Pro-Imaging

Small Luxury Hotels of the World Photo Competition ends 31 July 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.

"It is a condition of the competition and of each prize being accepted by the prize winner that during the course of their prize winning trip each prize winner will take a minimum of 20 high quality and interesting photographs of their Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ venue and its surroundings and will submit such photographs in an agreed format to the organiser promptly on their return for unrestricted use by the organiser for marketing and promotional purposes. All such photographs are subject to the copyright and usage terms set out below."

"It is a condition of entry to the competition that in relation to each photograph submitted to the competition, together with those taken by prize winners during the course of their prize winning trip, the entrant/prize winner thereby grants to the organiser a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, transferable, worldwide licence to use, copy, publicly display, distribute, sub-licence, modify, make derivative works and otherwise fully exploit such photograph for all commercial purposes, including marketing and promotion of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, through any media outlet and in any format without attribution of copyright to the entrant/prize winner and without any payment, compensation or permission."

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

• Fail, 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 -

By submitting 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.

Note that if you are a winner during your holiday awarded as a prize you will be required to take 20 high quality photographs all of which become subject to the rights claimed by the contest rules as detailed above.

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 - Small Luxury Hotels of the World Limited, American Airlines, Hotel Punta Islita, GAIA, The Capital, Luton Hoo, ESENCIA, The Iroquois New York

Judges - The website states that "The organisers will appoint an independent judging panel to determine the shortlisted entries and winners."   The judges are not named.

Contact - express your feelings 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 10th June 2008

The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed.

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.