Design contest. Ya right ? ! ? ! ? !

Anyone interested?

http://www.factoryfive.com/whatsnew/update/nextcar/designcomp.html

If you win, be sure to demand a royalty on each kit sold rather than accepting a flat fee and signing your rights away.

What a hokey contest, this shit happens all of the time in design and advertising and is being contested as illegal in several states already.
Most of the time, the scam is targets Design Majors in art and design colleges.

It's "work for hire" at it's core, and anyone signing their designs away, either for the winning cash prizes or for absolutely nothing,
since all designs become the property of Factory Five at the time of submission, is a fuckin' IDIOT ! ! ! !

( . . . all submissions, designs, drawings, data files and ideas entered into this contest will become the property of Factory Five Racing, Inc.)

Leave it to those SLEAZOIDS at factory five, huh?



Chime in ANY time Gordon. Tell me how wonderful your buddies are at factory five, then explain away THIS kinda shit . . . .

how to get dozens of new design ideas, some well fleshed out, for about $10k. Great deal for FFR. Not such a great deal for the people who put hundreds of hours into their design...then give it away. TC is right to declare "foul" on this deal.....I thought slave labor was relegated to China and the like? Oh, but the recognition you say? Try taking that to the bank...maybe Chip Foose will contribute? He has some great ideas and certainly $5k would at least cause him to sharpen at least one pencil.....

I humbly submit "The Homer" It will need a few tweaks to make it mid-engine, but she'll go like a bat out of hell being suby powered.

Fits the mid-engined setup perfectly with that elevated rear seat. Plenty of room underneath for a WRX motor.

Think PINK....

Pussy mobile?

TC:

What the hell is your problem?

You don't own a Factory Five product, nor do (I bet) any of your "friends" and yet, all you can do is bitch about them. I bet that you've never even met anyone who works there.

I know of several Factory Five customers here in SC, and a few more up in Massachusetts and ALL of them are happy with their products and after-the-sale support (which is excellent).

So what if they want to stage a "design" contest? You'll never enter anything into it - all you'll do is bitch about it.

Massachusetts now has a Sema-based home-builder category for registering our cars with a lot less hassle than before the law was signed and all you've done is bitch about that, too. A bunch of people from NSRA, NHRA and, yes, FACTORY FIVE worked their asses off for years to get that passed and all you can do is bitch about it. What did YOU do to support it?? oh....Nothing?

No wonder I prefer to do useful things and stay off of here. Your arguments simply aren't worth my time....

Pink?

I'd be happy if I just got a completed car like I wanted. I don't think my eyes can survive another build..

I have drawings.. and I have solved many design problems to make the car build better and easyer.

As some of you know, I want a gullwing fastback 550 spyder. grey outside royal blue inside.. I want it badly as a beetle replacement. And I don't care how many they build as long as ! get. >>(ONE)<<

I'd give my left testicle for a complete Factory Five 32 Roadster on their new chassis. I saw one in work today at Thunder Ranch and from what I've read, it turns significantly faster laps times than their own Factory five Cobras (which they claim will be migrating to the new chassis in the future).

Speedsters and spyders are fun, but I ain't gunna be no zealot about them.

Sorry Gordon . . . over react much ? !

Taking ownership of the submitted ideas and only paying for a couple top designs is the only way you can run a contest like this. If you don't take ownership of everything, then anyone who submitted a design could come back later and sue them because FFR's new car has 4 wheels, 2 seats, and is vaguely car-shaped. You know, just like in their drawing. If they payed, say $50 for every submission, some jackass could just wipe his ass on a thousand sheets of paper and they'd legally owe him $50000.

It's not about getting work for free. A week with a real designer would produce better work product than 99% of the submissions that they'll get. It's about generating interest in their new project with the community. And this is still just a concept drawing. It's the bare minimum starting point for the real design and engineering work.

I agree that it's often a bad idea to give away your IP if you can actually sell it, but I doubt that's the case for most entrants. And winning this contest would look nice on a designer's resume. Plus the submissions are voluntary, FFR isn't keeping poor college students chained to desks in some sweatshop pumping out ideas for them.

Justin, Gordon, txs for being the adult in the room w/ TC on this one, as he can get so worked up, don't you know, and I'd hate for him to hurt himself . . .

No design or imagery should be free, and especially if someone else is going to make real money from it. If they paid for the winners and returned the losers, unused and documented as such. Fine. To keep everything and maybe use a little from a handful of this and that from loser's designs on the final design based on the winners entry is just plain wrong. Authorship is FAR more important than any benefits of participation. To run a contest in this way, and to take advantage of the uninitiated, however it's presented, is wrong at every level.

Contest or otherwise. And Gordon knows me, and also knows that this has nothing really at all to do with razing the factory five crew, it goes to the core of authorship, ownership, and copyright; all of which are a great concern to me. That factory five is culpable is just an added bonus. Not the issue at hand.

These kinds of contests don't bring out the amateurs for the most part, they draw out (no pun) the design school seniors and advanced degree candidates who use them as a means of presenting and completing their degree program requirements. You could pay for a designer, and it would cost a TON more than they're offering as prize money, but even at that you wouldn't get the new stuff, the extraordinary work currently being produced in the schools and colleges right now. You'd end up with what the designer or design firm is offering at the moment.

These young people, the most talented, are the ones who get taken advantage of the most. They believe that they're doing it for the fame and exposure, they end up with ashes. Once factory five builds their new car, I doubt that they turn to the previous winner for the next design, they'll hold another contest. Bank on it.

Come on, translate this into any other field and you'd see the problem. Just because it looks easy when someone draws something on a scrap of paper doesn't make it worthless. Even something as seemingly simple as the design of the Coke bottle was designed and fretted over, and is copyright. I believe that it was done by the same man who designed the Stude, it wasn't the winner of a contest, and the loser's design didn't end op on the Fanta bottles.

If a contest was held for rocket engine designs, or computer platforms, or oil contamination clean up devices, would anyone be so stupidly callous as to suggest that the entrants were going to resort to feces as a viable medium to present their work trying to score extra $$$.

This business is REAL, design is real, and it's worthwhile and important and compensation ought to be offered. Ferarri sued, Shelby sued, their automobile design and copyrights meant something. something that shouldn't be given away. If the design work entered in this contest is so worthless as to ever speculate that it would be rendered in human fecal matter, then why NOT return the losing entries, shit stained or otherwise, unused and let the copyright remain with the creator.

Honestly, you folks don't have a clue about this. Not a clue . . . and even Gordon, in spite of his outburst, will most likely back me up when it comes to the importance of copyright, ownership, and retention of all rights when it comes to design, illustration, and such. This is important, and important to me.

...and now back to our regularly scheduled topic "The Nardi Horn Button"...

Since this site and the entire hobby of replica Speedsters is based on copyright infringement, it does seem somewhat ironic to champion the hard-working design folks who are paid to develop designs, to urge that their designs are protected, and then to devise ways to make our toys look just like their "protected" work. The stance seems hypocritical, and I'm not saying my culpability is any less than anyone else's. We want to have our cake and eat it too.

I don't think you understand. If they accept a design, even if they document and return it unused, then any future design work FFR does is tainted and they are open to being sued. No company will accept unsolicited works for this very reason. And in this case, since FFR actually did solicit these designs it would very much weaken any defense. They must take ownership of the submissions or risk being sued out of existence. And if they actually did pay someone to do the design work, full-time or contract, the company would still claim ownership on all their work.

You believe these contests are unethical, so be it. Blame our horribly broken IP laws and tort system that things can't work the way you want them to.

It's a moot point anyhow - everything useful has all ready been invented!

BRAVO David. And I assume you still have your left nut, where it is supposed to be . . .

Kelly - "How are you today David?"

David - "PARTS of me are just excellent, thank you!"