Moral Rights

For Photo Competition Entrants and Organisers

Moral rights are a complex subject in their own right and here we only propose to present a simple view of them with particular relevance to competition terms and conditions.

Moral Rights are a basic human right and are part of the law of copyright in most countries. Three of the important safeguards set out by the law on moral rights are to ensure that -

1. the photographer is rightfully acknowledged as the creator of their images.
2. the photographer can object to derogatory treatment of their work.
3. that there is a right to privacy with respect to photographs

Moral rights are recognized in most counries as part of their copyright law, but in the U.S. for example this is not the case. The U.S. views "moral rights" provisions as being addressed sufficiently by other statutes, such as laws covering slander and libel.

The Right to be Credited

If a photographer submits an image to a competition and it is published as part of the promotion of the competition it is only fair that the photographer should be credited with a copyright notice, for example -

© Joe Bloggs

Apart from crediting the photographer such a notice makes it clear that the image is also subject to copyright and who the copyright owner is. You should expect to find in the competition terms and conditions a statement that the photographer will always be credited.

Sometimes the rules will say the organiser will make every attempt to credit the photographer. This form of words may be employed where the organiser is cocerned that a third party, say a newspaper, omits, in error, to credit the photographer despite being instructed to do so.

The Right to Object to Derogatory Treatment

In most countries this right gives the photographer the legal right to object to mistreatment of his image in a way that is "prejudicial to the honour and reputation of the photographer." 

However, regardless of the specific legislation in particular countries it should be seen as right and proper that nothing should be done to a competition entrants images that the entrant would feel was derogatory. This should not be seen as restricting the right of an organiser to resize or crop a submitted entry in order that it may fit to their promotional material on the web, in magazines, newspapers or any other media.

The Right to Privacy

This right applies to everyone, not just photographers. If a photograph has recognizable people in it and it is entered to a competition the entrant should obtain the permission of all those in the photograph that it can be used by the competition organiser.

This can be achieved by having each person in the photograph sign a model release form which gives the organiser the right to use the photograph for the purposes set out in the competition rules. Competition organisers may in fact require entrants to submit signed model release forms.

Waiving of Moral Rights

Note that unlike copyright, your moral rights cannot be assigned to anyone else.  You may, by a written and signed agreement, with another specific person or organisation, waive your moral rights for specific images. Such an agreement is called a waiver. So even if you have assigned copyright to another person or body, you can still enforce your moral rights, unless you have also signed a waiver with that person or organisation, in which case you have lost the right to enforce your moral rights against that person or organisation.

Some contest terms and conditions will require entrants to waive their moral rights. This is not an acceptable practice.

In some cases it may be that the organiser, not actually intending to do anything that could be deemed derogatory to the photographs, is only seeking moral rights to be waived to give the organiser absolute assurance that they cannot be sued by a photographer for just cropping a photograph. This is an overkill practice, the organiser should simply require the right to crop/resize the photographs as needed to promote the competition and not seek waiving of moral rights.

On the other hand waiving of moral rights may be sought to enable an organiser to do as they wish with the photographers images and to commercially exploit them. This is a reprehensible practice and it is unfair to the entrants.