Pro-Imaging

1st Annual Young Artist On-line Art Competition ends 15 June 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.

"All entries become the exclusive property of the Echo Prospects ("Sponsor") and will not be acknowledged or returned."

"The potential winner will be required to complete an Affidavit of Eligibility and Liability/Publicity Release, which must be returned within 14 days or an alternate potential winner will be selected. Any prize notification letter or affidavit or other documents described in these Official Rules that are returned as undeliverable or any failure to comply with these Official Rules, will result in a forfeiture of eligibility to win any prize."

"By entering the competition, the entrant represents and warrants to Sponsor that he or she is the sole creator of the art work, and that he or she is fully empowered to transfer and assign and, by entering, does transfer and assign, all right, title and interest in and to the art work and the good-will associated therewith worldwide and in perpetuity, to Sponsor, its successors and assigns. Submission of a art work grants Sponsor the right to use, publish, adapt, edit and/or modify such entry in any way, in any and all media worldwide, without limitation or compensation to the entrant."

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 

• Fail, 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
  
• Fail, 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, you will lose all your rights to license the image in future and Echo Prospects can use it forever in any way that they wish.

Winners will have to sign documents failing which they are disqualified, but nowhere on the competition website are these documents on display, so when you enter the contest you are unable to know what conditions you are going to have to agree to. This is quite unacceptable and would not be permitted in a normal business deal. You should consider why Echo Prospects use a tactic like this. The contest is targetted at young people under the age of 35. 

The competition website states - "The FindYourArtSchool.com Young Adult Art Competition, sponsored by The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division, is geared towards helping current students & prospective art school students gain experience through competition." We agree with that, and hope that the students will use this experience to read terms and conditions of contests very carefully.

This contest is not recommended. 

Organisations - Echo Prospects, Art Institute of Pittsburgh

Judges - 3 unnamed judges

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 , and 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.