Microsoft Bing rights grab

Microsoft is running a contest for their Bing search engine in which the top prize is having your photo on their front page for 24 measly hours. Oh yea, and your compensation is just a credit.

The dirty little secret of these photography contests? They are used to build free stock libraries on the backs of clueless amateur photographers.

Before you even consider entering any contest online in which you submit creative content, read the rules closely. In the Microsoft Bing contest, like most photography contests, you are handing over a perpetual license to your work for free to a company that has millions in the bank and can afford a professional photographer’s services.

Image Ownership

All digital images must be original work. Participants retain ownership rights to their photos. You must have taken the photograph yourself, and submitted photos cannot violate the privacy or intellectual property rights of any person or entity. This shall include, but not be limited to, all third party copyrighted materials.

By submitting your photograph you grant Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates (collectively, “Microsoft”) an unlimited, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive right and license to use, reproduce, publish, modify, perform and display the image on the bing.com webpage or any replacement or successor to such web page, and in any marketing or advertising of any kind related thereto, in any medium now known or later developed.

Microsoft will not pay you any compensation for your photograph or any use we may make of it.

Microsoft is not obligated to use your photograph and we may not notify you if we do not use it.

By submitting your photograph you agree and represent to Microsoft that you are the photographer and the sole copyright owner of the photograph.

Don’t hand over your work for the sake of an ego boost. Microsoft, like most companies running these sort of contests, neither need nor deserve your charity. And always read the fine print.