if your picture is used without any return, do think of the wider issue of how this practice affects the livelihood of those who sell photographs for a living before giving away your (probably very good and commercially useful) images for nothing.

Tom Gardner