Contests & Artists' Rights

Hey there! This one's kinda important, so I'm gonna get right to it. it's been brought to our attention that people hosting contests are claiming that "All entries to my contest belong to me", which is simply not true - the only way this would be true is if the artists in question were all reasonably compensated for their work. Just because they entered your contest, does not inherently mean that they should lose all the rights to their own work. Claiming such a thing is EXTREMELY IMMORAL and thus we won't allow it. As such, the contest rules have been updated. It saddens me that we actually have to add this to our contest rules, but a while back when making the first draft of the main rules, I added at the end of it all: And put simply... What people have been doing with these contests... Isn't. Nice. So we're putting a stop to it, here and now. After the 31st of July, any contest that has in their rules that "All rights to the entries are given to me" or "All artists give me the rights to their entered work" (or anything akin to that) will be deleted, and the host of said contest will be contacted to talk about the issue. The only thing that an artist is doing, really, by entering a contest, is giving you the permission to use the art that they made. If you want more, then you need to be clearly detailing the reason why and probably will need to negotiate with the artists in regards to this. On the flipside. Pay attention to these things. If you're going to enter a contest and you find out, after doing so, that you don't agree with the rules - well... your entry into said contest is basically you saying "I agree to the Terms set". You can always withdraw... But chances are that the host probably saved your art already, which given that you withdrew, probably isn't what is desired. In short, make sure you pay attention. That being said, people should be reading the rules of contests anyway, but I'm just covering bases here. Nothing more.

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That said, there's also been a second addition, just for coverage. It's been noticed that there have been a disturbing number of contests that have either an undecided deadline (despite being made for over a week) or they've had their deadline extended repeatedly for invalid reasons. As such, we shall be placing the following additional rules: Upon posting the contest, you have 7 days to decide the deadline for your contest. The maximum limit is 30 days. You may contact a member of staff to discuss having the contest last longer, if you feel you have a valid reason for doing so. A host is only allowed two time-extensions. Each time-extension is allowed a max of 10 days. Both time-extensions are allowed to be to allow entrants to finish up their work. Only one of them is allowed to be for more entries into the contest. You may contact a member of staff to discuss having additional extensions if you feel that you have a valid reason for doing so. That said and done - again, if you have a contest that is breaking these new rules, please seek to remedy this post-haste. And if you see a contest that is breaking these rules from the 1st/Aug/2015 and onwards then please report it! Thank you~ And sorry for the wall of text :(

[img]http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t509/Ch3lsalina/Galaxytemplatetop-1.png[/IMG][background=http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t509/Ch3lsalina/Galaxytemplatemiddle.png][css=padding-left: 105px; padding-right: 105px;][css=text-shadow: 0px 0px 9px #000000;][font=Century Gothic][color=#f3f3f3][center]This is shocking to me actually, that people would claim this. So thank you for informing and putting a stop to it.[/center][/font][/color][/css][/css][/background][IMG]http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t509/Ch3lsalina/Galaxytemplatebottom-1.png[/img]

Thank you for setting the deadline rule's, this will be a lot less frustrating in the future for any other contests my self and other's join

I wonder how many contest holders actually even mean "all rights," and how many are just using a familiar term (as in, "all rights reserved" etc.) when what they mean to say is the right to save/display the art. But then, to be frank, if they don't feel the art is good enough to win a prize or be compensated somehow, why should they want to keep and use it anyway?

Thank you guys for these new rules. I've noticed both of these things happen often and I'm glad something is being done about it. I have a question though. I had a "contest" of sorts running right now, where the users guess which egg I'll hatch my melanistic Skitty at, and the winner (whoever guesses closest) gets a shiny. Obviously I can't really give a deadline... I've seen other contests similar to this too. What happens with them, since there's no way to say when it'll end? Are contests like this exempt from the deadline rule as long as the one holding it is still actively taking part in the contest?

Thank you Garthic! I have been noticing these contests and I think it's rude and, as you said, immoral. Artists have rights too and as someone who loves to enter contests I agree with what you've posted. Thank you so much for changing the rules and getting this out there.

Really glad to see this being brought up. I only noticed this recently as well, but then I noticed the sheer amount of it and it was kind of gross. I'm sure a lot of people didn't mean it in a bad way (as in, they'd just want to use it in a template or a skin or something), but it was still forcing artists to give up their rights. I do have a question though. If we see contests with these kinds of rules, how would we go about reporting it?

I'm pretty sure you go about it the normal way you report a user. You can either go to the person's page and report them through the report button while providing the evidence to support the user doing this. That or you can simply pm a mod and have them take care of it. Whatever you decide is pretty much up to you.

Ah, all right. That makes sense. Thank you.