The Corbis “I Am Buried” Contest Abuses Artist’s Rights

Creative Industries Seek To Change The Law

In its “I Am Buried” competition, the Corbis Corporation requires entrants to give up entirely all artist’s rights to their creative submissions. 

Anyone entering the contest is required to transfer to Corbis all ownership, title, interest, ideas, copyright, right of publicity and moral rights to Corbis in order that they may edit, adapt without limit, publish and distribute in any media, without attribution, also on “any new technologies that are yet to be developed” and “in perpetuity and throughout the universe without further consideration.” 

This technique is an abuse of the legal rights of those entering the competition, and allows Corbis to acquire at virtually no cost to themselves, any number of creative ideas and imagery. It is arguable that as this practice is clearly attempting to undermine the purpose of the law, it could be declared illegal if tested in the courts. 

Corbis claim that “As a company representing intellectual property, we work to carefully respect images, video, essays, ideas and other intellectual property.” 

We dispute this statement. Setting aside legal arguments, we believe the terms and conditions of this competition unambiguously express a contempt for artist’s rights by Corbis. It is to our dismay that Corbis is not the only company abusing artist’s rights in this way, and we have concluded that to stop such abuses taking place the law must be clarified. 

We therefore announce that we shall use our resources, in conjunction with other representative bodies in the creative industries, to make representations to the European Commission. The aim of these representations will be to introduce EU regulations clarifying the law, making it clearly illegal to attempt to acquire artist’s rights from the entrants to any competitions by the organisers or sponsors. 

Our equivalent representative organisations in the United States of America and other countries will be invited to participate in a worldwide campaign to press for similar laws to be passed in their own countries.

Additional background information for the press can be found here. 

To add an inspirational appeal to our campaign, a poet was commissioned to encapsulate our strong feelings on these issues in the way that only poets can achieve.  We have placed his poem below this press release for all to reflect on, and we thank him most sincerely for his work on our behalf. 

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Pro-Imaging is an organisation representing the interests of the worldwide photographers who are its members. Our website is at here at - http://www.pro-imaging.org   email - contact form

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If you can keep your heart when all about you

Have lost their titles to some small print t's and c's,

If you can trust the law when lawyers doubt you,

If you submit your work and lose its virtue,

But always try to show the honest touch,

If those big businessmen can't hurt you,

Though all men count with you, and truth as such;

If you can let them take your stuff and own it

Throughout the universe and just for fun

You lose the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a fool, my son!

(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling

'though not to Corbis, who may not yet…)

© Bryan Islip www.picturesandpoems.co.uk