Using IRTC Images

This is an expanded answer to Frequently Asked Question #6.7, placed here separately since it has become by far the single most frequently asked question about the competition.

So You Want to Use an IRTC Image ...

Here are responses to the most frequent queries we get about use of IRTC images:

• International copyright law states that every image on this site is copyrighted by its creator. You may not use the images without permission.
• The IRTC does not own the rights to the images--they are the property of the artists who created them.
• Because of this, the IRTC admins cannot grant or deny permission to a third party for any usage of an IRTC image. Only the artist has that right.
• In the past, many artists have readily granted permission for use of their images, but that decision is entirely theirs. Usually, the more information you can give them about how you plan to use their image, the easier it is for them to decide.
• Parties wishing to use an IRTC image must ask for permission directly from the artist who created it.
• Any contact information for an artist will be in the text file associated with their entry. To find that contact information, see the instructions below.
• The IRTC does not maintain any sort of database or registry of artists beyond the data they submitted with their entry. Very old contact information, like any such information on the Internet, can possibly be out of date. You have as much data as we do, thus as good a chance as we do of finding an artist.

Contacting Artists

Any contact information for an artist will be contained in the image's associated description page. All images have a description page, and at a minimum, it will contain the artist's email address. Many artists also put an address for their web page. There are two ways to find the description page:

From Viewing Page

If you are starting from the viewing page containing the image you wish to use, follow these steps:

1. Locate the viewing-page entry for the image you wish to use.
2. Select the Description link for that image. It will be of the form "imagename.txt"
3. Locate the EMAIL: line, very near the top of the description page.
4. Send an email to the artist's address, describing how you wish to use the image and requesting permission to do so.

Here is a typical viewing-page entry, with its Description link:

And here is the description page that is found by following that link, with the artist's email address highlighted:

Entering the URL

You may enter the URL (web address) of the description page directly. The URL of the image and the URL of the description page are identical except for the last three letters. They are "jpg" for the image, and "txt" for the description page. So an image whose URL is, for example:

   http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1996-06-30/crwrit.jpg

   http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1996-06-30/crwrit.txt

   http://server/ftp/pub/stills/round/name.jpg

   http://server/ftp/pub/stills/round/name.txt

• server is either "oz.irtc.org" for older rounds or "www.irtc.org" for newer ones,
• round is the date the round ended, in the format "YYYY-MM-DD", and
• name is the name of the entry as assigned by the artist.

Once you have located the description page using its URL, locate the artist's email address as described above.

We hope this clarifies the issue for you, and that you and the artist have a long and rewarding relationship!