Pro-Imaging

Kenora Tourism Photo Contest 2008 ends 15 September 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.

"Publication
All submissions will become the property of the City of Kenora and the Kenora Hospitality Alliance (KHA) at not cost. The City of Kenora and the KHA reserve the non-exclusive right to publish any entry and/or use any entry in promotional material. Model releases are the responsibility of the entrant. Winners must also sign a waiver indication that the photo has not been previously published."

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, the City of Kenora and the Kenora Hospitality Alliance have gained the right to use all submitted images for ever in any medium they choose without any payment to the creator of the photograph.

We do not recommend this competition.

The Kenora Hospitality Alliance and the City of Kenora's tourism department issued a press release on July 3rd 2008 announcing the photo contest. An extract from this press release states -

"New and up-to-date images are critical to our marketing efforts,” said Mark Duggan, KHA director. “It is our local scenery, people and activities that distinguish Kenora and Lake of the Woods from other areas.”

For the past 3 years, the KHA has produced a full-colour calendar. The images entered through this year’s photo contest will be featured in the calendar as well as local and regional marketing programs. The City’s tourism department will also use the photos for print and web based marketing campaigns.

"A photo library has been isolated in our tourism strategy as an important piece to the marketing puzzle,” said Randy Nickle, Tourism Committee Chair. “As we embark on the implementation of the plan plan, the photo contest is assisting us in accomplishing one of our goals."

Clearly a primary purpose of this contest is to build a photo library at little cost to those businesses who derive a benefit from it, and the photographers who build this library derive no benefit from it. 

It is very surprising that a city council and a group of businesses think it acceptable to get works of creativity for nothing. Would the City of Kenora expect to get any other goods and services it needs for nothing? Would all the hotels and bed and breakfast businesses that comprise the Kenora Hospitality Alliance expect to get the food and cleaning materials they need for their business for nothing? It is completely unacceptable that they should expect to get photographs for nothing.

We also note that the Kenora Hospitality Alliance has a page on it's website entitled Send a Postcard but it only contains a message saying "Sorry. There are no postcards to display at this time. Please check back again."  Pro-Imaging will check back again after the winners of this contest have been announced on September 23rd 2008.

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Organisations - City of Kenora, Kenora Hospitality Alliance the latter of which is comprised of the following businesses - Best Western, Comfort Inn, Days Inn, Lake of the Woods,  Northwoods Bed & Breakfast, Southview Inn and Bistro, Super 8 Motel, Travelodge, Countryside Manor

Judges - No details of the judges background and experience in judging photographs are given.

Contact - Send enquiries about this contest to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (His Worship Mayor Len Compton of Kenora), This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (Kenora Hospitality Alliance), This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (Nancy Tulloch, Kenora Tourism Development Officer) and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (City Hall)

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 9 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.