hnd

Why?

The Dean

Interesting point.......

A number of countries (presumably not including France) have a simple but effective law that would cover such a situation: everybody - from royalty to the masses - owns the copyright to his/her own image. Automatically. By default. Free of charge.

For 99-pct-plus situations, it makes no difference to anybody, but it would of course have made this situation far less likely to happen.

auzdafluff

That won't work.

The French solution of not being able to photograph people in private is the best approach, followed up by minimum fines of £1m plus, and jail time for the paparazzi scum that took it. That would stop anyone from publishing them.

The solution of you owning the picture if you're in it would make stock photography of places like Times Square, Oxford Street, and hell, even The Walk impossible to use in print because there's no way you can get everyone's permission.

The Dean

Wouldn't need anyone's 'permission' - it just means you have to be careful what you publish........... if you are sure it's not offensive, go ahead and publish (if they sue, they will have to prove how/why it was an unreasonable use of their image).

It works well in many countries - very few 'invasion of privacy lawsuits'.

Norm_uk

Yes I can. I used to be religious once...

N.

OleJanx

On the contrary, every time I stub my toe I invoke the name of the Lord....( and worse....)

scrubbedexpat141

It makes me laugh, beacuse when you see news reports about the mega fat ****ers in the UK, the heads are all out of the picture....assume this is to protect identity and save any red faces.

Yet...you can snap away at a person's waps and print them all you like.

Seems a little upside down to me.