Cristiano on Tech/Life Photographer Rights in the UK?
I’ve been reading up lately on the photographer’s rights here in the UK. It seems many of us walking around are easily impressed by legal terms and people in uniforms. It seems that there is quite a bit of misunderstanding amongst photographers, and law enforcers, as can be seen in this video.
Photographing in Public
As the above video seems to explain, in public anyone is allowed to make photographs of anyone. And then there are grey areas like train stations where even though not being completely public spaces photography can not be completely prohibited. It seems that most of the fuss has been created by the anti terrorism propaganda politics that have made everyone to paranoid to feel comfortable to take photos.
Model Releases
But what about taking photos of people and selling them? In the US any photo that features a person needs to be signed of on by the model with a so called model release form. But as we know, the UK is not quite the US (yet) and as far as I can understand a model release is not required to use a photo in a commercial publications. As Glyn put it to me yesterday: if it where, how would paparazzi then still be in business?
Obviously there are a few little caveats with this, the main one being the concern of defamation. Let’s say I take a photo of a guy, and a marketing agency uses his head in an advertisement for male incompetence? This kind of defamation does require a model release because of the nature of the commercial use.
It’s unclear to me though who is responsible for this release form. Let’s say I put all my photo on Flickr under a free license and a company does an ad like described before. Who is liable for not getting a model release form, the photographer, or the marketing agency?
International Complications
And then comes the problem with different international laws. As we said before, the US is not the UK, and a model release is required across the pond. So if a US company assumes my free license includes a release form, who’s responsible?
Obviously most companies tend to make sure their photographers did get the model release forms, but I have to admit that I can’t see most photographers take on the marketing agency’s lawyer firm to prove his innocence.
Precautions
So, for now, as a precaution I’ve added a few lines to my Flickr profile stating the details of my license, and warning anyone that I did not get a signed model release form from anyone. I have no idea if this is in any way legally binding but it might at least be a sign of good intent.
Cristiano, as you note, things are different here from the US (fortunately, some may say!) but you have to think about US rules because of the possibility that your work could be re-used in the US.
http://www.urban75.org/photos/photographers-rights-and-the-law.html may be of interest (and there are some helpful links in it too e.g. the PDF article).
Interesting article. Tnx! I read it quickly but I’m still mystified about one thing: if a US company uses my image without a model release, who is liable? Most companies don’t even work without a model release because they don’t want to get into these kind of issues, but what if? It’s all pretty unclear.