Anti ‘rights grabbing’ petition stands at 572 signatures
The Photolegal petition to review the practice of photography competitions where rights of the content move to the organisers of these competitions stands at 572. The deadline is the 22nd of October. Although not exclusively these types of competitions are also organised in the Stock Media industry. See below for the petition text:
It has become common practice for companies and organisations to run photographic competitions for the purpose of harvesting large volumes of photographs from entrants which can then be used by the competition owner and/or sponsors at no cost. These competitions rely on 1) people not reading the terms and conditions, 2) the t&c’s being difficult to locate and/or 3) the wording of the t&c’s being difficult to understand.
The property being harvested from vast numbers of photographers (mainly consumers) is of great value to these companies who grant themselves the right to use the images in marketing campaigns and advertising, use on products and packaging and even in some cases resale and syndication.
We call on the Prime Minister to look at this issue during the Government’s current review of intellectual property law, and to examine the ‘Artists Bill of Rights’ promoted by the photographic organisation ‘Pro-Imaging’ which calls for only limited rights (such as the right to use the images to promote the competition etc) to be taken by competition organisers