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ASMP slams AIA contest release form and urges members not to sign

ASMP is urging its members not to sign the "new" version of a contest release form that the American Institute of Architects is distributing to photographers.

ASMP managing director and general counsel Victor S. Perlman has warned that the form is no longer just a release to the AIA: it is also a release to Business Week and Architectural Record and their parent company, McGraw-Hill.

“The release demands that photographers give permissions that will allow a huge, for-profit publishing company to ‘use, modify, and reproduce’ their photographs, without payments or rights or pre-approval. It supposedly limits the scope of the usage, but those limits are illusory. The permission allows any use ‘in connection with efforts to educate architects, other professionals, and the public about architecture. Those are no limits at all, and those uses are by no means certain to fall under the heading of ‘fair use,’ which is something that can be determined only after all of the facts and details surrounding a specific use are known,” said Perlman.

ASMP has written to the AIA advising that photographers are being urged to not to sign the new awards release form but also offering to help draft a more equitable release.

Perlman’s told AIA’s chief executive, Phil Simons, that “this release demands, without any compensation, extraordinarily broad and valuable rights. For example, it commandeers the unrestricted right to modify any images that are released, without any input from the photographer or right of prior approval by the photographer.”

Perlman added: “The way a photograph looks in print is the photographer's stock and trade. Allowing one's photographs to be modified without any limitations or controls by the photographer, for no compensation, would be the equivalent of playing professional Russian roulette.

“Even more egregiously, it grabs the rights to make any uses the publications want - ‘in connection with efforts to educate architects, other professionals, and the public about architecture.’ McGraw-Hill and most publishing and media companies today make vast amounts of revenues from books and multimedia publication of ‘educational’ materials, and this rights-grab is simply unconscionable,” said Perlman.

“I understand that the words ‘fair use’ have been used in connection with this provision. Let me simply state that anyone who says that the uses encompassed by this kind of language would be covered by fair use either: knows nothing of the provisions of §107 of the Copyright Act of 1976; or is intentionally misrepresenting the facts,” he said.

Perlman did offer ASMP’s resources in creating another release, telling Simons that if personnel at McGraw-Hill and its subsidiaries would like to discuss a release form that would be fair, reasonable and appropriate, ASMP would be glad to assist. “In the meantime, ASMP will continue to educate its members as to the dangers of the 2001 release form and to urge them not to sign it,” he said.