Ever participated in an award? There is likely something you don’t know.

There are many possibilities to submit works to awards. Literally hundreds of thousands try this every year, just look at the number of the Scholastic Awards:

This year alone, students around America submitted over 330,000 works of art and writing to the Scholastic Awards, which goes to show the magnitude of this contest.

But I would guess more than 99% of the participants have not read a certain document, hidden behind a link in this paragraph:

Scholastic Awards Policy
By participating in the Awards, students agree to the [Scholastic Awards](participation terms). This means that the student agrees to submit “original work” to the Awards.
Would you have expected that behind this link you find that, essentially, the company writes “All your rights are belong to us”?

But one would-be participant, Sasha Matthew, 8th grade, has read it and says:

That means that the copyright for whatever the applicant submitted is fully transferred to Scholastic. In other words, if a student who applied for an award tries to print or publish their own work without saying "Property of Scholastic Inc.," Scholastic can sue. In addition, Scholastic can publish the applicant's work and sell it without giving the applicant, the original creator, any of the profits. - Sasha Matthews

Unfortunately, this thieving behavior is very widespread. For small events you could at least say that the people responsible just put in what their lawyers told them has to be there. But a company that has 330K of participants for their contest per year surely does not consists of a bunch of amateurs who don’t understand their own ToS.

Marx was worried about the exploitation of the workers by big companies. Maybe we, 150 years later, should be worried about the exploitation of our children by big companies?

Next time you (or your kids) send in something to an award, better look very closely. And think of this great youngster Sasha Matthews

via BoingBoing