Photo contest in Open Air Magazine

[David_in_DC]

Open Air Magazine, a new active lifestyle magazine from USA Today, has a "Reader Photos" section in each issue. If your photo is selected to be printed in the May or September issue of Open Air, you’ll have a chance to win a Canon EOS 5D 12.8MP digital camera with a 24-105 mm lens as part of a special Transitions Lenses contest. To enter the contest, submit your original, unpublished photos via http://openairphotos.usatoday.com by June 30, 2008. The official rules are on the site.

[larkvi]

Honestly, I think that the users of this forum are already wise to scams like this, but, seriously:

"By entering the Contest, each contestant grants to Sponsor an exclusive, royalty-free
and irrevocable right and license to publish, print, edit or otherwise use the contestant’s submitted
entry, in whole or in part, for any purpose and in any manner or media (including, without
limitation, the Internet) throughout the world in perpetuity, and to license others to do so, all without limitation or further compensation."

So, you gain a permanent, royalty-free exclusive license to unpublished work for free, even if not chosen for publication, and 90% of the photos chosen for publication receive nothing, the 'winner' loses all rights to his photo. . . That's not a contest, it is probably as legally far as youc an go without running foul of fraud legislation.

[Gordon Harrison]

Honestly, I think that the users of this forum are already wise to scams like this, but, seriously:

Well said larkvi, most probably are, but these competitions prey on people who don't know about their rights. The post I made on this forum about Rights Grabbing Photo Competitions earlier today points you to a photo organisation which is doing consumer tests on photo competitions.

You'll find the likes of Adobe, Nikon, National Geographic, even the UK Government listed as rights grabbers - at last they are being publicly named and shamed!

http://www.pro-imaging.org/content/view/188/132/

Being part of this campaign I can tell you that Adobe wrote to us asking us not to put them on the list. They are on the list...