New York Times Company, USA

About This Organisation

New York Times Company

About this Organisation

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded, and continuously published in New York City, since 1851. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady" the Times is owned by The New York Times Company, which also publishes 18 other regional newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. Wikipedia

About this Report

traffic-light-stop Competitions or appeals seeking submissions of creative works from the public, works such as photos, videos, poems, music, etc., are reviewed by the Bill of Rights campaign. The reviews are to help you decide whether you should participate in the competition or appeal. The only thing you need to understand is that when you create a work (e.g. a photo) the law automatically makes you the sole beneficiary of certain rights over that work (but see note 1 below). These rights are called intellectual property rights.

Rights have a value and you are free to decide what that value is. If a person or organisation would like to use your work to promote something, you have the right to refuse permission, or to set a fee for a specific use and decide how long they may use it. More information about intellectual property rights and their value to you as an individual can be read in our Guide to Rights & Licensing. Listed on the next tab are some competitions or appeals promoted by the above organisation. For each we detail how the organisation's terms and conditions will exploit your rights to their advantage for works you submit to their competition or appeal.

The main aims of the Bill of Rights Campaign are to help everyone understand that their intellectual property rights have a value and to encourage competition and appeal organisers to adopt the standards set out in the Bill of Rights for Artists.

Note 1. Rights for works created as an employee are usually owned by your employer.

About Their Competitions/Appeals

How this Organisation's Competitions or Appeals are Listed

How to Use this Tab

Listed below in order of closing date are the competitions or appeals promoted by this organisation that have been reviewed by the Bill of Rights for Artists campaign. To see the review of each competition or appeal just click on its title and a window will open to reveal its details.

The following information is provided for each competition or appeal;

the terms and conditions that impact on your intellectual property rights for any works you submit;
an explanation of how the terms and conditions will affect you and the rights you have in any work you submit to it;
a list of any other organisations sponsoring the competition or appeal;
who you should contact and how to complain to the organisation concerned.

A Timely Global Mosaic, Created By All of Us; closing date 2 May 2010

A Timely Global Mosaic, Created By All of Us

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Before listing some of the rules we should explain that what New York Times want people to do is to send them a photograph of where they are at the above date/time. This is to enable them create "a Web-built image of one moment in time across the world." It is not clear from their copy the reason for this appeal, the terms and conditions will help illuminate the reason -

3.3 You acknowledge that any submissions you make to the Service (i.e., user-generated content including but not limited to: comments, forum messages, reviews, text, shared TimesPeople activities, video, audio and photographs, as well as computer code and applications) (each, a "Submission") may be edited, removed, modified, published, transmitted, and displayed by The New York Times Company and you waive any rights you may have in having the material altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you. Submissions made to the Service including shared TimesPeople activities, may also be included in our RSS feeds, APIs and made available for republishing through other formats.

3.4 You grant NYT a perpetual, nonexclusive, world-wide, royalty free, sub-licensable license to the Submissions, which includes without limitation the right for NYTimes.com or any third party The New York Times designates, to use, copy, transmit, excerpt, publish, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, modify and adapt (including without limitation the right to adapt to streaming, downloading, broadcast, mobile, digital, thumbnail, scanning or other technologies) in any form or media now known or hereinafter developed, any Submission posted by you on or to NYTimes.com or any other Web site owned by NYT, including any Submission posted on NYTimes.com through a third party.

HOW THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS WILL AFFECT YOU

The following notes explain how the above terms and conditions affect your rights in respect of any works you submit to the above competition or appeal.

The terms and conditions require you to waive your moral rights. This means you will not be able to object to how your work is used in future, such as it being altered in a manner you may find derogatory, or if it is used to promote a product or cause you find objectionable. You have also lost your right to be credited as the author of your work.
The terms and conditions do not state you will always be credited when your work is reproduced. One of your most important moral rights is that you should be credited as the author of a work whenever it is reproduced.
The terms and conditions are granting the organiser unlimited use of your work for ever.
The terms and conditions grant the organiser the right to use your work beyond that needed to promote the competition or appeal. Your work will be used for other purposes. Usage of your work should be restricted solely to promoting the competition or appeal. If the organisation wishes to use your work for any other purpose they should negotiate with you independently of the competition. You should have the right to negotiate an appropriate fee for the specific use they want to make of your work and to set a time limit on such use. You should also have the right to refuse use of your work. For further information on fees and licensing refer to the Introduction to Rights and Licensing.

The above may help you to decide not to submit any works to this competition or appeal. For further guidance please read the Bill of Rights for Artists.

SPONSORS

None listed

CONTACT

Send your complaints to the President and Chief Executive of the New York Times at this email address; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To visit the competition website click the competition title above to submit the free image we have created. Note that the competition link may cease to work at some point after the competition results are announced.

You can help the Bill of Rights campaign by complaining to the organiser urging them to change their terms and conditions. If time is at a premium for you we have prepared a complaint email which you can copy and send to the organiser. Alternatively, or as well as, you can submit the free image we have prepared to register your complaint simply by entering the free image to the contest.

Where a contest automatically displays entrants images on the contest website as they arrive you can use the free image to test the competition and determine if it is stripping metadata. The test results can be submitted to a survey by the Controlled Vocabulary Group.

The Bill of Rights campaign depends on your active support, your help will make a difference.

Updated on 15 April 2010

Failing the Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights Standards for Creative Competitions

Competitions which meet all the standards set out in the Bill of Rights For Artists do not do any of the following -

claim copyright
claim exclusive use
seek waiving of moral rights
fail to give a credit for all free usage
add, alter, or remove metadata from submissions
seek usage rights other than for promoting the contest and no other purpose. Note that a book, posters, cards, or a calendar are seen as legitimate ways of promoting the contest and defraying costs
seek free usage rights in excess of 5 years
use the submissions commercially without the entrant's agreement, and such commercial usage is to be subject to a freely negotiated license independently of the competition.
make it a condition of winning that an entrant must sign a commercial usage agreement
fail to publish all documents on the competition website that an entrant may have to sign
fail to name the judges for this or last year's competition
fail to explicitly state all the organisations who will acquire rights to the submissions
set a closing date more than 18 months after the contest launch date
fail to make clear statements of rights claimed and how submissions are used.

We have written an Organisers Guide to the Bill of Rights to help organisers draft terms and conditions that respect the rights of entrants and at the same time provide legal protection for the organiser.

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The above text may be reproduced providing a link is given to the Bill of Rights For Artists.

Any text reproduced in italics in this report has been extracted from a competition or appeal website for the purposes of review.

Organisations who would like to be promoted as a Bill of Rights Supporter and have their competitions promoted on the Rights On List can use this contact form. We look forward to hearing from you.