IN FOCUS Rights and Publication Licence
What you keep, what you confirm, and what you let us do with your photo. This forms part of the Contest Rules.
In short
The photo stays yours. You are lending it to us, not selling it. We can show it in connection with IN FOCUS — on the contest page, in the gallery, on our social channels — always with your name on it, and if it is shortlisted we repost it on Instagram so people can vote for it. We cannot put it in a product advert, on packaging, or on anything we sell. You can ask us to take it down.
01 · You keep your copyright
You are and remain the author of your photograph. Nothing here transfers your copyright, and under German law it could not (§ 29 UrhG). You can keep selling it, printing it, licensing it, and entering it elsewhere. What you grant us is a non-exclusive licence: a permission, not a handover, and it does not stop you doing anything with your own work.
02 · What you confirm when you enter
By ticking the rights box on the entry form, you confirm all of the following. These are the things we cannot check ourselves and have to take your word on.
- It is yours to enter. You took the photo, or the photographer who took it has agreed that you enter it, that it is published with credit, and that you receive any prize.
- The people in it agreed. Anyone recognisable in the photo has agreed to it being published — the diabolist, and any bystander whose face makes them identifiable. If someone is genuinely incidental background in a public place, that is fine. If they are a subject, get their yes first. This matters more than people expect: in Germany, § 22 KUG gives people a say in the publication of their own image.
- Children. If anyone recognisable in the photo is under 18, their parent or guardian has agreed.
- It is a photograph. Not AI-generated, not generatively edited, not composited. See section 6 of the Contest Rules for exactly where that line sits.
- Nothing blocks it. You have not given anyone else an exclusive licence, and no agency, client, sponsor or festival contract stops you entering it.
- It is clean. The photo does not infringe anyone’s rights and does not contain anything unlawful.
If one of these turns out not to be true, we will take the photo down and withdraw the entry, and you are responsible for third-party claims that arise from it. We are not asking you to insure us against the world — only to stand behind the things you told us.
03 · What you grant us
You grant DiaboloFocus a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use your submitted photo in connection with IN FOCUS. That connection is the limit of the whole licence: if a use is not about the contest, it is not covered.
We can
- Show it to the jury and in the community vote
- Publish it in the IN FOCUS gallery on diabolofocus.com
- Post it on @diabolofocus and our other channels — Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, X, Threads
- Pay to boost a social post about IN FOCUS that includes it
- Use it in the IN FOCUS newsletter and in announcements about the contest
- Print it for an exhibition
- Give it to press and to other diabolo media reporting on the contest, with your credit attached
- Keep it in the IN FOCUS archive alongside future editions
- Repost it on @diabolofocus if it is shortlisted, numbered, so the community can vote on it in the comments — with your credit attached
- Show a public like count and, for finalists, a public vote count next to it
We cannot
- Put it in a product advert, a Google or Meta shopping ad, or any campaign selling a product
- Put it on packaging, a poster, a T-shirt, or anything else we sell
- Use it on a product page or as a product image
- Licence it or sell it to a third party
- Use it after IN FOCUS in a way that has nothing to do with IN FOCUS
- Publish it without your name
- Sub-licence it, except to press covering the contest
- Alter it beyond section 5
If we ever want another use, we will come and ask you first. That is a different conversation, and you can say no.
How long
The licence starts when you submit and runs for as long as the IN FOCUS archive is online, subject to section 6. There is no exclusivity period and no lock-in.
04 · Credit
Your name goes on your photo, in a caption or description. Every time, everywhere we publish it, in the form you gave on the entry form — the photographer’s name, the diabolist’s name, and your Instagram handle where the format allows a tag.
This is not a courtesy. It is a condition of the licence: publication without credit is a use we are not licensed to make. If we get it wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
05 · What we may change about the photo
Only what a format forces: resizing, and cropping to fit a square, a story, or a banner. Nothing else. We will not recolour it, filter it, retouch it, add graphics over the image, or crop it in a way that changes what it is a photo of. Your moral rights as author stay with you and cannot be signed away in Germany, including your right to object to distortion of your work (§ 14 UrhG).
06 · Taking your photo back
Write to info@diabolofocus.com and we will withdraw your photo from the contest and take it down from anything we control, within 14 days.
Two honest limits. We cannot un-print something already printed, and we cannot pull back a copy a press outlet or another account already has — a withdrawal works from the day you ask, not backwards. And if you withdraw before the results, you withdraw from the contest; we cannot judge a photo we cannot show.
07 · Photos that do not make the Top 10
They still appear in the entry gallery, with credit, if you are happy for them to. If you would rather they did not, say so and we will remove them and delete the files. Nothing about a non-winning entry is used for anything other than the gallery.
08 · The announcement
1st place is a certificate and the money prize. Announcing the result — showing the winning photo with the winner’s name on the site and on our channels — is covered by this licence.
09 · If you are entering someone else’s photo
You are the one giving this licence, so you need the authority to give it. Ask the photographer before you submit, not after we call you. A forwarded message saying yes is enough for us, and if there is any doubt at all, let the photographer enter it themselves — a photo that has to be argued about is not a photo we can publish.
10 · Contact
Guillaume Karpowicz
Marwitzer Str. 54a — 13589 Berlin, Germany
info@diabolofocus.com
German law applies, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protection law of the country you live in.