Pro-Imaging

2008 11 30 Professional Photographer of the Year '08

Professional Photographer of the Year '08 ends 30 November 2008

Click the above title to see the contest rules page.

This competition has been notified to Pro-Imaging by our contributors because it fails to comply with the Bill of Rights. Pro-Imaging have verified that the rules do not fully comply with the Bill of Rights and to illustrate this extracts from this competitions rules are listed below. This report has been made available to the organiser.

If you are a competition organiser and want to understand why your competition appears here please note the following bullet points. Briefly, competitions which pass the Bill of Rights do not -

claim copyright
seek waiving of moral rights
fail to give a credit for all free usage.
seek usage rights other than for solely and exclusively promoting the contest. Note that a book, posters, cards, or a calendar are seen as legitimate ways of promoting the contest and defraying costs.
seek free usage rights in excess of 5 years
use the images commercially without the photographers agreement, and such commercial usage is to be rights managed and limited to 5 years.
make it a condition of winning that an entrant must sign a commercial usage agreement.
fail to publish all documents on the competition website that an entrant may have to sign
fail to name the judges for this or last year's competition
fail to explicitly state all the organisations who will acquire rights to the images
set a closing date more than 18 months after the contest launch date
fail to make clear statements of rights claimed and how images are used.

This competition has failed on one or more of the above. Click on any of the highlighted links in the above bullet points for further information, and of course comprehensive detail on all these points is given in the Bill of Rights.

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 the Archant competitions, you accept these Terms & Conditions and the Rules of Entry. By submitting your images, you agree to allow Archant and the sponsor of the appropriate category to use your image on a 'no fee' basis in print or online, providing it is used in connection with the awards promotion.

These terms apply to all users of this website. If you do not accept these terms then you should immediately stop using this website. Your use of the website confirms your acceptance of these terms.

The winner(s) may be notified by email or phone and the results may be published on this website and/or in the magazine. We reserve the right to report details of competition winners and to publish their photos if required. Archant and the sponsors reserve the right to use the images on a no-fee basis, providing it is part of the competition promotion. The prizes must be taken as offered with no alternative. In the event that the prize cannot be supplied no liability will attach to Archant. Entry into this competition gives rise to no binding agreement between the parties. When prizes are supplied by third parties we are acting as their agents and as such we exclude all liability for loss or damage you may suffer as a result of this promotion. The website editor's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Employees of Archant and the prize provider and their immediate families and agents may not enter."

Pro-Imaging Comment -There is a lack of clarity in these rules regarding usage which fails the Bill of Rights. No time limit for usage is specified. There is no statement saying the entrant will always be credited. There is no statement that the image usage will be solely and exclusively to promote the contest, instead they say images will be used if part of the competition promotion which is imprecise and permits other parallel usages. The rules have nothing to say about possible commercial usage and what terms are offered should commercial usage be desired by Archant, rights managed or royalty free. This contest is not recommended.

Organisations - Archant, Professional Photographer Magazine, Jessops, Olympus, Bowens, Sigma, Epson, Creativity Backgrounds, Nikon, Adobe, Giotto, Mitsubishi

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

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. If Pro-Imaging is notified of rule changes by the organiser the competition rules will be reviewed again for compliance with the Bill of Rights. The competition will be moved to the Rights On List when the rules comply with the Bill of Rights.

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