Photographers rights to their copyright and the licensing arrangements that enable them to make a living from their creativity and skills are under threat as never before. If you don't understand rights and copyright here is how it works.
You take a photograph, you could be an amateur photographer, or a professional, or you are just taking a snap for the family album, the law grants everyone equal rights. The instant you the photograph the law makes you the copyright owner of that photograph. There are no forms to fill, you don't need to register your photograph, you just need to press the button on your camera! You are now a copyright owner!
What does this mean? It means that no one else can use or reproduce the photograph you have taken without your permission. Every country in the world has copyright laws in place to protect creators and their work so that creators can make a living from their creativity.
Licensing
Normally you would only give permission to use your photograph in return for a fee payable to you. This arrangement is known as licensing. In other words, to give your permission you draw up a license document for someone who wants to use your photograph.
The license document will spell out how long they can use the photograph, what it can be used for (e.g. one specific usage, say in a book, or a particular advert), and where it can be used, in one country for example, or throughout Europe, or worldwide. The greater the rights requested, say usage for two years instead of one, or to have multiple uses, the greater will be the license fee you charge them.
When the license expires the image must cease being used by the person the license was granted to. They can apply to you for another license of course, and you will charge another fee. This is how creative people such as photographers, writers, and poets for example earn a living.
Copyright Infringement
Without copyright law to protect them creative people would find the products of their creativity being copied and used by everybody without payment; they would find it impossible to make a living. Copyright law makes it illegal to freely use another's creativity without a license granted by the copyright owner.
Anyone using a copyrighted work without a license issued by the copyright owner can be sued in court for copyright infringement. Your photographs are a means of earning a living, you must take care to protect your rights, rights freely given to you by the law.
Another way of earning money from your work is to allow the public to buy a copy for their personal use. They can buy a photograph from you for their personal enjoyment, hang it on their wall, but this does not give them a right to copy it and sell or distribute it to others. Those who do that can also be sued for copyright infringement.
Photographers Being Ripped Off
However, through photo competitions and similar devices the greedy and less than ethical world of corporate business is using means by which they can get your images for free to use for ever for any purpose they like, even to license them to other businesses and make a great deal of money from your free images. You never see a penny.
So how is this done? You enter a photo into a competition. You haven't read the terms and conditions, have you? It really boring all that small print stuff, isn't it? So you didn't notice that by submitting the photo the organisations involved in the contest are claiming copyright of your photo, or maybe they are 'just' claiming the right to use it freely for ever.
You have just lost your photo, it's no longer yours if they have claimed copyright, you could actually be sued for using it in future. Or they have claimed the right to use it freely for ever, to make money from it by licensing it to others, but you'll never see one penny of that money earned by licensing your photograph. If you never knew that you were going to be ripped off simply for entering a contest, I hope you are feeling a bit angry and will read the T&C's in future!
Help is at hand!
An organisation called Pro-Imaging is fighting this practice by investigating all competitions. The ones that are safe to enter are listed on the Rights On List, and the ones to avoid are listed on the Investigated List.
If the competition you are thinking of entering is not listed in their lists, send a note of the contest and its website address to competitions@pro-imaging.org, they will check it out for you!