OK not photography, but nonetheless on the face of it a rights grab for intellectual property of artist contributors, Goggle has announced a "Doodle4Google" competition now airing on the Google homepage. It is aimed at 4 to 17 year olds and asks for a "doodle" on the theme of "I Love Football" to tie in with the world cup in South Africa.
In the Ts&Cs there is a rights grabbing clause which encompasses all entries, not just winning entries; The text is at http://tinyurl.com/y2ll9oy and reads;
"11. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: As between Google and the entrant, the entrant retains ownership of all intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) in and to the Doodle. As a condition of entry, entrant grants Google and the Contest Entities, including South African Tourism and Sports News Media a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display the Doodle (1) for the purposes of allowing Google and the Judges to evaluate the Doodle for purposes of the Contest, and (2) in connection with advertising and promotion via communication to the public or other groups, including, but not limited to, the right to make videos, screenshots, animations and Doodle clips available for promotional purposes."
No mention of remuneration for entries which do not win a prize, no mention that this clause only applies to winning entries. This is just an out-and-out rights grab. But not just a rights grab. Entrants will effectively give up any right to be remunerated or acknowledged for any idea which they may come up with; hence the "derivative works" clause.
Surely Google has the money and the clout to employ (and pay for) creative designers to develop ideas and graphics? So why are they proposing a "competition" which will feast for free on the creativity of unsuspecting kids? Shame on Google.
I have been doing some research on this topic for my class in film school on distribution. In general "non-exclusive license" is redefining distribution in many positive ways. I feel the author above is being a little over zelous. The kids in question are probably having fun and the idea that their creativity in question is being stolen doesn't make sense. Non-exclusive means that if there was a market place for their Art outside this contest that they still have the ability to commodify their efforts. I agree logo design should be paid for. I certainly wouldn't design one for free, but the idea that the people in question are being taken advantage of is kinda of silly considering it's pretty obvious that people create the doodle in hopes that it gets seen by people not an economic reward.
aka:
http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/lovefootball/doodle4google/vote.html
Too bad there isn't a market place for chosen doodles for people to cash in... alas if this was a photo or film contest there would be.
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