Pro-Imaging

Photography Laureates Photo Contest - weekly

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition. These extracts detail the rights being claimed from entrants.

"By submitting photographs, reviews of photos, biographical information, and other content, contributors are certifying that these works are of their own original creation and do not violate any copyrights. By submitting material to The Photo Challenge, you agree that we may display, modify (for appearance, not for content), transmit, distribute or delete your posting. We may remove content at any time at our sole discretion. Individuals who submit their photos, reviews and other content to us retain their copyrights, but grant to us the right to reproduce and distribute the submitted material on this Website, or in printed form."

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
  
• Fail, 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
• Unclear, 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

• Fail, The contest end date is within 16 months of the contest being announced

Conclusions

This competition has no end date as such, and to enter and remain in it you have to agree to pay a regular subscription either monthly ($5.99), quarterly ($15.99), or annually ($59.99).  We have read that Photo Laureates have about 120,000 members.

The rules of the contest grant permission to The Photo Challenge to use and publish your photograph for ever. The rules do not make clear the purposes to which the photographs are employed. Although you can still license your photograph for non-exclusive use you have lost forever your right license your photograph exclusively.

We could not find any mention of judges. The contest is primarily driven by public voting but on all the image reviews we have looked at a John Warton makes comments on behalf of this organisation.

Photo Laureates have issued a press release denying they were operating a scam and statements from John Warton are available to read at dpchallenge, BetterPhoto, Yelp, photo.net, and countless others that you will find with a Google search.

This competition is not recommended. 

 
Organisation - Photo Laureates

Judges - Public voting primarily with comments from John Warton

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 10 June 2008

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

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.