Really Right Stuff and rights-grab photo contests
April 16th, 2010
Always read the fine print!
It has become a fairly common practice, sadly, to create “photo contests” that are thinly-veiled tools for companies and publishers to get content for free. Some of these “contests” are judged, some are popularity contests (i.e., get your family and all your Facebook friends to vote for you! Yay!).
So why don’t I enter most of these – and why do I think that they have a much more self-serving purpose than encouraging community, building a brand, or just sharing great photos? Take a look at the fine print about what rights you’re giving up when you enter an image in a contest. In many cases, when you submit your image(s), you are handing over ALL rights to the contest owner. Forever. No compensation. In any form. EVER. Not just the winners. ALL the images.
I’m going to be specific and call out a company that should know better, because they make products for photographers: Really Right Stuff. They’re currently running a contest that is a horrid rights grab, and they ought to be ashamed. Don’t believe me? Read the below, taken from RRS’s rules page for the contest:
“By entering the Contest, all entrants grant an irrevocable perpetual, nonexclusive license to Authorized Parties, to reproduce, distribute, display, and create derivative works of the entries (along with a name credit) in connection with the Contest and promotion of the Contest, in any media now or hereafter known, including, but not limited to: display at a potential exhibition of winners; publication of a book featuring select entries in the Contest; publication in Really Right Stuff magazine or online highlighting entries or winners of the Contest. Entrants consent to RRS doing or omitting to do any act that would otherwise infringe the entrant’s “moral rights” in their entries. Display or publication of any entry on an Authorized Party’s website does not indicate the entrant will be selected as a winner. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use. Additionally, by entering, each entrant grants to Authorized Parties the unrestricted right to use all statements made in connection with the Contest, and pictures or likenesses of Contest entrants, or choose not to do so, at their sole discretion. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use.”
This is just insulting to RRS’s customers. RRS builds great products and I use them, and love them, but this just offends me. Are they the only ones doing this? Absolutely not, it happens all the time. But maybe, with smaller companies that are closer to the photographic community, my voice can have some impact.
Hey RRS! How about demonstrating your commitment to your customers by not screwing them with your contest? Fix your rules!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Denise Swanson, Dave Block. Dave Block said: RRS and rights-grab photo contests #photog http://bit.ly/b8XUZz [...]
I’ve spent a pretty penny with RRS and this makes me sick. For the past few years family/friends have asked me why I don’t enter photo contests. I always state the very reasons you and Bob Krist mentioned above.
Actually I’m pretty surprised a license policy like this would come from RRS (Joe and Joan Johnson) after reading the beginning of the last few catalogs. They read like a very moral and loyal American business… not a big faceless conglomerate of a company.