Licensing

For Photo Competition Entrants and Organisers

We need to talk about licensing now, to begin with a few notes about how photographs are licensed generally, then we shall discuss licensing and how it relates to photography competitions.

Licensing a photograph involves the photographer giving permission to use a photograph, via a license document, to a person or organisation. In return the person or organisation will pay an agreed license fee to the photographer.

Typically a license document will spell out how long they can use the photograph for, a year for example, what it can be used for (e.g. one specific usage, say in a book, or a particular advert), and where it can be used, in one country for example, or throughout Europe, or worldwide. The greater the rights requested, say usage for two years instead of one, or to have multiple uses, the greater will be the license fee charged by the photographer for these rights.

When the agreed license period expires the image must cease being used by the person or organisation the license was granted to. They can apply to the photographer for another license, and the photographer will charge another fee. This is how people can profit from their creativity.

Perhaps you are an amateur photographer, or only taking a family snap, and may think that your photograph has no value to anyone else. Your photographs are valuable. There are some organisations that harvest photographs taken by the public in order that the harvesting organisation concerned may profit by licensing the public's photographs to other organisations. Typically the harvesting is done via photographic competitions, but sometimes the harvesting is carried out by a straightforward appeal for photographs.

Competition Terms and Conditions = License

When submitting a photo to a photo contest the entrant is in effect granting a license to the contest organiser, a license that enables the organiser to use the photograph. Note that the competition organiser does need certain rights to use the submitted photographs to promote the competition, to display them on a contest website, to sub-license them to the media in order that publicity about the competition can be published, and so on. The competition terms and conditions (sometimes called rules) will set out which rights entrants have to grant the organiser if they wish to enter the competition.

It is up to entrants to read and understand these terms and conditions, to take note of the rights being claimed for the entered images, and to decide whether granting these rights are acceptable to them or not.

It is up to organisers to determine what are the rights they need to promote their competition, and also to set out the rights they need clearly and simply for entrants to understand.

Types of License

Within photography there are currently two predominant types of license, the Rights Managed license, and more recently the Royalty Free license has entered the arena.

Rights Managed is the traditional form of licensing whereby an image is licensed for a specific usage for a set time period in a specific geographical area; it may have other contraints on it's usage set out in the license. The wider the rights required by the licensor the bigger the license fee, and at the end of the time period set out in the license the image must cease to be used.

On the other hand the Royalty Free license involves a single initial fee payable by the licensor which normally entitles them to use the image in perpetuity for any purpose.

Typically competition terms and conditions will specify that the license the entrant is to grant to the organiser is of the Royalty Free type. Sometimes the Royalty Free license set out in the competition terms and conditions is time limited to a specific number of years, for example two years. In such a case the organiser would no longer have the right to use the image after the two year period set out in the terms and conditions expires. Competition terms and conditions should set out a time limit during which they are permitted to use the entrants images to promote the competition.

In some contests the license is described as a perpetual Royalty Free license which enables the organiser to use the entrants images for ever. In order to promote a competition a perpetual license is unecessary and unfair to entrants, a time limit should always be specified.

Exclusive and Non-Exclusive Licenses

A license to use a photograph may be declared as exclusive or non-exclusive. Lets say for example that an organisation wished to license the use of a photograph, but they want an exclusive license. That is, they want the photographer to guarantee that he/she will not license that image to any other organisation while they are using it. The photographer would charge a higher fee for such a license because it limits their ability to profit from that image.

Non-exclusive licenses on the other hand allow photographers to license the images to multiple organisations concurrently.

Now consider the terms exclusive and non-exclusive in relation to photo competitions. If competition terms and conditions require entrants to grant the organiser an exclusive license in perpetuity this would mean the photographer can never use or license their image again because the usage required by the competition organiser in such a case is exclusive, and it is in perpetuity.

That is an example of an unfair license in that it effectively denies the entrant the use of his own creativity. They could not enter the image to another contest, publish it on Flickr, make it into a greetings card, sell it as a print, etc, in fact they could be sued for doing so. It is for such reasons that it is very important to read terms and conditions and understand what they mean.

Competition terms and conditions that are being fair to the entrants will specify that the license the organiser needs is non-exclusive.