Pro-Imaging

Cultures On My Street ends 30 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.

"7. All participants must agree to the subsequent use of their photo material by the European Commission for measures related to the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008."

"The European Commission reserves the right to use submitted photos for the information campaign and to reproduce all entries for promotional purposes."

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 -

• There is no statement limiting the duration of free usage as per The Bill of Rights
• Commercial usage is made of the photos but there is no time limited rights managed agreement to license and limit such usage
• 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.

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. 

A Freedom of Information request was submitted to the organiser on the 24th November 2008 seeking further details about this contest.

Organisations - European Commission, Berlitz, EF - Education First, The European Federation of Youth Hostel Associations, The European Youth Forum, The European Youth Parliament

Judges - The website states "In total, four winners will be selected from among all eligible submissions. Three will be chosen by a jury of established artists and leading figures on intercultural issues. The fourth winner will be selected by the visitors to the competition website through a process of online voting."

No where does it name who the judges are.

Contact - Send enquiries and views about this contest to here.

© 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.