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Arts Law maintains an ongoing watch of terms and conditions in prizes and competitions for artists in Australia and overseas and gives those terms and conditions a rating out of 5 stars. Click here for more about our star rating system.
Entrants should always weigh up Arts Law’s ratings against the prize and possible profile-raising which may result from being a finalist or winner.
About Arts Law regularly reviews the terms and conditions of competitions and rates them out of five stars. Our review looks broadly at the terms and conditions of a competition. In particular, we look closely at how a competition deals with an entrant’s copyright and moral rights, and consider this in light of the prize. … Continued
This is very much a topical competition in the current COVID- 19 environment. The competition is described as “a new national award for digital art, promoting contemporary visual art for screen, including video art, custom software, hypertext and art games”.
Arts Law reached out to the Gallery to suggest ways their terms and conditions could be improved to make them as artist friendly as possible. We were really pleased with the Gallery’s response – it was enthusiastic about listening to our suggestions and its subsequently revised its terms and conditions, taking on board the most part of our suggestions.
Overall, the terms around copyright are artist friendly. The terms include a positive statement that copyright in the photographs is retained by the photographer.
Arts Law reviewed this art prize last year and gave it a 4 out of 5. At the time the competition organiser indicated that they were going to look at improving the terms for this year. We are pleased to see that the organiser has made some positive changes to the terms to make them more artist friendly.
This competition offers good prizes and a profile-raising opportunity for artists.
Congratulations to JamFactory for excellent copyright terms. They reflect a respectful and fair treatment of artists and their rights.
Arts Law made suggestions to the competition organiser to make this competition’s terms and conditions more artist friendly, and we are delighted that it took on board our suggestions.
Well done to the Gallery for having a generous first prize and dealing fairly with copyright and moral rights
The Gallery explained that due to the time of year and staffing, it could not make any adjustments to the terms and conditions this year but has indicated that it will be engaging with Arts Law to improve the terms of its future competitions.
5 stars: copyright remains the property of the entrant; finalists/winners only grant a licence for a limited time for limited purposes; there is a positive undertaking to attribute the entrant for their work.
4 stars: copyright remains the property of the entrant; all entrants grant a licence for a limited time (5 years or less) for limited purposes; no agreement by entrants to infringement of their moral rights (“moral rights waiver”).
3 stars: copyright remains the property of the entrant; all entrants grant a worldwide licence for an unlimited period of time for limited purposes; there is no waiver or limited waiver of moral rights.
2 stars: copyright remains the property of the entrant; all entrants grant a non-exclusive, worldwide licence for an unlimited period of time for unlimited purposes; moral rights waiver.
1 star: copyright remains the property of all entrants except for finalists who must grant an assignment of copyright or grant an exclusive, worldwide licence for an extended period of time for unlimited purposes; moral rights waiver.
No stars: all entrants grant an assignment of copyright or an exclusive, worldwide licence for an unlimited period of time for unlimited purposes; moral rights waiver.
Unrateable: unable to locate / must enter to receive competition terms
However, a star rating may be higher or lower depending on the other terms and conditions.
If a prize or competition would like Arts Law to review its terms for fairness to artists and provide best practice advice concerning amendments to those terms, please email [email protected] or call 02 9356 2566.
Please note: Arts Law amended the rating system in May 2015. The rating system above applies to prizes and competitions rated by Arts Law with deadlines from May 2015 and onwards. Competitions with deadlines before May 2015 were reviewed using our previous rating system.
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