As I have a bit of an interest in amateur animation and cominc film making, I was delighted to be given the empty outer packet from a multi-paclk of Hula Hoops (You know - for kids!) - on the pack is an invitation to create and submit a short film, featuring fingers and their potato-based circular snack food.
The prize is tempting (an expenses-paid trip to Hollywood), but this clause in the T&Cs is an instant turn-off for me:
It’s just greedy, unnecessary and quite abnormal for competitions of this sort. It would have been far better if they had demanded a nonexclusive usage right instead - but this way, I wouldn’t even have the right to show my own creation on my own website.
Poor form United Biscuits. You suck.
Plus (as a side note) - shouldn’t the ‘waive all moral rights’ bit be a little more specific?
No kidding… and this is for all entrants, not just the winner.
ETA: Unnecessarily greedy T&C, by way of manufactured outrage byGlenn Beck. If the T&C his writers (or whoever) imagined up did actually exist, I’d suggest it would be a smidge out of line.
“Moral Rights” in this context has a specific meaning in copyright law and derives from the Berne Convention, the main international convention on copyright.
In this context moral rights are non-economic aspects of copyright and are essentially the right to be acknowledged as the author, and the right to object to derogatory treatment of the material. So its basically saying they can take your work and use it without acknowledging that you made it, and without you having a right to object if they bastardise it.
I thought all these sorts of competitions were in order to obtain imaginative marketing ideas from a very large group of people without having to pay anyone? Is this one worse than average?
Sounds to me like standard boiler plate CYA stuff. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Much like everything you post on this board automatically becomes property of the Chicago Reader. It’s not like that ever bites us in the ass.
I would. As a creator, I would never grant that sort of licence to anyone unless I was getting very well paid, and maybe not even then. To require that grant of mere entrants–not even the winner, but entrants–to a contest is far too excessive.
Er, no. We grant the Reader a licence to use our stuff, but it remains ours.
Sounds like you’re speculating; have you ever actually had experience having to sign such a release? They’re pretty standard.
A lot of these things sound extreme, until you imagine the other perspective. It’s a time/labor saving thing, and again pretty standard.
Imagine American Idol if the release you signed only covered contest winners. The first third of the season would be GONE.
If you don’t like it, don’t join the contest. If you join the contest, you play by their rules.
As a photographer I have to get any model I use to sign a model release. The standard model release covers what seems, at first glance, a pretty baroque menu of bizarre uses of the model’s imagery that you would never imagine you’d ever possibly have a use for. But what if you did? Now you’re covered, you don’t have to track down the model to get a separate release for future uses that you didn’t anticipate in the first place.
The company running this contest is doing so to gather enough material to find some gems to use in its own marketing. By covering all rights issues up front, it doesn’t have to do so later, on a case by case basis.
I’m not sure about what counts as standard practice where you are, but when I worked in advertising we would have told a potential client that wanted us to sign over all rights to a proposed work that they could go to hell.
The quoted T&C in the OP seems pretty plain. They want ALL rights to every entry. In exchange you get nothing, except the chance, and only the chance, to win a contest. They can take the ideas of everyone else and use them in whatever way they want, with no further compensation. That means no compensation at all if you aren’t the winner.
Now certainly you are right, it’s their contest and if you don’t like their rules you don’t play. And I would certainly recommend that you don’t. This is the kind of thing that companies try to pull all the time, even with the ad agencies. They want to get ideas submitted in response to proposeal requests and to keep the stuff they get. And the ad agencies with any balls at all won’t play. You want ideas, pay for them.
If all they want is the necessary rights to show the entries on a website and duplicate them for the judges, they can do that without demanding all of the rights. This website does that and so could they. But that dosen’t seem to be what they want.
I had the same problem sending my letter to the editor of the local paper. They insisted on full rights. Well, sure they want publication rights. And it’s fair to ask for “First North American Print Rights”. And I suppose they deserve lingering rights to include it in a search database.
But why are they preventing me from using my own words again to write to another paper, or putting them in my memoirs?
Still, since I’m planning to publish my memoirs posthumously, I sent the letter with the waiver.
Come to think of it, the words at the bottom of this screen seem to give all of this post to “Creative Loafing Media, Inc.”.
Tough cookies, Mister C.L. Media! I still plan to include all my posts in my postumous memoirs. If you wanna fight about it, you will have to do so without me.
I’m not sure about this. Does this mean if walk in off the street and you take my photo after I’ve signed the release you can take my image and slap it on gay porn and post it on the 'net? Seems I should have some control over that. What if I’m famous. For someone like Tyra Banks it would seem the photographer would be signing the release as in you can photograph her, but on her terms.
As to the OP I agree with storyguide3. For the price of a trip to Hollywood they are getting free marketing/advertising ideas. The chance to win will be enough motivation for some. Personally I wouldn’t do it. Plus even if you sign away rights etc you can still say “I made that, I just sold the rights” or can you?
Not in this context. I’ve taken part in a number of these types of schemes (some for film, others for writing). Although I’m aware that terms and conditions like this exist elsewhere, they are pretty uncommon in competitions inviting the participation of amateurs.
No - they don’t, and this is exactly my point. The right that you grant CL by posting here is nonexclusive - you can repeat yourself all over the world if you want, and can find an audience.
Nope. Tyra Banks doesn’t (typically) own the pictures taken of her (certainly not when she was a working model). Trust me, Tyra Banks has signed a buttload of such releases in her day.
–of course, you don’t have to sign it. But most photographers would see that as too high-maintenance to deal with, and you’d be out the job. No photographer wants to set themselves up to have to negotiate such issues on a case by case basis for all future uses of the pictures.
As your question about being famous, obviously once you have some power “high-maintenance” is less of an issue (Tyra Banks wasn’t always “Tyra Banks”), and you can write your own contracts. I seriously doubt La Banks would sign such a release nowadays; she probably has plenty of her own conditions. As I said, the above boilerplate is STANDARD, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only such document in existence.
Same rule: you don’t like it, you don’t play. But for a Joe Average model, or from some random contestant off the street, the boilerplate’s gonna be written to protect the one “in charge”–the photographer, or the company holding the contest. Them’s the conditions, like it or leave it.
(Not that I don’t agree such things can be off putting: I once tried to submit some suggestions to Microsoft, after working in PowerPoint 40 hours a week for two years, but ultimately refused to because they wouldn’t even allow a suggestion until I signed away all rights to said suggestion. Screw em, I said, fix your own bugs.)