The Artists’ Bill of Rights Campaign aims to protect artists’ intellectual property rights, and already has the support of a large number of creatives’ organisations, including Pro-Imaging, EPUK, The British Photographic Council, the Association of Photographers (AOP) and the British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP).

Aims of the campaign:

To provide a means whereby all artists’ associations can unite around a common set of standards for preservation of their rights.

To promote the Bill of Rights’ standards for the preservation of artists’ rights in competitions and appeals seeking creative works.

To promote organisations who support the Artists’ Bill of Rights and to promote their competitions and appeals.

To educate the public about the purpose and value of their intellectual property rights and to enable them to recognise when they are being exploited.

To publish reports about the extent of rights grabbing and to analyse and quantify the rights grabbed by the private, public, charitable, and non-profit sectors.

To press for legislative changes that would protect the public from unfair and unethical terms and conditions that seek to exploit their intellectual property rights.

In addition to the artists’ associations there are many private and public sector organisations who have given their support, all of whom are listed on the Artists’ Bill of Rights supporters page.

The initiative follows an earlier campaign started by Pro-Imaging in 2008, which successfully campaigned against unfair ‘rights-grabbing’ terms in photographic competitions.

Some photographic competitions insist that all entrants give them either copyright or extensive reproduction rights as a condition of entry: a move known as ‘rights-grabbing’ which is widely regarded as exploitative, bad practice and legally unnecessary.

In the past, EPUK has criticised companies including Nikon, The Guardian, Red Bull and The National Trust over similar competitions with rights-grabbing terms which exploit the goodwill of entrants.

The new campaign widens its objectives to cover education of the public of intellectual property rights, ascertaining the extent of rights-grabbing competitions and contracts, and to lobby for changes in the law to protect competition entrants from unfair terms and conditions.

The Artists’ Bill of Rights encourages all organisations representing creatives to officially lend their support to the campaign.

The campaign is currently run entirely by volunteers. Anyone who is interested in helping with the campaign is encouraged to get in touch via the campaign website.