A few days ago we received a notice from a photographer drawing our attention to a photography competition organised by the United Kingdom Natural History Museum (NHM) as part of the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) partnership project. The competition is asking the public to send in weather related photographs to a project which is supported by public money (£11.75 million) granted through the UK Big Lottery Fund. In addition the OPAL project is actually comprised of seventeen separate publicly funded bodies, one of which is the Natural History Museum in London.
Terms and Conditions
The photographer drew our attention to the terms and conditions page where we found the following;
- Each entry must be your original work and must not infringe the rights of any other party.
- You must either be the owner of the copyright or have secured the written permission of the copyright owner to enter the image into the Competition and grant the NHM the rights detailed below.
- The copyright in all images submitted to the Competition will remain with the copyright holder.
- By entering the Competition, you grant the NHM a non-exclusive irrevocable perpetual licence to reproduce, publish, and communicate to the public by any means and exhibit your image and copies of your image in all media throughout the world in relation to the Competition and OPAL.
As item 4 makes clear all images submitted by the public can be used freely by OPAL, not just to promote the competition, but to promote OPAL worldwide for ever without making payment to the creator for use of their work.
A Gang Bang Rights Grab?
The UK organisations participating in the OPAL project are as follows;
- Field Studies Council
- Imperial College, London
- Met Office
- National Biodiversity Network
- Natural History Museum
- Newcastle University
- Open University
- Royal Parks
- University of Birmingham
- University of Central Lancashire
- University College London
- University of Hertfordshire
- University of Nottingham
- University of Plymouth
- University of York
- Environment Agency
- DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs)
The latter two organisations are described as Associate Partners. As noted above the terms say the images submitted can be used in "all media throughout the world in relation to ... OPAL" but only specify that NHM are granted the license. However the question has to be asked if NHM will then sublicense to their partners in the OPAL project. One could easily imagine that, for example, the Met Office would like to acquire 'free to use for ever' weather images for its image library.
As is so often the case in competitions organised by government bodies the language used in their terms and conditions is imprecise as well as rights grabbing.
Email to OPAL & Natural History Museum
To obtain detailed information about the IP rights being claimed from the public and how they will be used and sublicensed by the participating organisations we have sent the following email to the OPAL Portfolio Director, Linda Davies as well as to NHM using the contact form provided on the OPAL website
I refer to the Weather Photo Competition Terms and Conditions as set out at -
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/WeatherPhotoTerms
Can you please tell me if all the organisations listed on the partners and projects page will have the right to use the weather photo competition images in connection with OPAL.
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/PartnersandProjects
If so, please provide a copy of the license they are granted by NHM and indicate whether these organisations are in turn permitted to license image usage to other parties?
I would be grateful if you would acknowledge receipt of this email sent today 22 April 2011.
We now await a response to our enquiries and will publish the outcome in due course.
