Dive Magazine – a title with which we can indulge ourselves to our hearts’ content with puns concerning “rock bottom” and “plumbing new depths” – operates one of the most wide ranging rights grabs we’ve seen in a while.

First, from the Dive magazine website: an example of the “have your cake, eat it and then have more cake” school of rights grabs:

Any Content provided by you by, for example, posting messages to bulletin boards or chat forums, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication through this Website, although owned by you, is subject to a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, world-wide licence allowing DIVE Magazine to use, distribute, copy, sub-license, adapt, transmit, publicly perform or display any such content. You agree to irrevocably and unconditionally waive on your behalf in perpetuity in respect of such Content the benefit of any provision of law known as moral rights of authors or any similar law in any country.

Mmmm. You might argue that most content submitted in forums might have very little resale value – but Dive Magazine appear to think otherwise, and what’s more, they want to make money from it. But at least they have to cover the risk in case you say anything libelous or defamatory, no ? No.

You understand that all information, data, text, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages or other materials (“Content”), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. This means that you, and not DIVE Magazine, are entirely responsible for all Content that you upload to, post on or otherwise transmit via this Website.

But what about those pesky competition rights grabs ? It just gets so tiring having to type out all those “we own your entry and the horse it rode into town on” terms every time you want to run a competition. Problem solved here:

By you entering a Competition you:
(a) assign to DIVE Magazine all rights, title and interest (including, without limitation, all intellectual property rights however arising and in whatever media throughout the world) in perpetuity, in all creative material uploaded onto the DIVE Magazine Site or otherwise provided by you where such creative material is the subject of the Competition;
(b) irrevocably and unconditionally waive on your behalf in perpetuity the benefit of any provision of law known as moral rights of authors of any similar law in any country;
(c) acknowledge that DIVE Magazine may use such creative material in any way it sees fit without further payment to you;
(d) warrant to DIVE Magazine that such creative material is wholly original to you (in the sense of not being copied), does not libel, defame, cause injury to, or invade the privacy of or otherwise infringe or violate the rights of any third party and the use of such creative material by DIVE Magazine will not infringe the rights of any third party; and
(e) consent to DIVE Magazine passing your name and address to any third party to deliver the prize or prizes to you.

Wonderful. As we’ve pointed out many times before, these “competitions” can actually just be a cheap and easy way for a publisher to get a royalty-free picture library, so long as you have the gall to try and shaft your own readers. What we would like to see is far more reasonable terms of the winners keeping copyright, but the publisher being allowed to publish the winning works to promote the competition.