More info on ‘photo contest’ issues

Posted on 16 July 2009

Yesterday’s post about problematic “terms” in photo contests elicited some responses (including email from the promoter of the contest I mentioned) and led me to some additional relevant information on the web.

First, thank you to Peter Phun for pointing me to his article at Black Star Rising that describes an contest that actually states in its terms that a goal is to build a library of cost-free images! I guess that the organizers of that contest at least get points for honesty…

While responding to another comment on this issue I made up an imaginary scenario to illustrate why entrants might want to be cautious about contest terms that assign legal and financial liability to the contest entrant for future use of the photographs by the contest sponsors. While doing so I found a link to another piece at Blackstar Rising (whose RSS feed I have now subscribed to!) that will help readers understand some of the potential liability issues that non-professional contests are unlikely to anticipate.

By the way, the promoter of the contest I wrote about yesterday emailed to say that the article was “false.” (He also made a few, ahem, “other points” that I won’t repeat here at the moment… ;-) I told him that if he would point out “false” material in the post I would be happy to consider revising it – but so far I have heard nothing, but the offer still stands.