Pro-Imaging

Caltex Shooting Stars ends 30th 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.

"2. The participant will be required to grant to Chevron an exclusive perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right and licence to use the Work that is selected as one of the winning entries in this Contest ( the “Winning Entry” ).

3. For the avoidance of doubt , Chevron shall have the exclusive right to:

a) reproduce the Winning Entry in any manner or form and circulate such Winning Entry to any person in connection with the Contest, without compensation ; and

b) use, copy, publish, print, transmit, and distribute the Winning Entry in any manner, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes, as may be determined by Chevron without the prior consent of the photographers or owners of the Works and without any compensation whatsoever.

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
  
• Unclear, 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

Rule 6 requires contestants to agree to requests by Chevron to "do such other things as may be reasonably requested by Chevron" but gives no details of what "such things" are. No one should enter a contest with such a rule and we'd advise anyone still thinking about entering this contest to write to Chevron first and ask them to spell out what things may they be asked to do.

Originally this contest claimed copyright, but following a protest from photographers in the Philippines Chevron changed the rule so that now they are claiming an "exclusive perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right and licence". This rule means that even though you own the copyright you can never license the image to anyone else and the image is rendered worthless.

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 - Caltex

Judges - They say "A panel of judges appointed by Chevron (including external professional photographers) will select and shortlist the submissions"  but don't name the 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

© 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.