Pro-Imaging

What Photographers Lose 

In running such contests the sponsors gain positive PR – handsome prizes, happy winners – while robbing entrants of the rights to their own creative work, rights which by default the law assigns to them.

This is a clever ploy, since many photographers are naïve and do not understand their rights, or the potential value of their work. Bad enough for the individual photographer – but worse, such competitions damage photography in general. How? Because when sponsor companies can get collections of free images, they are less likely to buy from photographers.

A photographer submits a photograph to a competition, the conditions of which take away his rights to that picture; the sponsor acquires a 'free' image and subsequently has no need to go to a picture agency or individual photographer to locate or commission a picture for some commercial application; a photographer somewhere loses a sale.

Multiply this many times over – there are thousands of photographic competitions worldwide each year – and there is a clear threat to photographers and to commercial stock libraries.

The Way Forward

The press release issued by Pro-Imaging on the 21st of September 2007 states that we will co-operate with other international imaging & copyright associations and in particular we shall make representations to the European Union for EU-wide regulations that ensure all artists' rights are fully protected in competitions. 

Naturally we will co-operate with and co-ordinate actions with other groups and associations in the U.S. and elsewhere to help bring maximum pressure to bear on rights-grabbing. This will all take quite some time. Fortunately there is, right now, an extremely effective and simple remedy for photographers:

Ignore the Rights Grabbers!! 

Don't enter competitions that attempt to steal your rights! In a way, it’s possible to defeat the rights-grabbers by doing nothing! What else can be done?

For a start Pro-Imaging are building a list of competitions which have been subjected to the conditions stated in our Bill of Rights and failed to pass one or more of our tests. Essentially this is like a consumer test report, we test the competitions to see if they match up to the quality standards we have set, and where they have failed any of our tests we tell you!

These failed competitions are placed on our Rights Off List. On this list not only do we give details of the rights grabbed for each contest, we provide contact details wherever possible of the organisations and judges involved in the contest. All you need do is click on any of the contact details and you can express directly to those involved your views of the contest, we encourage you to do that for at least some of the contests.

Before placing a competition on the Rights Off List we write to the organiser giving them private access to our competition report asking them to consider changing the rules, and that we will be happy to assist them to do that. Some organisers do change the rules once we've discussed the implications of their rules with them. Often the organisers and the judges are not actually aware of what their own rules are demanding of entrants because they have been drafted by over enthusiastic lawyers acquiring rights and protections way in excess of those that the organiser actually needs. 

If the promoter does change the rules to fall within the guidelines of our Bill of Rights their competition is placed on the Rights On List. However, if an organiser ignores our notification, or does not wish to change the rules we publish the competition report and place it on the Rights Off List

Spread The Word 

All photographers, both professional and amateur, should be aware that they have the same rights, and that they need to protect them.

Too many competition sponsors are stealing your pictures, stealing your creativity, stealing your skills, stealing your unique vision. Such things are worth infinitely more than any competition prize. 

Tell your friends and colleagues, your associations, your forums, your political representatives, and your local and national news outlets about this. Refer them to this article.

Contact Pro-Imaging

If you can help in a practical way, by spreading the news for example, or if you have particular skills and expertise - in copyright law perhaps, or you know of competitions not on our lists –  Pro-Imaging would like to hear from you.  There is a competitions campaign contact form which can be found under the 'Contact Us' menu item at the top of this page - enter your enquiry there and we will respond as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading this far – and we hope you will now ignore all rights grabbing competitions and spread the word about our campaign. If you do this, together we can defeat the rights grabbers!!