Pro-Imaging

Photo Answers Holiday Photographer of the Year 2008 ends 31 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.

"You also grant Photo answers, Practical Photography, Digital Photo, AA Publishing and Saga/Spirit of Adventure the right to free reproduction of the winning and shortlisted images on the results pages or any related publicity. This can include any resulting print or web use – such as a book, magazine feature, or exhibition – and your images will also be shown on the Photo answers and the Spirit of Adventure sites for public viewing and commenting. Any comments made online will not be used by the judging panel. Images may be used during the competition for any publicity purposes relating to the competition.

Copyright of each image is retained by the photographer. Use outside of that already stated will be paid for at normal reproduction rates negotiated with the photographer."

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

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

• Unclear, 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 -

• There is no statement limiting the duration of free usage as per The Bill of Rights
• Usage in a book is not subject to a time limit as per condition 2 in the The Bill of Rights
• Commercial usage may be made of the photos but the rules do not make clear that it will be subject to a time limited rights managed license agreement
• The rules do not state that the photos will always be credited
• The judges are not listed

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.

It is not clear that the usage by sponsors is solely and exclusively for promoting the competition 

This contest is not recommended. 

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Organisations - Photo Answers, Saga, AA, Bauer Consumer Media 

Judges - The web site only states that there is a judging panel, not who they are

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

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 11 June 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.