"Best of Wet Canvas" competition

[TScottDove]

I'm disturbed to see this in the submission agreement:

"I hereby grant the Sponsoring Organization the perpetual, non-exclusive, world-wide right to:
-publish the Work in print format
-promote, distribute and sell reprints of the Work (singly or in combination with other works)
-repurpose and republish the Work in other publications published by,or licensed by, the Sponsoring Organization."

Basically the artist loses all right to the work? The sponsor can make money off the work, without a percentage going to the artist? Is this standard for competitions? Seems to fly in the face of the supportive attitude towards the artist found elsewhere on "Wet Canvas."

[CRYork]

I was wondering about this myself, as I am considering entering this competition. I entered the Artist's Magazine Over 60 contest, and the wording was very similar to this. Two of my sons warned me that I would be giving up all my rights to my own work, and I said I didn't care, that I just want the exposure (I was referring to the Artist's Magazine contest).

I would be interested to see an interpretation of this agreement.

Char York

[dsargent]

Hi there,

I forwarded your question on to the right folks, and here's the response I got:

The artist still owns all rights to the actual piece. They can sell their artwork. They can have the image published elsewhere. In fact, they do not even have to own the piece anymore when they enter. This is simply a standard agreement. If we didn't have this wording, we couldn't publish the winners. The exposure is part of the prize for most competitions. We are working on the wording to make it less intimidating but no final copy has been approved just yet.

I do know that this is a pretty standard arrangement for any art organization that intends to issue a press release or article, or post on a website which includes the winning pieces.

If a competition doesn't have such provisions, then no one would ever be able to see the winning pieces (at least not legally -- if the organization doesn't have this, then they'd have no legal permission to publish about it).


Hope that helps --

[T.Ihrig]

umm... yes that is disturbing.

[Steve Orin]

I was once a bill collector and later, fraud investigator, for a major bank. I've seen a few such contract clauses get folks in trouble. They sign on the line, allowing trust in "good people" to suplant reasoning. Usually, they're not hurt but sometimes their trust goes against them. What it boils down to is that "good people" should not require signatories to such ill conceived contracts and people should never think that their signings are anything but binding and inforcible agreements. It would be a small thing to alter that phrase to stipulate that any use of images would be only for advertisement of shows and agreed upon purposes, not for any income earning activities. Or some such.
I once also refused a good giclee printing on grounds of that same phrase. If nothing goes wrong you're ok... If it does, tough luck - you signed!

[calportfolio]

I may be dense, but what does "sell reprints of the Work" have to do with promoting the work online or showing the winners online, or even "publishing" the winners. It seems to me that this wording is so vague that it would also apply to the sponsoring organization doing a giclee of the work and selling it in competition with the artist... or at least it seems to me that "selling reprints" would include such an activity.

[dsargent]

For example, promoting the winners may include publishing a feature article about them in our magazines. Legally, this would be considered a reprint of the Work(s) for sale as a part of the magazine.

For what it's worth, F+W has been holding art competitions through The Artist's Magazine, Watercolor Artist & The Pastel Journal under these same contest rules for decades. And you can expect the same level of professionalism and respect for the art & artists here too.

[K. Henderson]

Yes " F+W has been holding art competitions through The Artist's Magazine, Watercolor Artist & The Pastel Journal under these same contest rules for decades." And I've complained about this wording for decades.

So I have no faith that "We are working on the wording to make it less intimidating but no final copy has been approved just yet". This is not something new.

I don't understand what is so hard to write a contract that says you will only use the image for specific purposes and for a specific amount of time.

[blue bird]

Ok, I read this stuff. I never knew about this until now. It makes me wonder about it. I was thinking of entering a contest but now I'm not so sure. My daughter has entered a completion on Wet Canvas.

Nina

[TruEnuff]

Wow, trying to enter the competition and upload painting photos was sure an experience. The entire process had the feeling of something not well thought out. There were a couple of steps along the way where I just had to make a guess that clicking on a particular button was the right thing to do, even if it didn't seem completely correct. Even some of the graphics were messed up (overlapping sections). Pretty crude programming. The delays during upload were amazing....something like five minutes for each picture. During this time, there was no indication that anything was happening so I didn't have any idea whether the process was working or not. I actually lost the connection once because the "server timed out". Then for one of my pictures, no 'confirmation' picture appeared. I loaded and reloaded and reloaded, each time waiting for five minutes or so to see if it worked. I even changed pictures for the upload. Same problem. However, WC indicated that a file had been received, even if it didn't display it, so I went ahead and paid for three entrys....I'll just hope for the best.

All in all it wasn't a good experience. It took me well over an hour to do something that should have taken 10 minutes, max. Did anyone else have similar problems?
Maybe it wasn't WC fault entirely, but it sure didn't go smoothly.

Oh well.
Keep Painting!
Bruce

[Judith2020]

I am new to WC and find the navigation could be a lot more intuitive and robust. I may have more luck accessing WC through Facebook, at any rate glad to be a new member!

[CRYork]

Is there any word on when the voting will start on the final entries? I'm getting anxious to know who won...and to vote.

Char York