Pro-Imaging

Shutterfly; Hit The Road ends 12 August 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.

"In consideration of entrant's submission being included in this Sweepstakes, each entrant hereby grants to the Sponsor a non-exclusive, irrevocable, fully paid, universal license in perpetuity to use, copy, sublicense, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, publish, delete or display such submission, or any portion thereof, including any derivative works, in any media now known or hereafter devised without any further right of approval or compensation. Each entrant releases the Promotion Entities, and their assignees and licensees, from any and all claims or liability (now known or hereafter arising), including but not limited to any claims for defense and/or indemnity, in connection therewith and entrant warrants that he/she has permission from all persons appearing in, and all necessary rights in and to the photograph for the Sponsor to use the photograph as described above, without compensation."

"Potential winners may be required to sign and return an Affidavit of Eligibility and Release of Liability and a Publicity Release within ten (10) days of attempted delivery or prize will be forfeited."

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, Rules state a credit is always given to the photographer when the image is published
  
• Fail, 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, A statement clarifying the commercial usage position is present as per The Bill of Rights
• 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 -

If you submit 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. However, Shutterfly have gained the right to use all submitted images for ever in any medium they choose.

A series of documents are required to be signed by "potential winners" but they are not displayed on the website leaving entrants entirely without knowledge of what they may need to agree to, and if ultimately they don't agree with what is required potential winners will be disqualified. Yet this contests terms and conditions ask you to be bound by them before entering the contest. It is unacceptable to demand that entrants be bound by terms and conditions, some of which are not published.

This competition is not recommended. 

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Organisations - Shutterfly, Site Systems

Judges - The contest "is administered and judged by Site Systems, 5855 Green Valley Circle, Suite 108, Culver City, California 90230." There are no details of the judges or their experience in judging photographs.

Contact - Send enquiries about this contest to Gretchen Sloan at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 4 July 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.