BF Gets it Done Photo Contest

It seem that some organizers of photo contests looks so lowly of photographers and perhaps looks at them as if they're a bunch of kids wanting some attention - only to win an unidentified gadget package and some limited edition pink urinal pen holders! Read the mechanics below and you be the judge..

Team Bayani Fernando invites all professional and amateur photographers to join the BF GETS IT DONE Photo Contest!

Simply capture a photo from anywhere in the Philippines where Chairman Bayani Fernando was able to improve the situation of that area to join.

Contest Mechanics:

1. Participants must log on & register at www.bayanifernando.com.ph to join.

2. Photos MUST be taken from any area of the Philippines where a Bayani Fernando/MMDA project has been or is being implemented.

3. Duration of contest is from May 12, 2009 – May June 12, 2009.

4. Deadline for submission of entries is June 12, 2009.

5. All entries must be submitted with a title and an explanation on how the photo embodies “BF Gets it Done!”

6. A participant may submit multiple entries.

7. All entries submitted shall be considered property of www.bayanifernando.com.ph and may be used for future Bayani Fernando projects/campaigns.

8. By joining the contest, the photograph, in its entirety, must be a single work of original material taken by the participants. The entrant acknowledges, and warrants that the submitted photograph is an original work created solely by the entrant, that the photograph does not infringe on the copyrights, trademarks, moral rights and/or rights of privacy/publicity or intellectual property rights of any person or entity, and that no other party has any right to claim or interest in the photograph.

9. Entry Specifications:
a. Photo entry must have the following characteristics:
i. 800x600 pixels, 72 Dpi, JPEG format.
b. The text must have the following characteristics:
i. Title: Max. 50 characters.
ii. Narrative: Max. 500 characters.
c. Filenames of entries for submission must be in the following format:
i. Filename format: last name.first name.date of submission in MMDDYY format (Ex. DelaCruz.Juan.050109)

10. Criteria for Judging:
25% - Relevance to theme
25% - Composition / Impact
25% - Technical Excellence
25% - Creativity
100% - TOTAL

Participants are granted:
1. The opportunity to compete for the gadget package grand prize donated by the friends of the Chairman!
2. To receive a limited edition MMDA Urinal penholder. (For Top 10 Entries.)
3. The right to have their name appear next to the photo, in the case of publication.
4. The chance to take part in any exhibition and have the photos published in a final photo book.

Tagalog and English are the official languages of the initiative in terms of rules and regulations.

Note: You need to register in order to read/download the contest mechanics.

Copyright? What Copyright?

Gloved and hunched over scanners, librarians from some of the biggest libraries in the world have spent the last five years digitising each and every page of millions of books — five million of them still under copyright.

They did it to democratise information, they said, to preserve the corpus of human knowledge for generations to come. They did it without permission from the copyright holders.

They did it for Google. Or, more specifically, for the Google Books Library Project, a virtual database containing the scanned pages of millions of the world's books.

Originally, back in 2004, the partnership between Google and America's great libraries was conceived to digitise the 15 per cent of library books that were in the public domain — golden oldies like Wuthering Heights and David Copperfield. In America (and Australia, thanks to the Fair Trade Agreement), a book enters the public domain 70 years after the author's death (in Australia it used to be 50), or if it was published prior to 1 January 1923.

That left 85 per cent of library books unscanned — 10 per cent of which are still in print and on bookstore shelves, and the remainder of which are "orphans" (books out of print but still in copyright). But because Google are uppity little nerds who consider the world as theirs to metatag, they decided to scan them all, regardless of legal status.

Arm-in-arm with librarians, Google declared they would have 15 million books digitised in under a decade. In other words, almost half of the 32 million books that humans have published.

Using the Elphel 323 — a digital camera that can scan 1000 pages per hour — librarians and Google began to scan the full texts of every book in five major university and public libraries: Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library. Google archived the entire text of each book, indexing it to be responsive to search requests. Users got a few lines of text as their search result — a "snippet" — which Google claimed was "fair use", the same way a review might quote a few lines of a film or book.

Continue reading at newmatilda.com

Relevant links:
A Photo Editor

Victory Liner/ YKL Color-FujiFilm Photo Contest

Victory Liner/ YKL Color-FujiFilm Photo Contest
Submission of entries: February 1 to April 30, 2009

Please note the following:

• Organizers and sponsors will have exclusive use of winning entries no more than 2 years.
• Owners of the top 100 entries shall allow Victory Liner free use of the photos to publish or display without permission or payment of any kind for a maximum of 2 years. The photographer will be acknowledge every time the photo is used (item13).
  
• The photograph, in its entirety, must be a single work of original material taken by the participants. By entering the Contest, entrant represents, acknowledges, and warrants that the submitted photograph is an original work created solely by the entrant, that the photograph does not infringe on the copyrights, trademarks, moral rights and/or rights of privacy/publicity or intellectual property rights of any person or entity, and that no other party has any right, tittle, claim, or interest in the photograph.
• The photograph must not, in the sole and unfettered discretion of the Sponsor, contain obscene, provocative, defamatory, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable and/or inappropriate content. Photographs that include sculptures, statues, paintings, and other works of art will be accepted as long as they do not constitute copyright infringement or fraud; provided entrants are prepared to provide a “release form.” When photographing the work of others, it must be as an object in its environment, and not a full-frame close-up of another person's art. All entries must not, and should not, have been entered into any other photo contest.
  

See mechanics here.

2009 FORMULA 1™ SingTel Singapore Grand Prix Online Photo Contest

2009 FORMULA 1™ SingTel Singapore Grand Prix Online Photo Contest TOC states:

All entries submitted for the Contest, including all photographs and images submitted, will be the sole property of the Organiser and will not be returned. - (No. 15)

16. The entire right, title and interest (including intellectual property rights) in and to your entry (whether or not prize winning) and all materials submitted with your entry, and in and to all works based upon, derived from, or incorporating your entry or any part thereof shall vest exclusively in SGP, its successors and assigns...SGP shall be entitled, without further reference to you, to exercise all intellectual property rights in your entry, including the use, adaptation, modification, reproduction, translation, exhibition, publication, display and archival of your entry or any part thereof in any context and with or without other material, in any medium now known or hereafter devised, whether or not for profit, for the full period of protection arising pursuant to the laws in force in any part of the world including all renewals reversions and extensions and to authorise others to do the same. In no event shall the Organiser be required to use any entry, whether in whole or in part. - (No. 16)

Its a bit confusing too, especially the last line of item 16.

Read 2009 FORMULA 1™ SingTel Singapore Grand Prix Online Photo Contest TOC here.

iClick Art Contest

iCenter Cebu, a local reseller of Apple Products, is organizing an Art Contest (Photography & Graphic Design) dubbed as iClick Art Contest. Just in case you're planning to join, please beware and take note of the following (under Copyright):

• Photos tendered are subject to Dreamtech exclusive right to use, without obligation to notify and/or explain reasons, including possible reproduction.
• In addition, all entrants to the contest grant (by their entry) an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to Dreamtech and their licensees, to use, reproduce, edit, display, transmit, prepare derivative works of, modify, publish, and otherwise make use of the Entry in any and all media, whether now known or hereinafter created--throughout the world and for any purpose--without compensation to you of any kind.

The above-mentioned stipulations are earlier taken from iCenter's Multiply Site. However, contest mechanics was now unavailable and cannot be viewed publicly nor do they have a full public disclosure of the full mechanics. Please see more here.

Thanks to Paul Gotiong for the heads up.

Immunizers Travel Shots Photo Contest

Just in case you're planning to join the Immunizers Travel Shots Photo Contest, please see the stipulations hereunder:

By entering, any subsequent prize winners agree to allow the free use of their names, photographs and general locations for publicity and news purposes during this and future promotions by Immunizers or any associated or subsidiary company.

Immunizers, Inc. reserves the right to publish all or parts of entries other than the winning entry. Immunizers, Inc. reserves the right to edit entries in its discretion for publication. Entrants will retain copyright in their submitted entries; however, by entering, all entrants give Immunizers, Inc. a worldwide royalty free perpetual licence to edit, publish and use all or segments of each entry in any and all media (including print and online) for publicity and news purposes. In particular, all entrants license Immunizers, Inc. the right to print their entry online and in print.

Full mechanics can be viewed here.

It seem that the organizers of this contest are referring to the Creative Commons (some rights reserved) which allows the organizers to (1) edit (2) re-publish and (3) make a derivative work out of your photo entered.

Prior to licensing your work to Creative Commons, it is advisable to know how CC works. Please refer to the following:
Before Licensing
FAQ
Baseline Rights

Things You Need To Know About Rights-Grab Photo Contests

It seem that contest photo organizers/ sponsors had found a 'cheap and economical way' to 'harvest' a great deal of creative work, usually images for absolutley nothing - a library of FREE images. These are rampant nowadays not just in the Philippines (from private companies to government agencies) but even abroad. A clever ploy targetting photographers especially the amateurs who are naive and do not understand their rights and the potential value of their work. This, in a way, can 'harm' photography in general because when sponsors/ contest organizers get a collection of free images, they are less likely to buy nor hire/commission a photographer to shoot photos for commercial application - somewhere, a photographer loses a sale.

Yet, no matter how clever their mechanics/ contest rules may be, there will always be loopholes and gray areas which you can detect if you examine the contest mechanics very closely. When joining a (photo) contest, please take sometime to read carefully and understand the specific clauses particularly on the following:

Copyright Ownership/ Policy

As authors of original works, photographer entrants should own copyright of their entries, irregardless of winning and non-winning entries. Think twice if you see any of the following clause explicitly expressed in the rules:"All photos submitted as entries to the photo contest shall be owned by ...."; "..... shall retain the copyright of the photographs."; "All entries shall automatically become exclusive property of .... and may be used, copied, reproduced and/or reprinted by.... into any size or medium for exhibition, advertising, promotion or whatever purpose." 

File Submission

Photographer's entries are submitted independently of the digital files or film negatives except in the case of winners, where the sponsors/ organizers may request high resolution file/ digital scans of the winning photographs for verification purposes. Contest organizers has the prerogative in disposing non-winning prints. These maybe returned (via mail by enclosing self-stamped envelope) or destroyed if unclaimed. It is also understood that mere possession of unreturned/ unclaimed entries, both print/ digital files (low resolution) does not transfer authors copyright to the organizer/s. Please be warned should you read the clause "Original negatives and data files should be submitted together with the entry" or "All photos submitted as entries to the photo contest shall be owned by ...."

Terms of Use

Organizers has the right to use the winning photographs for marketing and promotional purposes directly related to the photo competition. It is also the duty of the organizers to give appropriate citation/credit to photographers of winning entries. Please be watchful though for a clause such as this: ".... you hereby grant ...., its subsidiaries and branch offices the perpetual right to exclusively, royalty-free and without limitation freely use, modify, edit, copy, reproduce, distribute, translate, create derivate works from, alter and publicly display or publish such content, for whatever purposes, in any form or medium, either on this web-site or elsewhere, whether promotional or in other activities or events arranged by .... or any of the above stated parties, whether locally or world-wide."

Attribution

Being the author of creative work, you have the right to require that the authorship be attributed to you, the right to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification, or derogatory action which would be prejudicial to your name and reputation.

 

What photographers lose in joining these contests?

Photographers loose all their rights, including economic and moral rights and also future income generated from licensing, etc. 

In conclusion, make sure that all rules and guidelines are clear, fair and justified. Should you encounter unclear and misleading guidelines similar to the clauses stated above, better think twice - it's not worth your time and effort. You may as well join IPR-Photo should you be interested in issues such as these.

Source: Dennis Rito