Deja Vu: Bad Contest Rules Get Revised

Thanks to all who e-mailed me today about the contest rules for the New York Photo Awards. You can stop now. The contest organizers just revised the rules to make them less egregious.

Here's the offending passage that sounded like a rights grab (emphasis mine):

"Entries may be published by The New York Photo Festival, The New York Photo Awards, any Sponsors and/or their designees, licensees or affiliates (the "Authorized Parties") in magazines or books, on websites, or in any other medium, at Authorized Parties' discretion. By participating, all entrants grant a license in the Entries to the Authorized Parties, and acknowledge that any Authorized Party may use the entries and a name credit in any media now or hereafter known, without restriction, including commercially using the entries to the fullest extent possible worldwide in perpetuity. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use."

Here's the revision:

"Entries may be published by The New York Photo Festival (NYPH), The New York Photo Awards (NYPHA), any NYPH or NYPHA affiliated Sponsors and/or their designees, licensees or affiliates (the "Authorized Parties") in magazines or books, on websites, or in any other medium, at Authorized Parties' discretion. Such use will be restricted to promotion, publicity, news, or informational education or awareness usage of NYPH and/or NYPHA. By participating, all entrants grant a license in the Entries to the Authorized Parties, and acknowledge that any Authorized Party may use the entries and a name credit in any media now or hereafter known, without restriction in relation to the uses stated above. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use."

If this story sounds familiar, it's because the same thing happened last week with a PDN/National Geographic Traveler contest.

Daniel Power of powerHouse Books, one of the organizers of the New York Photo Festival, e-mailed me with this explanation: "Our web designer cribbed it from National Geographic as dummy text for holding, and we never went back to it after dealing with all the issues we encountered on the site. We are revising it."

Lots of chatter about this on Lightstalkers.