Would have liked to participate but "The rights to ownership of entries that win prizes will pass to me" is weird. A photographer or an artist is always the owner of the rights of the created images, even when winning a contest. Of course this is your contest so you apply the rules you want lol. Nice initiative though. Cheers :)
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No problem. The competition is a form of community commissioning process, I'm purchasing the rights to the images created that win the prizes. That is one of the reasons the rewards are relatively high. Artists sell artwork you know, nothing weird about that!
Nothing weird about selling art indeed. :) And that is clearer.
When a photographer (or a visual artist) sells an image to a client, it does give the right to the buyer to use it under specific conditions. My point was just that buying the entire rights to an image is not something that artists accept easily (at least from my own experience) as it would allow you to resell the rights it for a much bigger amount to a third party company and even overtime. That is why it is usually very expensive to buy the entire rights and that artists ask what will be the use of their image before setting a price.
It's an interesting matter because as a photographer I was asking myself how the blockchain technology could help artists to catalog/reference their productions as authentic, in case someone else want to use their work for commercial purposes. It's all about intellectual property, actually funny because it is something I discussed during the Blockchain Live event in London last week with some of the block.one team btw ;)
I kind of get your concern. I share the hope that blockchain tech will empower artists by providing a secure, free market for their work and services. It's something I have mentioned several times. In this case, I don't really know what I'll do with the images.....what motivated me to make the disclaimer was the fact that after previous art competitions i've run, occasionally I found the artwork being used by others for different purposes and that can lead to confusion. Creativity is potentially limitless for a talented artist, what they really need is community awareness. I try to make the prizes substantial enough that an artist is well compensated for their time, it is difficult to predict the future value of an image that does not yet exist and there are many reasons why an artist may choose to participate in an art competition besides the possibility of winning the prizes. Either way, artists are free to enter or not :) I like to think I've always done my best to support the artistic talent on Steemit and be very fair.
I completely agree on this point with you and as said before I encourage and appreciate initiatives like this.
I just wanted to explain my feelings about copyrights, it is something I am sensitive to because it has been recently more and more difficult for photographers (but I would say visual artists in general) to survive, because the copyrights are less and less considered. When clients are hiring me, they have the sensation that they have any rights on the images I produce during the shooting. Many clients forgot the fact that there is a major difference between the prestation (the actual shooting session), and the rights to use. It is obvious that the price of an image won't be the same if the client is using it in front of his store to promote his business, than if he plan a worldwide ad campaign with giant billboards in different major countries. That is very interesting subject to discuss though. Thanks to have shared your vision.