Pro-Imaging

Planet Magazine Global Travel Photo Contest  ends 20 Oct 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.

""By entering this contest, you agree to allow PLANET and its affiliates to use your name, city and state, voice and images in connection with publication of your entry and for promotional purposes (except where prohibited), without review, notification, or approval. Winners may be required to sign and return an affidavit of eligibility, grant of rights, and a publicity and liability release within 14 days of notification, or prize may be forfeited and an alternate winner selected. Entrant agrees to hold harmless PLANET Magazine, their officers, directors, employees, divisions, affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotional agencies, from any claim by any third party relating to any rights in any photograph submitted""

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
• Fail, 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
• Fail, Entrants are not required to sign commercial usage licenses

4 Declarations

• Pass, The organisations that acquire rights are all named
• Pass, 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, Planet magazine 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 prize 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.

We are unable to recommend this competition. Enter a contest on the The Rights On List instead.

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Planet Magazine Response

We made a copy of the above report available to the Planet Magazine on the 12th of August 2008. In our email to the magazine we said we would be happy to correct anything in the report that was incorrect. We also said that we planned to publish the report on the 18th August, but if Planet Magazine wished to adjust or clarify the rules to let us know and we would delay the report for a reasonable period while the changes were made.

We received no reply from Planet Magazine.

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Organisations - Tiny Vices, LiveBooks inc.,  Powerhouse Books, PLANET° magazine

Judges -

"Tim Barber runs the well-known online gallery tinyvices.com. He is also a photographer, publisher and designer and just launched his own independent publishing house TV Books (tvbookshop.com), which produces unique books, artist monographs, zines and posters. is currently curating a series of five photography books to be published by the Aperture Foundation in the fall of 2008. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Steve Kalalian has been on the forefront of the digital imaging, photography and post-production industries since he founded The Millennium WorldGroup in 1991. Steve’s umbrella of leading brands includes Impact Digital, Industrial Color, ICLAB, Fast Ashley’s Studios, GLOBALedit and The M Project Gallery.

Marek Milewicz is a longstanding figure in the international photographic community, having founded one of the most successful and prestigious photographers’ agencies known on both sides of the Atlantic, Marek and Associates. He started with only one photographer over thirty years ago, Deborah Turbeville, who is now one of the legends of art, travel, and fashion photography. Other important photographers whose careers he has helped develop are Walter Chin, Michel Comte, and Steven Klein.

Hans Neleman is a Dutch-born American photographer and author of three acclaimed photography books: Moko-Maori Tattoo, Night Chicas, and Silence. He is the founder of WIN-INITIATIVE a new stock agency based on the cutting-edge talent of emerging photographers worldwide. He works from his studio in SOHO, New York City. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Derek Peck is Founder and Creative Director at PLANET Magazine. He conceived PLANET over ten years ago while napping in a hammock in Latin America and, consequently, hasn’t napped much in a hammock since. He has been a writer, editor and photographer for many years, was senior editor at Surface Magazine, and occasionally contributes to the UK style magazine, Another.  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sara Rosen is Associate Publisher and Senior Vice President of Marketing and Publicity for powerHouse Books, Publisher of Miss Rosen Editions, Editor of powerHouse Magazine, and Publicity Director of the New York Photo Festival. She lives and works in New York City.

Anthony Smith is a veteran travel writer with two decades of experience in art photography, ethnography and photojournalism. In addition to his work with photographer Gerald Forster for The Light Years Project (a seminal collection of photography, poetry and stories from the field), he has traveled to and written about over thirty countries on six different continents. He is editor-at-large at PLANET."

Contact - Send enquiries 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 12 August 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.