oops, that was a typo on my part. I meant to say "connected to this competition" My point was that its possible that their license goes beyond just printing things about the competition. But as others have said, its par for the course.

What "... connected to this publication" ?

I dont think its underhanded, however, this legal terminology gives them more right than people have been saying:

" ... in any of their publications, their websites and/or in any promotional material connected to this competition." can easily be read as: ANY of their publications, and of their websites not connected to this competition and ANY promotional material connected to this competition. In other words, it would certainly be forseeable for them to use the material in a publication that has nothing to do with the competition as long as its THEIR publication, and not a third party publication.

My point is the "... connected to this publication" does not have to tie to all three of the parts of that clause, just the last part about the promotional material.

all that being said, I still dont feel there is anything underhanded or dishonest about this. You know that you are granting a non-exclusive license, retaining copyright, in the hopes of being published (or maybe just winning money).

And i completely aggree with heartyfisher about the types of material in a contest. sure its a marketting reason, but there is nothing wrong with contests being about marketting, and there is no reason costest have to be "arty". (your point about homelessness and christmas)

lol! You have done it now ! in 10 years when you are the president it will come back to bite you ! ;-)

seriously though I dont understand what you see as being "dishonest". you seem to say that there is some misrepresentation happening but its not clear to me what it is. I don't understand the relevance of the "homeless" statement (and related paragraph) to the competition.

Its not unlimited license, its only licensed for reproduction related to the promotion of the competition, and you still retain copyright.

yes, i understand that the pictures should be used in connection with the comp, its just they get an unlimited license for any picture sent that bothers me, i feel that it should be our decision as to whether we grant permission for use or not in any situation.

and i just dont like the underhanded nature of it .... i mean seriously, its 100% about grabbing pictures imo, and 0% about art. the comp just seems like a ruse to me.

it struck me how there was nothing about christmas time, nothing about the homeless problem around london, things id normally expect, and the 3 categories are just the stuff they use in their marketing. ya know, its OK if they want to do that, but they shouldnt fake it as a competition, i feel like they are being very deceptive, and i cant stand deception, it annoys me.

so, anyways, even though ive had second thoughts, as far as i know the story is gonna run in the newspaper this week, hahaha, im nervous tbh, i have a feeling like im gonna get in trouble over this. have to wait and see. ill let you know what happens ....

What the original poster's quoted language establishes is that an entrant can't come back later and say "Hey, I don't want you using my photo anymore" and force the University to destroy, for example, printed flyers or whatever. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that if you enter a contest your images might be used to promote the contest.

There are actually many "competitions" that take your pictures.. so you are right to be careful. but this one seems ok.
1) you retain copy right
2) they can only you your picture only for stuff related to the competitions.
3) They cannot sell/on sell the pictures.

eg: of a bad one
"
Ownership of proposals and reproduction rights

The designers transfer all copyright and other intellectual or industrial property rights relating to his or her proposal. These rights will then become the exclusive property of the Organizers which will be able to use, publish or dispose of them as it sees fit, without geographical limitation or any other restriction, via all forms of printed (publications, posters, promotional material, etc.), digital (websites, multimedia presentations, etc.) and/or audiovisual media.
"

I do not see a problem here, the sentence ends in "connected to this competition" .

If SOAS would not be allowed to use the images in their publications, they would not even be able to plublish the winning pics...

And if your pic would win and bget published : even better...
It also says that copyright remains with you, so not only you can stil sell the images, without their permission, but also they will have to add your name to them when publishing....always .

This , to me, sounds one of the better regulations on a competition, many others would stipulate that you would loose the copyright to the work..

@Tao - not every competition is the same, most of the times You only have this kind of closure when Your photo wins.

as for the main topic, I think that it is a cheap way of gathering snaps and therefore I rarely send any of my snaps to competitions - as I don't have time to read all of the fine print before sharing photos.

as for using next snap... well, some snaps are unique. I like to sketch with my camera, though I'm not using is as machine gun and don't fire 2-3-4 same snaps in a row.

This is common, but he's right in that they've found a cheap way to build their image library. While you may not win any prizes, don't be surprised if you see one of your images in next year's school brochure. Consider it a cool addition to your portfolio. If you're really concerned about this, then it's likely because you're already getting paid significant money for your images. If that's the case, why enter a contest?

A shoe store in my town did something similar. They offered gift certificates of $250, $500, and $750 for options when they wanted to rename their store. Every woman in town came to them with dozens of names. Had they gone to a major ad agency to do this, it would have cost them upwards of $5,000. But when you consider the markup in shoes, it only cost them about $750. Smart business if you ask me.

Almost every photo competition in the world has the same language. I challenge you to find one that doesn't.

Overreacting? - Yes. Scam? - nope - they are just doing the appropriate contracts and releases. The images are not worth a penny - until you win. Then it is worth 900gbp or whatever the prize is. Think of it this way - Photographers or the Models they shoot, do not own their images, the publication that paid them does. Nothing different here. You provide the work, you win, they give you something, and you get published or your image seen.

Rarely do many take an image that will be used for Stock or something that will generate an income on it's own to make any difference. And with digital, all you have to do is use the next frame in the set and you are fine - it is another unique image you can use freely.

safyre said:
chances of [the] images being distributed is extremely low

This. also, marketing thinger

Mike,

I haven't submitted many things to competitions, but I do know that this verbage is very common to photo contests. Even large publications like National Geographic have this exact wording for their contests. In my opinion, your University is the one that's hosting the competition, is offering the prize money; and since they are not forcing people to enter, they can create the guidelines as they please.

And being a recent student, I will say that the thought of gaining publicity and prize money definitely outweighs any sort of cost associated with having my work freely distributed. In fact, if I were a student, I'd be pretty estatic that the university would be using my work, even if I wasn't getting paid. When you are a student and starting out, the most important thing is getting your name out there, not worrying about how much you are getting paid.

I will provide another example, did you know that if you upload a photo to Facebook, they can use your images for their promotional material without compensating you for it? It's part of their Terms of Service, and although many people are aware of it; it doesn't stop them from uploading images because they understand FB is a powerful marketing tool, and is free of charge as well. Not to mention the chances of their images being distributed is extremely low. This is such how the industry is today; very much based on quid pro quo.

So to answer your question, it is not a big deal in my opinion. This is pretty standard procedure and since your university is hosting and offering the money, they are free to set the rules as they like; and they are not out of the ordinary (just ask National Geographic).

hello !

at my university they are holding a photo comp with the following small print (seems to be common in competitions)

"Copyright in all images submitted for this competition remains with the respective entrants. However, in consideration of their providing the Competition, each entrant grants a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to SOAS, University of London to feature any or all of the submitted images in any of their publications, their websites and/or in any promotional material connected to this competition."

the three categories for the competition are also exactly the same as the kind of pictures the university uses for its website/brochures etc (pics of the uni, pics of london, and pics of foreign countries where the uni has links). it seems really rather obvious imo ...

so i feel really certain that this 'competition' is nothing other than a cheap way (prize money totals 900 gbp) to gain the copyright to hundreds of images, which will surely be worth much more. we are thinking of running a story about it in the university newspaper, to warn students not to submit, until this clause is removed from the small print.

am i overreacting ? do you think we will get in trouble if we accuse the university of trying to scam copyright info from students' images in the newspaper ? i know that what they are doing is technically legal, but i feel its really dishonest ... i dont wanna get in trouble

advice pleeeeease