Pro-Imaging

Belfast City Council "Parks - Our Heritage" ends 30 May 2008

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition. These extracts detail the rights being claimed from entrants.

"Belfast City Council retains the right to free reproduction and exhibition of all entries. By sending a photo to us, you grant us permission to publish your photo, or any part of it, in any media we choose, including our website. No payment will be made for the use of your photo."

Results of Testing the Rules

Listed below are the results of the tests we carried out on this competition's rules. The tests are all based on the standards set out in The Bill of Rights. By adopting these standards competition organisers can create competition rules that meet the needs of organisers and are fair and respectful to the rights of entrants. For each test a result is given which can be Pass of Fail. Competitions that pass all these tests go on The Rights On List, those that don't go on The Rights Off List.

If the rules are vague and we cannot determine whether the rules pass a particular test or not the result is shown as Unclear.  Where a test is not necessary the result is shown as N/A.

Click on any result below for more information about that specific test.

1 Copyright & Moral Rights 

• Pass, All photographers entering the contest retain their copyright
• Pass, The contest does not require any entrants to waive moral rights
• Fail, A credit is always given to the photographer when the image is published
  
• Pass, All the documents that must be completed by each entrant to participate in or win a contest are shown
  

2 Free Usage Durations Claimed

• Fail, The organisers free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, The sponsors free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• N/A, Book usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, free usage only promotes the contest or is used for a book 

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

• Fail, Commercial usage is rights managed & time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• Pass, Entrants are not required to sign commercial usage licenses

4 Declarations

• Pass, The organisations that acquire rights are all named
• Fail, This (or last) years Judges are named along with brief bio details

5 Contest End Date

• Pass, The contest end date is within 16 months of the contest being announced

Conclusions

This contest fails The Bill of Rights because -

If you submit an image to this contest, although you can continue to license your image non-exclusively, you will lose forever the right to exclusively license your image. 

Pro-Imaging call this type of contest a Commission Contest. It enables a large number of photographers to be 'commissioned' for a specific purpose without having to incur the cost of actually paying any photographer. It also has the advantage to the organiser of being supplied with a large number of images free to use without any license restrictions and at very little cost.

This contest is not recommended.

### 

Organisations - Belfast City Council, Bloomingdale Nurseries, Morrow Group

Judges - The website says "a panel of judges will choose the winning photos."

Contact - Send enquiries and views about this contest to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated April 2008

The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed with a link to the Pro-Imaging website.

Text reproduced above in quotes has been extracted from the competition website for the purposes of review in this report.

NB. If the competition rules are changed after updated date shown above it is the competition organisers responsibility to notify Pro-Imaging of changes made.