"Copyright infringement is the use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works, without permission from the copyright holder, which is typically a publisher or other business representing or assigned by the work's creator."
- Wikipedia
If you are a contest junkie like I am please play fair! Joining contest specially when it involves photographs as your entry needed time and effort so that you can come up with the best entry to fit the category. Or if you are tricky and never think of consequences in regards with your act you will result to grabbing photos over the web and claim it as yours.
This happened to this recent photo contest I joined in over Facebook. The concept of the contest was to post interesting photos during your daily commute. Meaning you should sumbit your own photos, photos that you took, photos that you created. Since I have stock photos that goes with the theme I submitted entries for it, and since it is not a "most like wins" kind of contest I was confident about the decision of the contest admin. The prize? Five winners of Tretorn shoes for men.
During the middle of the contest week I saw this entry.
I was shocked when I saw this! I knew that photo because I have seen it so many times over the net, in social network sites. I read the caption and the contestant obviously claimed the photo as hers. I was like duh! I never said anything and waited for the result of the contest, and a couple of days ago as i checked the announcement.... Guess what!
That entry won! I felt sick and angry because I am a hobbyist photographer and the feeling of something was taken from you in the advantage of winning a pair of shoes! I did experience photo grabbing and disregarded me as the owner of the photo and even claimed that she's the one in the photograph. I called her attention and removed her from my friends list. This is not new, a few months ago copyright infringement was all over the news because of this Filipino who grabbed photos and won in an International contest.
The giant shoe from Marikina is a photograph of a Filipino Photojournalist from Reuters and copyright of that photos can be seen everywhere. Articles from different news websites used that photo and gave credit to the owner. We called up the attention of the contest admin and I appreciate that they reply and made the right thing, the winner was disqualified due to copyright infringement.
I just do hope that the rest of the winners there are legit entries.
Common guys... Play fair!
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