Pro-Imaging

Major Review of the Competitions Campaign

The campaign has been running for three months now and over that time there have been minor adjustments here and there both for content and presentation of the information. In the last few days a major review of all aspects of the campaign has taken place, with regard to the following -

What is the campaign trying to achieve?

Have we got the right rules in our Bill of Rights to achieve the above?

Is the presentation of information as effective as it could be?

It was inevitable that the campaign would be reviewed at some point, but the catalyst for doing it now came from a frank discussion with a contest organiser whose contest rules we had criticised, and who in turn criticised our Bill of Rights and report presentation. Many issues were raised in the course of this discussion and we took the view that now was the time to address them, even if it meant normal campaign reporting being impeded for a week or two.

What is the campaign trying to achieve?

The campaign was born of long frustration at seeing countless rights grabbing competitions building image libraries that could be freely used by the organisations concerned without cost, and with the ability to profit from them.

These types of contests are a huge threat to the viability of anyone making a living as a photographer. The Bill of Rights was born from the anger engendered by that frustration but at no point was a single easily understood aim ever expressed that would be used as a guide to the Bill of Rights provisions that would be needed.

That aim has now been expressed and it is -

To stop the building of image libraries from competitions with images that can be freely used without limit of time.

There are other contests of good intent run by organisations whose business is to make a profit from running contests, and to do so they need rights that give them the possibility of generating a profit. We took the view that this is not a problem in itself as long as the photographers rights are protected. We took the view that protection means the rights acquired by organisers have to be time limited.

Following lengthy discussions both internally and externally the following new guidelines were agreed upon -

1. Images submitted to a contest can be freely used to promote the contest for a maximum period of five years from the date of announcement of the winners.

2. Images submitted to a contest can be freely used in a book for that specific contest subject to the photographs being fully credited. There is no limit on the publication term for such a book.

3. Images submitted to the last five years of a specific contest can be freely used in a compilation book subject to the photographs being fully credited. There is no limit on the publication term for such a book.

4. All other commercial usage for images submitted to a specific contest is to be subject to a non-exclusive rights managed contract not exceeding five years from the date of announcement of the winners of that specific contest.

The Bill of Rights has been updated now to accomodate these revisions. It is hoped that these slightly more flexible rules will reflect more accurately the realities of the commercial world and encourage organisers who run contests for profit to continue to do so, but to do so within the guidelines set out in the Bill of Rights.

Is the presentation of information as effective as it could be?

This aspect of the campaign has been criticised as being too adversarial and not informative enough and we agree. Our only excuse is that the campaign was conceived as a reaction to a long held and deep seated anger and frustration at the voracious rights grabbing indulged in by some organisers who have not the slightest respect or concern for photographrs rights.

In response to that criticism we have engineered a completely new format of reporting that is not only much more informative, but is neutral and simply sticks to the facts. The new report format details for each contest every Bill of Rights condition and whether or not it is passed or failed on that condition, and clicking on any one condition in the report will give extensive detail about it.

We hope this new format will also prove educational too, especially to those new to photography who are not familiar with terms such as copyright, moral rights, licenses, and so on. Each report has links to other sources of information on these matters.

It will take a little while to convert all the existing reports to the new format and that work is already underway. The first contest converted to the new format is the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2008.

The conversion to the new format will begin at the top of the Rights Off List and when that's complete the Rights On List will also be converted next. New contests will be added in the new format, but please note that while this conversion work is underway reporting of new contests will be a slowed.

RSS Feeds

We take the opportunity at this point each week to mention that if you want to keep up to date with the competition campaign, click on the orange RSS Feed icon in your browser address bar. You will receive competition diary updates direct to your RSS feed. Regular visitors know this already, but new visitors arrive all the time!

Contacting Us

We welcome notices telling us about contests that are either good or bad. You can use our Competitions Campaign Contact Form to tell us what you've found. We are especially keen to hear about good contests that you think pass our Bill of Rights, at the moment they are more difficult to find but as the campaign continues for the long term, we expect that to get easier.

We try and reply to all the notices we receive, but this may not always be possible. We thank you here in advance for any help you offer. 

Other Diary Entries

Other competition diary entries can be read here.