Update, June 3, 2016: The Singapore Land Authority has issued a clarification. They said they do not own the contest photos submitted by participants and will give authors credit when their works are used.

The Singapore Land Authority is organising a photo contest happening from May 1 to June 12, 2016, with the declared aim of creating awareness and appreciation of State buildings.

The SLA Photo Contest 2016, with the theme “Celebrating Places and Memories”, is organised to celebrate SLA’s 15th Anniversary.

There are two categories for participants: Either the Open Category or Instagram Category. Participants can only join either category.

Both categories are relatively similar in scope with regards to their terms and conditions, except for the the eventual prize money (Open Category 1st prize of S$3,000, while Instagram Category has 10 prizes of S$200 each).

Photography enthusiasts, hobbyists and professionals are encouraged to use their cameras and phones to take pictures of State buildings and submit their shots with descriptions as to why the place was picked.

The full list of approved state land and buildings that can be shot for the contest can be found here.

However, found in the terms and conditions of the contest for both Open and Instagram categories, is clause 7.3, which basically amounts to handing over one's work to SLA for free forevermore:

7.3 Every participant grants to SLA a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sub-licensable licence to use, publish, publicly display, reproduce, post, upload, transmit, distribute, communicate, print, archive, adapt, edit and modify any entry and other materials submitted for the Contest, in whole or in part, in any form and in any media, for any purpose whatsoever, without acknowledgement of authorship and without prior notice to the relevant participant. In no event shall SLA make, offer or provide any payment or compensation therefor to any participant in any form whatsoever.

Applies to all participants, not just winners

This clause effectively means that it is not just the eventual winners who are awarded the various prize money who must essentially surrender their work and cannot determine how it is used in the future, but anyone who participates and submits a photo.

This appears to be the case despite what Clause 7.2 states: "The intellectual property rights subsisting in each entry shall be retained by the relevant participant".

Particularly jarring is the "without acknowledgement of authorship" line, where future credit will not even be given to the photographer for using his or her work.

But not as if this stipulations have gone unnoticed.

Darren Soh, the photographer who shot the photo capturing Singapore's lightning storm which was praised by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong himself, has highlighted the catch-all clause of such contest requirements.

Of course, SLA could have included the clause to protect themselves from possible law suits and there is a possibility that they have no intention of using nor retaining the existing photos, but that's not what the layman would think

Why is it unfair?

This practice of getting crowds of people to submit content with the hopes of winning a small carrot dangled is tantamount to almost crowdsourcing for content for free.

The number of works is potentially limitless, but the prize money is capped.

In tech circles, such a practice is politely referred to as "user-generated content". Behind closed doors, it is often referred to as "loser-generated content", where people seemingly do things frequently without any reward or for free, often without any credit.

Moreover, stated in clause 2.1 in both the Open and Instagram categories explicitly is the requirement for participants to produce "original" and "unpublished" works.

Creators of content will be particularly miffed, as this "original" and "unpublished" works are criteria that everyone procuring for a good or service wants, but are not keen to pay for.

Worse, another clause 5.2 within the terms and conditions do not inspire any confidence at all:

5.2 The judges reserve the right not to award any or all of the prizes in the Open Category if in their opinion, none of the eligible entries meet the required standard for that prize or the prizes.

5.2 The judges reserve the right not to award any or all of the prizes in the Instagram Category if in their opinion, none of the eligible entries meet the required standard for that prize or the prizes.

This effectively means that there is a possibility that no participant gets to win anything if the judges decide all the photos are bad.

Open competition is nothing new

However, it should be noted that this sort of open competition sourcing for valuable solutions is nothing new.

The precedent was famously set in 2009 when Netflix held an open competition and dangled a US$1 million prize for anyone who can come up with the best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films.

Known as the Netflix Prize, it drew a huge response with many solutions, with the winning solution perceived to be many times better than if it had been solved by fewer people.

In comparison, Netflix would have had to pay many times this US$1 million quantum if it had hired its own dedicated team of engineers and quants to solve the problem in-house.

The only difference now is that crowdsourcing for the best algorithm benefits everyone, while crowdsourcing for photos benefits SLA.

And that SLA gets to keep all the photos for their own use. Including the bad ones.

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Top photo via Infopedia

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