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You will lose important rights to your images if you enter contests on this Rights Off List, and the contest organisers, promoters, sponsors, affilliates and subsidiaries gain free usage of your images for ever in the vast majority of cases. Competitions which fail one or more conditions in The Bill of Rights are placed on the Photo Competitions - Investigated list. Subsequently, we write to the organisers of some of the competitions on the Investigated list detailing our concerns, and urging them to change their rules. The outcome of this attempt at persuasion appears on the The Rights Off List below when the organiser either refuses to adjust their rules, or simply fails to respond. If the organiser does adjust the rules and Pro-Imaging reach agreement with the organiser that their contest now meets all the Bill of Rights conditions, we will remove their contest from the Investigated list and place it on the The Rights On List. In the reports below for each competition a red circle rating system is employed, each red circle indicating a Bill of Rights condition that the competition rules failed to meet. In the list of competitions below if you click on a competition title that will take you straight to the competition's rules. If you click on the graphics that show what conditions in our Bill of Rights the competition has failed, that will take you to the page with details of these conditions. 
N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! See the full and ever increasing list of failed competitions in the new Investigated list. The Rights Off List
1000000 Million Places On Earth ends 16 January 2010 Bill of Rights conditions failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You lose the right forever to exclusively sell the images submitted, MPOE gain the right to use your images forever, worldwide, and sub-licensable for commercial gain. It states that MPOE will agree with you in good faith a 'reasonable' fee for commercial usage, but it does not say that it will be on rights managed terms, nor that you have the right to refuse such offers. The end date for this competition is years in the future, and the rules allow MPOE to extend the end date by a further two years to 16 January 2012! Amazing! Do you want your images locked up for years, when if they are good enough to win a competition prize they are probably good enough to earn you regular money! We wrote to MPOE and they failed to reply to our detailed criticism of their contest. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. RECOMMENDATION; Pro-imaging believe in individuality. Don't follow the crowd who will lose their rights, become a real photographer and earn a regular income from your creativity. Keep your rights and use them for your own benefit. SPONSORS; Rough Guides
MyPlace Panasonic Photo of the Year ends 1 August 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You lose the right forever to exclusively sell images submitted, MyPlace gain the right to use your images forever, to "use, copy or exploit any photographic material uploaded to this website for such promotional purposes as we may decide". Here we have another company awarding themselves a blank cheque! We would like a statement from Panasonic spelling out precisely how they will use the images. Note that the competition rules do not have a statement explicitly excluding commercial usage (this is always worrying), but they do have a statement asking that "You recognise and acknowledge the intellectual property rights of us and of other users of the website". We do Panasonic, but we would like this to be a reciprocal arrangement with regard to photographers rights! We wrote to Panasonic and they failed to reply to our detailed criticism of their contest. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. Have you thought about how much your images are actually worth if you retain the exclusive right to sell them? Why would you want to give up that right? RECOMMENDATION; Pro-Imaging recommend that you protect your camera and learn how to use it effectively. We also believe it to be even more important that you protect your rights and learn how to use them effectively for your own economic benefit. Don't let others benefit from YOUR rights. SPONSORS; Panasonic
Canon New Baby Photo Contest ends 31 May 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 12 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You lose ALL rights and ALL future sales from your submitted images. They are no longer your images, Canon U.S.A. now owns the copyright and can use that right to earn money from your images, money that should be yours. Here is what the rules actually say; All Photos will become the exclusive property of Sponsor, and none will be acknowledged or returned. Sponsor shall have the right, but not the obligation, to edit, adapt and publish any or all of the Photos, and may use them in any media whatsoever, including, but not limited to the Internet, without attribution or compensation to the entrant, the Baby, either of their successors or assigns, or any other entity. ENTERING A PHOTO IN THIS CONTEST CONSTITUTES ENTRANT’S IRREVOCABLE ASSIGNMENT, CONVEYANCE AND TRANSFERENCE TO SPONSOR OF ANY AND ALL RIGHT, TITLE AND INTEREST IN THE PHOTO INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ALL COPYRIGHTS. How do you feel about... It's no longer your photo. If you reproduce it again, have it published in a magazine for example, you can be sued for copyright infringement. Do you want someone else to own your photos? How would you feel if the photo of your baby is being continually used in commercial licencing agreements, not one penny of which you will ever see? How would you feel if the photo of your baby was edited or adapted in a way that you would not approve of? You will have no right to object, Canon have the right to edit, adapt and publish any or all of the Photos. How would you feel if the photo of your baby appeared on a product you would not approve of? You have no right to object. How would you feel if the photo of your baby was sub-licensed to an organisation you would not approve of? You have no right to object. Are Canon's rules valid? Wait a minute! What's this? The law of the United States of America states that a transfer of Copyright is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent. So Canon can only claim your copyright if you sign a written agreement. To keep your rights you must not sign any document that Canon puts in front of you. Canon will put documents in front of the winners, if the winners don't sign, they won't get the prize, but they get to keep their rights, their photo, and be able to enjoy and profit from it forever! Losers can ignore Canon's claims to owning the copyright, they have no signed agreement from the losers which according to the U.S.Copyright Law makes Canon's claims invalid. We wrote to Canon USA and they failed to reply to our detailed criticism of their contest. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Keep your rights, never give them away, they are very valuable which is why others are very keen to get their hands on them. Canon Philosophy This is interesting stuff from their U.S. website. Canon's corporate philosophy has been kyosei — which we define as "all people, regardless of race, religion, or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future." So are we to assume kyosei also covers the practice of claiming intellectual property rights from those who enter photos to a competition and that this helps to engender harmonious living? So how does that work exactly? Recommendation; Pro-imaging believe in healthy life styles, we recommend that you take a very long walk and take note of any traffic light signals you encounter. Also adopt a healthy lifestyle with regard to your photographic rights, excercise them, take care of them, and don't give them to others.
Adobe Design Achievement Awards ends 2 May 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You will be required to agree to lose forever your right to exclusively sell your images for any images chosen as a finalist entry, if you agree Adobe Sytems Incorporated gain the right to use your images forever. There is not even a statement in the terms and conditions saying that every image used will be credited. Adobe states that if you become a finalist you will be asked to sign certain documents, but nowhere on the competition website are these documents on display. You should be able to view the documents you may be required to sign before you enter the competition. Finalists images will be used for commercial purposes and you will not be entitled to seek any remuneration for such usage. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. Whatever you do, DO NOT enter this contest before you have read all of paragraph 8 in the official rules, just click on the competition name above to be taken straight there. Correspondence with Adobe We wrote to Adobe and received a reply from them saying they were satisfied that their contest was a good one, and would we please refrain from putting their contest on our lists. Adobe also copied their reply to their top two legal people. We wrote back dismissing all the points they had made and concluded our letter as follows - "We do understand the importance Adobe attaches to this matter given its close association with the photographic industry. This initiative by Pro-Imaging has been born out of widespread dismay at the rights grabbing malaise that is blighting our industry. This malaise is collecting daily unimaginable volumes of imagery on perpetual usage licenses, in some cases even complete copyright claims. It is not just the Pro-Imaging organisation which is concerned at this blight on the creative professions. It is expressed continually by other organisations and hardly a day goes by on the countless forums where this subject is not discussed with anger and resentment. To see organisations, both hardware and software, to whom photographers have given vast sums of money indulge in these practices is viewed with horror, and gives the impression that despite the profits they make from us our loyalty counts for very little. It is not possible for such a state of affairs to continue without both parties suffering damage in the long run. We have analysed your competition and made our report on the Rights Off List about the Bill of Rights conditions it fails. Naturally if you feel we have been inaccurate, and can demonstrate that your rules do indeed match the points it has failed on, we will of course be happy to correct any errors. If your future competitions meet all the conditions in our Bill of Rights we will be delighted to report them on our Rights On List. We hope you will take our advice as well intended." --- We recieved no reply from Adobe to the above. They are unable to demonstrate that their contest has not failed our Bill of Rights. Recommendation; Pro-imaging believe artists and their families should benefit from their images. Make a will specifying who is to inherit your copyright so that they can continue to benefit from your copyright. That is the only occasion when you must make provision to assign your rights to others. Never give any rights to another business in any other circumstance.
SPONSORS; iStockphoto; MAXON Computer; Nokia; Xerox; X-Rite; Mohawk Fine Paper; Netdiver; Original City Pictures; Saturday Night Magazine; The Creative Group; TransPerfect; Xerox Premier Partners; Behance; CMYK Magazine; Communication Arts; IdN; SXSW Interactive; TheKDU; tomatic
The Great Outdoors Photo Contest ends 30 April 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You lose the right forever to exclusively sell images submitted, the sponsors gain the right to use your images forever in any media, even those not yet invented! The competition rules state that if you become a finalist you will be asked to sign certain documents, but nowhere on the competition website are these documents on display. You should be able to view the documents you may be required to sign before you enter the competition. Even more astonishingly the rules claim that "Entries become the property of Sponsors and will not be returned or acknowledged." This statement has all the appearance of a copyright claim, what exactly are they claiming? Perhaps Photo District News and National Geographic would like to tell us exactly what this statement means? In our notification letter we asked them to explain this statement, but they did not reply to our question.
You will not receive any remuneration for image usage of your images by the sponsors for the rest of your life. How much might you earn if you keep your image and the exclusive right to sell it as often as you like for as long as you live? The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. Pro-Imaging wrote to both National Geographic and PDN about this contest, National Geographich failed to reply. PDN's editor, Holly Hughes, did reply saying that the contest is "no different from any other competition PDN conducts, and we have never received any complaints from any professional photography trade associations about any of them. ASMP for example has vetted the current version of the World in Focus Contest rules, and I’d prefer to take advice from them." We wrote back to Holly as follows - --- Pro-Imaging have read all the competition rules and we are well aware that that the rules state usage is only by National Geographic Traveller and PDN in connection with this contest. However within these terms NGT and PDN are granted perpetual usage of these images. Our Bill of Rights requires competitions to limit usage to two years only from the date of announcement of the winners of the competition. We believe two years is long enough for sponsors and organisers to have the right to free usage of the images, following which full exclusive rights should revert to the image creators. The sponsors and organisers will also have had the considerable benefit of publicity as a result of the competition as well as two years free image usage. We have extremely serious concerns about images being passed into perpetual usage licences and this is reflected in our Bill of Rights condition 2. The competition rules do not explicitly say whether or not the images submitted will be subject to any commercial usage as required by our Bill of Rights condition 3. The rules of The Great Outdoors Photo Contest also require potential winners to sign various documents; - An affidavit of eligibility & liability release
- Warranty of ownership & license
- Publicity release
- Any other affidavits and/or releases or additional documents that may be required by prize suppliers
In our Bill of Rights condition 1 we require competition rules to publicly display all the documents that an entrant may be required to sign, such documents are extensions to the competitions terms and conditions and should be open to public view. The documents mentioned in the competition rules are not displayed on the competition website. Within the competition rules for The Great Outdoors Photo Contest it states “Entries become the property of Sponsors and will not be returned or acknowledged.” If this means that by becoming the property of the sponsors that the sponsors claim the Intellectual Property rights, I would advise that such a claim is invalid in both U.S. and International copyright law. To claim copyright it is necessary in law for the assignor to sign a written agreement assigning the copyright and/or moral rights to another body. Without a signed agreement a claim for copyright is completely invalid. I would be grateful if you could clarify the precise meaning of the above statement. Finally I would like to say that Pro-Imaging view the apparent consensus on what constitutes acceptable terms and conditions for competitions as in fact completely unacceptable to the entrants. Many are naive and do not fully understand the rights in law that creators have, the value of such rights, and the need to protect them. It is one of Pro-Imaging’s aims to address this situation through publications, press releases, education, and through its own members spreading the word. I hope this has clarified for you the specific concerns Pro-Imaging have with The Great Outdoors Photo Contest rules, but if you have any further queries I will be very happy to assist you. --- Pro-Imaging received no response to the above letter to Holly Hughes at PDN. Recommendation; Pro-imaging believe in healthy life styles, we recommend that you take a very long walk and take note of any traffic light signals you encounter. Also adopt a healthy lifestyle with regard to your photographic rights, excercise them, take care of them, and don't give them to others. SPONSORS; National Geographic; pdn
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 ends 31 March 2008 Bill of Rights condition failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; If you are a winning entry the rules state no limit on the length of time the images will be used, and if that is the case you would you lose the right to exclusively sell the selected images forever, and BBC & Natural History Museum gain the right to use your images forever, there are no specified limits that we can find. In our correspondence with the Natural History Museum they said they only needed the images for the exhibition and tour, but when we pressed them to spell out how long that was, was it less than two years, they did not respond. Why? The competition rules are unclear as to whether royalty payments are rights managed or on a royalty free basis. We asked the Natural History Museum to enlighten us about their usage agreement, is it rights managed or not? We got no response to that question. Why? Nor is it clear from the rules that you can reject license agreements for commercial usage but still be considered for a winning place in the competition. We cannot find a statement in the terms and conditions saying that every image used will be credited. When we questioned the Natural History Museum about this they said "We are meticulous in applying credit lines and in insisting the press do so too. Under the competition's terms & conditions of image use failure to include the credit makes the author liable to a fee imposed by the photographer." Pro-Imaging applaud this but when we asked the Natural History Museum to enlighten us as to where it says that in the published rules we received no response. Why? Also, how is an entrant supposed to know he can rightly claim a penalty fee if it does not state this in the terms and conditions. If we are to judge competitions fairly the published rules must be complete and accurate.
There are some good aspects to this competition such as the statement regarding CD entries being destroyed after the judging period, and slides being returned if the correct postage is provided by the entrant. Pro-Imaging welcome these provisions and are likely to include them as a future update to our Bill of Rights. Pro-Imaging are sorry that we were unable to continue our discussions with the Natural History Museum about this competition, but it takes two to have a dialogue. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. RECOMMENDATION; Pro-imaging believe in individuality. Don't follow the crowd who will lose their rights, become a real photographer and earn a regular income from your creativity. Keep your rights and use them for your own benefit.
British Council Creative Cities Competition ends 13 March 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 3 March 2008
What happens if you enter this competition; You lose the right forever to exclusively sell images submitted, the British Council gain the right to use and sub-licence your images forever. The British Council reserve several rights to themselves "including the offering of this material on the market or the lending of this material for use without remuneration." The rules do not say the images will be used solely to promote the competition thus implying commercial usage is possible, and note that "The British Council may sub-license the photos and videos as well as transfer the license to a third party without the prior consent of any of the participants." Note that the British Council receives substantial public funds from the UK taxpayer (£189M in 2006/7), ask whether this competition is a proper use of public funds in that it seeks to remove some IP rights from the participants. The UK government is currently considering the Gowers review that it commissioned to strengthen UK Intellectual Property law. Pro-Imaging consider it astonishing that a government who, having already spent considerable sums of money considering means of better protection for creators rights, is in fact also funding an organisation employing competition terms and conditions that strip creators of many of their rights. Utterly amazing! Subsequent to our notification letter the British Council engaged in discussion with Pro-Imaging. They said that they "will certainly take advantage of Pro-Imaging's advice when designing competitions in future", and went on to say that for this competition they "will not use the photos longer than for two years" and "discuss further details of cooperation with the final winners". Pro-Imaging welcome these statements from the British Council, but we note too that the rules of this competition as published remain unchanged, and that these statements, while encouraging, are not clear enough to fully comply with our Bill of Rights. The law FREELY gave you the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to license usage for your images to others for YOUR economic benefit. Use your rights, don't give them away, they are very valuable. RECOMMENDATION; Pro-Imaging recommend that you protect your camera and learn how to use it effectively. We also believe it to be even more important that you protect your rights and learn how to use them effectively for your own economic benefit. Don't let others benefit from YOUR rights.
Student Challenge 2008 ends 3 March 2008 Bill of Rights conditions failed 15 March 2008
Newsflash! 10 April 2008 Competition Rules Amended!
Pro-Imaging and One NorthEast have had positive and constructive discussions about the rules of this competition. Although this competition is now closed for entries One NorthEast have retrospectively changed the rules that were detailed in the original Rights Off List report.
In brief the following changes have been made by One NorthEast -
One NorthEast no longer seek to claim copyright, nor waiving of moral rights. One NorthEast no longer claim unsuccessful students submissions other than a license permission to display submissions on the competition website. All images will be credited. For the winning image the student will be invited to license their submission to One NorthEast for use in the Regional Image Campaign, such license appropriately time limited. and with a condition that the student will not use the submission in a way that could harm the reputation of the region.
Pro-Imaging welcome these changes that One NorthEast have made and we sincerely thank One NorthEast for their response to our concerns. These changes remove all criticisms that we made of the original competitions rules detailed in our original Rights Off List report for this competition and the contest has now been transferred to our Rights On List.
N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! N E W ! See the full and ever increasing list of failed competitions in the new Investigated list. |
