Photo-Attorney Carolyn E. Wright is someone whose advice on her blog I’ve often referred to in the past, both here and elsewhere, but I can’t remember hearing her voice before. Recently on her blog she posted a link to Don’t Post Pictures of My Kid on the Internet, Part 2, a programme in the Digital Manners podcast series on Slate, where she tells the two presenters what the legal position is about photographing people – including children – and posting pictures of them on the web.
As she says, there are minor differences in the law from state to state, but the advice that she goes on to give is clear and I think also would apply in this country. The key test is a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, and if this is absent, then you are free to make use of images for ‘editorial purposes’, which would cover posting to Facebook or on your web site etc, in fact more or less anything outside of advertising or product endorsement.
From what she says, I think UK courts have sometimes shown a slightly less wide interpretation of the “reasonable expectation”, but at the moment the position here is similar.
Some of those giving evidence to Leveson or commenting on it have called for the kind of aggressively restrictive privacy laws that would effectively end our right to photograph people without express permission, and there are certainly people who think that is already the case particularly so far as children are concerned, but it isn’t so.
The Slate site also has a poll, and if it is still open you will need to vote to be be shown the results. Although I was pleased to find that my own view was in the majority, the size of those voting ‘No’ to the question “According to the law in most states, anyone is free to photograph you in public and post it onlineĀall without your permission and over your objections. Are these laws correct?” was a little worrying.
This was the programme’s second discussion on the issue, and took place because there were complaints from some listeners about the answers they gave in the first, which was backed up by Wright’s exposition of the law.
