Bill of Rights for Photographers Proposed for Photo Contests

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Following up on the disconcerting trend of photography contests grabbing the image rights of unsuspecting photographers I found it comforting to see Pro-Imaging.org, a professional photography association based in the UK, put forward proposed standards to be adopted by photography contests. See my previous post â€œHow The Rights To Your Photo Are Being Hijacked Through Photo Contests & Social Mediaâ€ for more on this issue.

Pro Imaging have set out conditions for photographic competition organisers and sponsors to be guided by when constructing terms and conditions for their competitions. We call this set of conditions The Bill of Rights for photographers. Pro Imaging believes The Bill of Rights represents best practice to the photographic competition industry and our intent is that it should be adopted as a standard code of practice.

Read more about the proposed Bill of Rights for Photographers via Pro-Imaging.org

I will be interested to learn more about this approach and how Pro-Imaging.org plans on tracking or commenting on organizations running contests in violation of these standards.

Technorati Tags: photography, contest, standards, photographer, photo, bill of rights, Pro-Imaging.org, copyright

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Posted by Jim on 03.13.2008 at 12:55 pm
Tagged: Copyright, Links & Articles, Photography , Copyright, Photography

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Andy Richards

I think the advent of the internet has made unprecedented "changes" to the public's attitudes about copyright. I don't know why, but for some reason their is a popular thought that somehow, because is is on the internet and technology exists to simply right click and download, that that somehow dilutes the "ownership" of the art. I know that in the past, it was not unusual for people to make cassette tapes of music and "share" them, the visual arts were more difficult to "copy."

At the same time, it has become so easy to "upload" photographs and for the "hosts" to use them, that is seems to have become "accepted" for the owner of the copyright to "give up" their rights. Perhaps the "bill of rights" is a concept whose time has come. But I have to agree with the previous poster that education of the copyright owners and how they need to be vigilant about their rights is critical!

Gordon C Harrison

As one of the Pro-Imaging people behind the Bill of Rights campaign many thanks Jim for picking up on it and publicising it. We already have had one camera manufacturer change their rules in response to our campaign. In another the legal services section of a government agency wants to involve us in the drafting process of IP T&C's for future contests.

The campaign is all about education, educating entrants, and educating contest promoters and sponsors. We are expanding the range of competitions being reported through a new fast track process here -

http://www.pro-imaging.org/content/view/212/132/

We want contributions from everyone about competitions they encounter, both good and bad. We especially want to know about good ones, the more of these we can list the better - people will tend to go there instead and the people running bad competitions will be starved of submissions.

Competitions can be notified to us at competitions@pro-imaging.org Thanks for your help.

D. T. North

A very necessary step. Glad to hear someone with some clout is throwing in their hat on the issue. A campaign such as this is beneficial only if people are educated, however. So everyone should forward this post (or at least the Bill of Rights Link) to as many people as would potentially be affected. Then, if you hear of a contest that complies with Pro-Imaging's model, make sure Pro-Imaging gets wind of it so they can add it to their "Rights On" list. Then, tell everyone you know. The more successful competitions we have under these recommendations, the sooner we can put a damper on the inferior competitions.

I'm still getting e-mail from a competition I mistakingly entered a year ago. I'm "in the running" (still) for the weekly competition...and I am able to get discounts on the up-coming book that allegedly has my picture in it...just so long as I join the club for a small fee.

Beware...