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you have no right to identify me via face recognition.

What if I kept a big book of photographs taken in public places where there is no expectation of privacy and did it by hand, no computers? Would that be OK?

So far, you have not crossed the line. It depends upon how you use the photographs. Here is the commonly used point that a model release is needed: https://asmp.org/tutorials/fre... If FB is driving advertisements based upon these photographs, I would say that FB is on shaky ground but I'm sure they have more expensive lawyers than I do. :-)

i'd say that's an adequate summation of my stance. you can already ask google to uncache i think.

https://support.google.com/web...

if it's personal of that nature, you know outside the bounds of journalistic integrity, i think they already had stuff in place to remove their listing of it. They still recommend you contact the actual webmaster for obvious reasons, but they would remove anything that a responsible journalist wouldn't report.

i'd say with the picture thing, if you've waived your rights to the picture, explicitly or implicitly, those rights are no longer your own. Part of that is expedience too, photos taken of a crowd at a public event for example. I think the courts in the US have ruled that
https://asmp.org/tutorials/fre...
photojournalism is too hard if you have to worry about everybody.

Also, in public places you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy... which is slightly sticky with upskirt photos, photos at swimming pools etc. still being grappled with by courts of various states.

who owns pictures has always been a sticky subject.

Not completely true. There's a reason if you do a photo shoot with a model you ask them for a model release (right to use their image). Not every image is copyright to the photographer. And I have quite a few citations.

Of course, whether or not you need a release is a complex issue, but if you don't want lawyers sorting it out the best is to err on the side of caution.

Private restaurant? Privately owned maybe and the owner could request people not wear glass in the restaurant but it is still in public. You have NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY.

The geek confuses what is legal with what is courteous and respectful towards others.

That is what makes him a Glasshole.

Figuring out what is or isn't a public place is usually easy, but not always. If the public is allowed free and unrestricted access to a place, like streets, sidewalks and public parks, it is probably a public place (although parts of sidewalks and what appear to be public parks may be privately owned). Once you go indoors, you are probably no longer in a public place, and some person or entity can probably make the rules, including restrictions on making photographs.

Frequently asked questions about privacy and libel

What if the subject posed for a nude painting (from a good enough artist that it was accurate/near photo-realistic)? Would she have a right to have it destroyed because she changed her mind?

Models for photos (and I'd assume photo-realistic paintings) typically have to sign a release form, acknowledging that they are of age, understand the photos will be distributed and/or publicly exhibited, and fully consent to said distribution either for free or in exchange for certain compensation. The release form is used specifically to prevent incidents like you're hypothesizing.

To an extent, the law acknowledges the right for the subject of the photo to consent to its publication. The right is just not considered substantial enough if, say, you're walking around in the distant background at the beach when someone takes a photo of it for an ad. The person generally has to be clearly recognizable (what got Google in trouble with Street View), and/or constitute a significant portion of the photo. Generally there are exceptions for newsworthy events, which every paparazzi (ab)uses with celebrities - everything they do can be considered newsworthy. In these cases, the public's right to know is considered to be greater than the subject's right to control their image. The exact rights, including whether just commercial use is prohibited, or any non-consensual publication is prohibited, varies from country to country.

I think this is the right decision. What's been murky so far isn't control of photos - it's pretty clear from established law that the subject of the photograph wields ultimate control in matters of commercial use, publication, or distribution (depending on country). The photographer only gains those rights if the subject consents, and that consent can be of varying levels (e.g. ok for publication in a limited distribution newsletter but not a magazine with a wider circulation, ok for print but not video, ok for a newsletter but not for ads, and in the case of self-nudies for your GF/BF - ok for personal use but not for distribution). What hasn't been clear is what exactly constitutes publication. In ye olde days when it took effort and money to make a copy of a photo, a single print was about all there was. If you passed a smutty print of your ex-GF among your friends, while perhaps unethical, it wasn't publication. But today with the Internet and the way digital photos can be endlessly copied, I think there's a strong argument that distributing a photo online (e.g. putting it on a web site) constitutes publication. The commercial shame your ex websites for instance are blatantly illegal since they don't have model releases and are making money off of these people's images against their wishes.

Because that's the law for photography and I know because I'm a serious amateur photographer.

If you don't believe me, google would confirm this for you (or do you just enjoy disagreeing with people for no reason online)?

http://asmp.org/tutorials/freq...

Actually, there are some laws he could wind up on the wrong end of, even if not perfectly so. Example? No problem: Unless he gets one of these signed for every person he videotapes (and one of these for every recognizeable property, not to mention trademarks) or painstakingly blurs every recognizeable face *and* recognizeable property? He could wind up in civil court from a wide variety of people and entities.

(Mind you, I'm not saying he would, but that he could.)

Even if he were perfectly non-liable in civil court and perfectly innocent of any criminal charges, the time, effort, money, and potential loss of freedom (e.g. while awaiting trial) would be more than enough to make his life a living hell.

Overall? Kudos to him for making a solid and valid point. I agree with the underlying concept - surveillance all over is IMHO a bad idea. OTOH, there has got to be a better way to go about proving the point...

Nope. See:

Thus, privacy issues typically arise when an image is used for purposes of trade or advertising. That is, it’s not the picture, but how it is used that determines the need for a release. For instance, an image that is printed in a newspaper, shown in an exhibition or reproduced in a book might well be immune from a privacy suit. But the commercial sale of coffee mugs or t-shirts with the same image would probably not enjoy such protection. An advertisement almost certainly would not be immune.

Cited from here.

I had this exact thing happen to a photograph I had posted on Flickr. A magazine from the UK took my image without license, and published it in print, online, and in a DVD. Their distribution included many stores here in the US. Before posting the image, I had taken the time to register my copyright with the USCO, so that unlocks statutory damages, which are very important in copyright infringement cases. Without registering *before the infringement*, you don't get attorneys fees or court costs, and you only get actual damages. That makes pursuing an infringement case a loser if you don't have the copyright registered.

Having distributed physical copies into the US, I could have pretty easily used the US as the venue for a lawsuit, or even done so through a solicitor in the UK. However, lawyers are messy, and enforcing judgments across international borders is costly. The first thing I did was prepare an invoice stating the usage of the image, that there was no implicit license, that the images are copyrighted (which they are, whether you registered them or not), and how much I expected in licensing fees for the usage. I also added a multiplier for needing to issue the license retroactively and having discovered the infringement myself. After a bit of negotiation as to the licensing fee, the publication was very apologetic and wired me the agreed upon rate. Now they have a license, I got paid for the commercial use, and we parted amicably.

For more information, I highly recommend the ASMP website on copyright: http://asmp.org/tutorials/enforcing-your-rights.html

No. Taking a picture of your house isn't "copying" it. Taking the plans of your house and building an exact copy of it _might_ be a violation of copyright.

If only common sense reigned, this would be so. See ASMP's page on photographing public buildings; not every building is impacted, but I've seen cases where museums and the like claimed that the architecture of the building itself constitutes a work of art, and that photography of the same was forbidden.

Many people seem to forget that the whole concept of intellectual property is entirely unnatural and the word 'property' in this context is a misnomer. Without some very strong reason no-one should have the right to stop me from copying something. There is no natural ownership to the intangible. We only extend 'rights' to intangibles if it benefits all of us. Quite often the applications of intellectual properties do not benefit 'the whole' on balance. Rather quite perversely they simply protect private interests. There is also a vast difference between theory and practice. In theory we have fair use. In practice the courts have severely limited its application. So frequently even in educational institutions, materials are denied to students because of fear of copyright (unless they cough up very big bucks). Many types of copyright of simply unnecessary for creativity. We had no copyright on buildings before December 1, 1990 but we do after that date. Did that damage creativity there? No of course not. But now they are copyrighted.

We also quite often forget that preventing people from speaking, or singing, or playing an instrument, or creating a DVD or using a photocopier in a way they deem proper takes away from their personal freedom and their economic freedom. Does anyone take into account the money saved on allowing people to use more copyrighted, trademarked and patented concepts with greater ease. Does the $15 I save because an album is 30 years old and 'could' be actually out of copyright count? Take that $15 and multiply is by 10 million. Now people have saved $150 million. You have to weigh their costs and benefits against the artists. And let us not forget that the artist and the corporation that has been putting out their music has been making money off the copyright for 30 years. They have made a fortune.

What about the right to use copyrighted material as part of a large of a larger whole? Eg a documentary film that wants to use short copyrighted clips. Often the cost of obtaining them makes their use uneconomic. Here commercial prorogation of something new is inhibited by 'Copyright' despite the fact that the reason d'etre of 'Copyright' was to encourage commercial prorogation of new ideas and art. Copyright owners who extol the value of copyright often 'forget' quite conveniently that IP may actually supress creativity. Often copyright is used simply to deny public use of material. So let me get this right. You need copyright law that allows the complete prevention of artistic material from circulating at all so you can encourage future creativity. Because mr/ms creative would only produce something for the public if they knew they could prevent any public dissemination. Right?!

I always get a laugh out of the heirs who already enjoy copyright revenues. So they didn't do jack sh*t but they are an heir so they should rake in cash for doing nothing. There was a New York Times article that had the audacity to argue for perpetual copyright. So you want to put on a Shakespeare play - better pay his descendants or some rich corporation. You want to read your bible in the church. Not before you hand over some cash. This idea is absurd but it's scary that the copyright crazies are advocating it. They claim they own ideas. We get this...no-one owns ideas! IP is not susceptible to ownership. We just put restrictions on IP for societal benefit not for the narcissistic desires of the original producer and certainly not their descendants.

Some of the restrictions of IP impinge on free speech. Sometimes you need to be able to film some event that has political implications without worrying about the 'person' rights. Eg Police brutality. Think this is an exaggeration? Just wait till you hear that free speech is cool but because some political speech intruded on commercial ri

While rare, I can see someone getting their panties in a bunch over their place of business being photographed without permission...

Then we have the "hey! I got an idea! let's photograph the inside of a Wal-Mart!" (where the photog will promptly get thrown out...)

Could be wrong (they might've covered, you know, permissions), but I can see lots of kids getting snagged in something like that. /P

That was actually shot down a while ago...Basically, if you can see it from public property, you can't claim ownership of all pictorial representations.

In addition to property-release issues, you also need to think about copyright concerns vis-à-vis buildings if they were built after December 1, 1990. Before that, buildings did not have copyright protection and were thus, by definition, in the public domain. Shoot away.

In general, buildings erected after December 1, 1990 do not pose a big problem either. There is a "photographer's exception" to a building's copyright owner's rights that permits the photography of buildings. This gives a wide leeway to the definition of "building"; everything from gazebos to office towers are included. As long as the building is in a public place, or visible -- and photographable -- from a public place, there is no infringement of the building's copyright owner's rights. This rule includes private as well as public buildings. --American Society of Media Photography

Yes, it looks like I'm wrong. ASMP page (Am. Society of Media Photographers) says it's okay (with a small reservation if there's a painting or something on the building), and here is another analysis by probably a non-lawyer, but he does seem to know what he's talking about.

Typical BS on /. - you're not even sure if that's right and you're certainly not an expert - so go ahead and slam someone who is, even if you haven't checked your facts. What's more imply that the other person's country is inferior to your wonderful USA and perpetuate the stereotype of the arrogant obnoxious American, who doesn't know a thing.

These laws and principles of law aren't an Australian exclusive. Here are some articles so perhaps you can get a clue before you type sarcastic drivel - it isn't my job to educate you:

Look under "property release". Note that pets and livestock are included.

http://www.shutterpoint.com/Help-Selling.cfm#relea ses
http://www.indexstock.com/content/help/modelproper tyrelease.asp
http://www.asmp.org/commerce/legal/releases/AboutP ropertyRel.php

Most stock photography libraries (who onsell images to clients based on demand) REQUIRE a property and/or model release. Otherwise it can cost them large amounts in legal action.

A little less abbrasive arrogance would do you a world of good.

Back in late 1991, I was working for a now-defunct Mac reseller, and I specialized in imaging sales/support. At that time, digital cameras were something everyone said were coming, but hadn't hit the market yet (with a few extremely high-end exceptions). I spoke on the state of the market at an ASMP regional meeting that fall about it, and a guy from Kodak was there. He brought their (then) brand-new Kodak DCS for us to see. It used a Nikon 8008 body with a digital back, attached by cable to a box with the hard drive, battery, and all the electronics. It cost around $10k and was just hitting the market then.

Later, in 1992, I went to work for an ad agency. We did a lot of food and product photography, and the cost/time lost to conventional film was really difficult. The nearest pro lab was about 10 miles up the highway, so we had a minimum of 2-3 hours for turnaround.

Then Kodak came out with the DCS 200 - all the features of the DCS in a single device - no tether. Sure, it was kind of flakey - the SCSI connection was prone to problems, the color balancing wasn't great, and the Photoshop plugin was awful, but I bought one. It cost nearly $10k as well.

Over the next year or so, we bought four more. And the speed difference helped us get so much business that all those cameras were occupied 10+ hours per day. We exploded in size and revenue, driven by what digital cameras could do even then. Later, we bought a couple of Leaf medium-format models for high-end work, but the Kodaks were the bread and butter of the company even a couple of years ago - years after I left.

The company that built those cameras - if you didn't catch it before, was Kodak. They saw the promise of digital photography in the media and pro markets way ahead of virtually everyone. You still see tons of their pro gear at any sporting or news event. The thing that Kodak is struggling with is the consumer market transition, but I think everyone in the film business is struggling with it as well. It's happening much faster than most people (myself included) ever expected.

I certainly wouldn't bet against Kodak succeeding, though. They may not look like quite the same company when it's over, but they'll still probably be the same relative to the new market that they were in the old one. In the digital world, you still need to print and archive your work, and that's where a lot of the profit can lie. There's also still a film market out there that can be milked for years to come, and a graphic arts business that they can keep servicing, too.

Of course, I believe anything that the Standard has to say. Didn't they go out of business a while back, too?