| My take on this debate (would love to get a hole or several punched through this reasoning, so please give it your best): * People being concerned about the prevalence of crowd-sourced or spec work are right to speak loud and clear about their concerns, and campaign against it wherever they get the chance. * People not sharing those concerns are right to set up or participate in competitions/spec work if they want to, and draw their own conclusions from their experience. But are there any objective reasoning to apply beyond the subjective concerns? At no-spec.com people campaigning against spec work have had years and years to formulate their reasoning, their FAQ probably lay down the facts best: http://www.no-spec.com/faq/ The entire FAQ, although verbose, basically boils down to two assertations: A. Spec work often gives out false promises about further, "real", employment opportunities once the competition is won. B. If you give out spec work, you can expect inferior results because proper care will not be spent on research prior to carrying out the work. There is also the conclusion that as a designer you should always try to retain the rights to the work, but that seems to apply to all projects and not only spec work. To sum up, the conclusion I draw from the No-spec campaign FAQ is: It is ok to arrange spec work competitions as long as you don't give out false pretentions about the rewards going to the winner, and you find the risk of inferior results acceptable. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? |