This contest didn't come to me from the most reputable source -- I found out about it by a Google Adsense ad run on this very site. Regardless, it's worth mentioning: Your Indie Film is a short film competition run out of Canada with a grand prize of $5,000. From the horse's mouth: "There is no jury or panel, just film fans and filmmakers voting on the films. The film with the most votes wins... Voting starts on June 1st 2010 and ends on August 1st 2010. Once the festival is over the films will be deleted and the festival starts over again." Simple enough, but here's what I hate about these contests:
They say the films will be deleted when the contest is over. So why does the Legal section state the following:
You hereby grant to us the perpetual, unlimited, royalty-free, world wide, non-exclusive, irrevocable, transferable license (the “Licence”) in and to your Submissions. The Licence grants to Norwester, in respect of each and every of your Submissions, the rights to run, display, copy, reproduce, publish, bundle, distribute, market, create derivative works of, adapt, translate, transmit, arrange, modify, sub-license, export, merge, transfer, loan, rent, lease, assign, share, outsource, host, make available to any person or otherwise use, any information or other content you provide on or through the Website, or which is sent to us by e-mail or other correspondence, including without limitation, any ideas, concepts, inventions, know-how, techniques or any intellectual property contained therein, for any purpose whatsoever.
I get it -- they're absolving themselves from any potential legal recourse by an angry filmmaker. But why does this need to be in perpetuity? With this contract, if the parent company (Norwester, in this case) decides to start their own YouTube, they have perpetual rights to air your content. That doesn't seem right to me. Regardless, I bolded "non-exclusive" above because unlike some contests, you won't be limiting yourself (in terms of future distribution or contests) by submitting to Your Indie Film.
Link: Your Indie Film
