Pro-Imaging

Guardian News & Media In Pictures Competition - weekly

The Rules of this Contest

Note the rules for this competition keep moving to different pages each week, do a search on the Guardian website for -

        "In pictures" competition

- to find the latest rules if our link above fails.

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

"9. In consideration of GNM agreeing to consider the entry, each entrant grants to GNM an irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence for the full period of copyright to publish or otherwise use the entry in so far as is relevant to this specific competition in any way and at any time and to sub-license such rights to any third-party. GNM will use reasonable efforts to assert the entrant's moral rights in the photograph. However GNM may cut, edit, crop or arrange the entry as it sees fit and shall be entitled to sub-licence such right to third-parties."

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
• Pass, 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 the fails the Bill of Rights primarily because it claims the right to use all submitted images  "for the full period of copyright".

It may be of interest to note that in the U.K., in which country this contest is running, the full period of copyright lasts for 70 years after the photographers death. It is quite unacceptable to make such claims, especially for images that don't win and also get used by Guardian News & Media Limited for the "for the full period of copyright".

The statement that they will publish the work "in so far as is relevant to this specific competition" is imprecise and fails the Bill of Rights condition 2 that requires a more precise wording, i.e. "Solely and exclusively to promote the competition"

This contest is not recommended. 

###

Organisations - Guardian News & Media Limited, Canon UK

Judges - Judges and judging is not mentioned on the contest website. This is quite extraordinary.

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 to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated June 9th 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.