Pro-Imaging

UK Government Releases Rights Grabbing Information

A recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Pro-Imaging to the United Kingdom Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) has been answered. DBIS is responsible, along with many other duties, for the United Kingdom copyright legislation. The FOI request was submitted following the launch of the DBIS Rights Grabbing competition entitled 'Living Science', the terms of which were changed following Pro-Imaging's complaint.

We asked for the terms and conditions for other photo competitions DBIS had organised recently to be released. The following is an extract from their reply -

In addition to the Living Science competition, the number of competitions promoted by the department is two:

• An internal competition held by BERR in August 2008 involving the submission of photographs or creative images. I can confirm that the copyright for these images remained with the photographers, and each entrant granted to BERR an irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual worldwide licence to publish any of their submitted photographs in any way and to sub-license such rights to any third-party. Copies of the terms and conditions are enclosed. 

• A Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) photography competition held from July to the end of November 2009.  BBSRC is an Executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) of BIS, where it receives its funding.

In their reply DBIS said they had attached to their reply the terms and conditions for the BBSRC contest. Due no doubt to an oversight they had not in fact attached them but we found they were still available online. The BBSRC contest reserved "the right to retain a non-exclusive license in perpetuity to reproduce entries in any media for promotional purposes without providing payment for use"

DBIS Fails to Respond to Key Questions 

When Pro-Imaging submitted its Freedom of Information request to DBIS we also asked them to respond to questions regarding their view of the practice of rights grabbing. The department chose to ignore our questions and so we are still unable to report the departments view of this practice. We have therefore submitted them again along with a new FOI request.  The following is an extract from our new request -

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"We note from the FOI attachments that the UK Government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) and its predecessors, BERR & DIUS, promoted two other photography competitions.  In both cases the terms required entrants to grant an irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty free, perpetual worldwide license for their photos to be published in any way, and to sub-license such rights. The terms also failed to respect the entrant’s moral right to be credited.

Given that the rights requested in these competitions are the same, and match the rights requested by many other publicly funded bodies, there is concern that it may be the policy of DBIS, and other government departments, to organise competitions employing such terms in order to obtain creative works that can be freely used at will forever.  If so, given that most entrants are unaware of the value of such rights, it would not be surprising if creative people in the UK, and elsewhere, concluded that UK Government departments and other public bodies, such as local authorities, are content to exploit this naivety to their advantage.

Therefore we submit a further Freedom of Information request. Please make available –

a) Copies of all documents setting out any guidelines, policies, or legal advice used by your department, DBIS, and other government departments, regarding the terms and conditions to be used for the submission of creative works by members of the public, or by government employees, to competitions or appeals for creative content.

b) For each such document please note which department was responsible for its creation.

It is disappointing that questions about rights grabbing asked in our original email on March 1 2010 to the Right Honourable David Lammy have not been answered by him, or on behalf of him by his department. Therefore we have attached that original email for your information and you will note that the following questions were raised in that email;

We raise the following questions for DBIS to respond to.

1) What is your department’s position concerning the practice of rights grabbing?

2) Will DBIS take steps to ensure that future competitions by public bodies seeking creative submissions are not subject to rights grabbing terms and conditions?

I am sure you are aware of the meaning of rights grabbing, but in case of doubt, rights grabbing is a practice seeking to gain IP rights to creative works submitted by competition entrants exceeding those needed to promote the competition, and no other purpose, for a limited time period, typically two years or less.

A primary purpose in writing to Mr Lammy and Lord Mandelson was to obtain a statement from their department concerning this practice, a department which after all is responsible for IP legislation.

We trust your department will now respond to these questions and to the fulfilling of our new Freedom of Information request."

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The above was sent to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills on Monday 19 April 2010. We will publish any responses we receive.