🚀 go-pugleaf

[ P.S. Note followups to aus.legal,rec.photo.misc ]

In article <8F59A0851GozoROT13@209.247.210.100>, 
ROT13=Tbmb@fbpvbybtvfg.pbz (Gozo) wrote:

>Actually, the park is a good example. In Canada, where private life is even 
>a bigger issue than it is in the US, the Supreme Court ruled that taking
>a picture of somebody being a public place does not give the right to use 
>that picture, especially in newspaper. The ruling was about the case of a 
>women who didn't like that a picture of her walking down a street on a 
>spring day was used and published in a freely distributed newspaper. 
>
>Eventually, she got few thousands dollars in compensation, but the main 
>outcome of that was that it is now forbidden in Canada to take and use a 
>picture of somebody in a public place without their explicit (written) 
>consent.
>
>It shows that being public does not automatically means that you lose  
>all rights for privacy.

I've always assumed that, in Australia at least, there's no 
problem about having individuals in a photo as long as it's
not a photo *of* them.  That is, the people in the scene are
incidental to the scene, they are not *the* scene.  However, 
anything that could be construed as a photo *of* a person 
requires a signed release to avoid subsequent problems in 
the event that it's published in some form or other.

We had an amusing example of this approach some time ago.  
One of the weekly smuts had an article on Cairns.  It was 
illustrated in part with a large colour photo of the milling 
back-packers and others on "the bonking Esplanade" as the 
caption phrased it.  There, right in the foreground, was the
son of one of our senior staff strolling with his fiancee. 

Cheers,  Ian S.


ianstDELETE@THISdpi.qld.gov.au