Photo Contest: We own you

[Humanist]

I was thinking of entering a contest until I read the following:

At the time you send any Photo Entry, in whole or in part, to the LCBO, and whether or not your entry is selected as a winner, you irrevocably transfer, convey and assign to the LCBO all right, title and interest in and to your Photo Entry, in whole and in part, and all the intellectual property rights therein, throughout the world in perpetuity, including without limitation any and all copyrights and the registration, renewal, and derivative rights and you waive all moral rights and rights of attribution relating thereto and agree to execute all documents and perform all acts deemed necessary by the LCBO to apply for, register, perfect and record such transfer and assignment and/or waivers and protect LCBO's right in the intellectual property. You further understand and agree that LCBO shall have the exclusive right to apply for or register any patents, mask work rights, copyrights and such other proprietary protections with respect thereto. You will not now nor in the future be paid for your Photo Entry or for granting the LCBO any of these rights. The LCBO, its affiliates, licensees, successors and assigns are in no way obligated to use or continue to use your Photo Entry (and have no obligation to you or any other person or entity after your Photo Entry is received). You agree to waive all claims to and shall receive no royalties of any kind now or in the future from the LCBO, its affiliates, licensees, successors and assigns for use of your Photo Entry including copyright, trademark, public performance, digital sound recording, mechanical, synchronization or master use royalties, and you represent, warrant and agree that no other party is entitled to claim royalties from the use of the Photo Entry as set forth in these Official Rules."

Here is my question: If I submit a file to them that is, say, a 300DPI read-to-print for a 4x6 file, do they own only that file? Or do they own anything connected with the image like my full, higher resolution PSD file?

[dakwegmo]

To your question first. It's the substance of the material, not the format that matters. It would be like an author selling rights to a book to two publishing houses but claiming one only bought the rights to the MS WORD version, while the other bought the rights to the PDF version. Likewise, if you make a photo using film and wet processing, someone can't come along and scan your photo and claim you didn't own the copyright to the digital version.

If you have any ambition of ever using the image for anything other than this contest, you should run from this contest.
If you surrender your copyright to the extent outlined here, you retain no rights to the image. You are transferring them to the organization running the contest. If you try to make money off of the same image they could come after you for copyright infringement.

Most contests I've seen grant the organization running it enough rights to use your images for the purpose of the contest, this usually includes marketing the contest and publishing your photo within the context of the contest. They may even restrict the images use during the contests run. Otherwise, you still retain full rights to the image.

If they are requiring you to release all rights like this, it seems like they are more interested in building a cheap stock catalog rather than trying to promote photography or photographers.

[Humanist]

Thank you! I had a bad feeling when I read the rules... and it's lucky that I actually did read the rules. Certainly I've entered a contest without having done so. I will run and hide from this contest and warn my friends.

The sad thing is, this is my government trying to do this to photographers. Very sad.


Thanks again,
Josh

[tonebytone]

Very sad indeed. Maybe you could write a letter to the editors of Photo Life magazine, so they can give this travesty wider negative publicity. I've never heard of outright thievery like this seems to be!

Moral: Contest enterer, beware! Read the fine print!

[jfullerton]

O O O O O o .


This is me getting smaller as i walk briskly away from that contest...

[jjaappaa]

All I can say is wow. No respect for photographers or their work at all. Have another look at the even finer print, it says "and we retain the right to take the shirt off your back"