In view of the declining revenues of daily newspapers, we've been expecting a rash of new competitions aimed at prising free stock photos from readers. The weekly Daily Telegraph Big Picture competition has been grabbing rights for nearly a year now, but of course the Telegraph has been having its own private recession for longer than most. We failed to notice the flagging Times has since muscled in on the travel compo action that the rival Telegraph had to itself, with its own weekly Times Travel competition.

Travel is a perennially useful theme for newspapers' rights-grabbing competitions. For one thing, readers with jobs can afford to travel and don't try to reclaim the expenses, unlike pro photographers used to. And readers' generic images from around the world can be repurposed to fill holes for all sorts of international stories. This is tremendously cheaper than buying in a topical photo that is actually relevant, of course. And who would not want to donate their work to help out the impoverished News Corporation in these hard times? Generous CEO Rupert Murdoch's company only earned $32.996 billion last year.

17. By entering, any subsequent prize winners agree to allow the free use of their names, photographs and general locations for publicity and news purposes during this and future promotions by TNL or any associated or subsidiary company of News International Limited.
18. TNL reserves the right to publish all or parts of entries other than the winning entry, and publication does not necessarily mean that the entrant has won a prize. TNL reserves the right to edit entries in its discretion for publication. Entrants will retain copyright in their submitted entries; however, by entering, all entrants give TNL a worldwide royalty free perpetual licence to edit, publish and use all or segments of each entry in any and all media (including print and online) for publicity and news purposes. In particular, all entrants license TNL the right to print their entry on thetimes online and in print.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/travel_images/article6003168.ece