| Bill of Rights |
Page 1 of 4
In the Beginning If you are unfamiliar with the meaning of terms such as rights, copyright, intellectual property, and moral rights you will find it helpful to read the Introduction to the Bill of Rights followed by the Introduction to Rights and Licensing before reading the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights for Photography Contests campaign was devised towards the end of 2007 and launched in March 2008. It is a response to those photography contests which have the intention of claiming perpetual and irrevocable usage rights of the submitted entries, even in some cases copyrights and waiving of moral rights. The World Intellectual Property Organization defines the purpose of copyright and related rights as follows- The purpose of copyright and related rights is twofold: to encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public. Rights grabbing seeks to take advantage of a dynamic creative culture without returning value to creators and therefore the practice of rights grabbing is unethical. We believe that the spirit of the law should be respected for everyone. Therefore in 2007 we set out to devise a set of standards that photography contest organisers could use to draft contest rules that would respect the creator’s rights. These standards would allow the organiser to use the images to promote the contest, the photographs, and the photographer, and certain usages to defray costs or create profit, all time limited so that when the time period expired the creator had full and exclusive rights to their images returned to them. We call this set of standards The Bill of Rights. During their development discussion took place with other photographic associations and photographic competition organisers. This extensive liaison took place to ensure the creation of a set of workable and practical standards that at the same time prevented exploitation of the entrants by respecting both their rights and their creativity. Later in this section you will find a complete listing of the conditions set out in the Bill of Rights. How the Bill of Rights Campagn works in practice is described in Introduction to the Bill of Rights. Appeals for Images by Commercial OrganisationsThere are businesses which appeal for images to be submitted to them in order that they may exploit the images in some way, say by publishing a book. There are no prizes involved nor any negotiated remuneration on offer to those who supply the images. Instead, the organisers will claim that their use of the image will provide the person granting them use of it free publicity which will help them get 'noticed'. In some cases those responding to the appeal for images are actually asked to pay a fee to have their image included in a book. Such a practice is viewed as exploitation of those who submit images in response to the appeal, and although not a contest the practice is still subject the Bill of Rights. It is viewed as a contest with no prizes and will simply be judged according to the Bill of Rights standards. |
||||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
