why is it ok to take a photograph of someone with out permission but not for video?

[TurdBerglar]

you know when you watch a show like cops and they blur out the people that didn't give permission to have their faces shown? why is it ok to take a photograph of anyone and publish it without permission? or am i wrong?

[Videodrome]

?

[mikizee]

I have no idea, but its a valid question

[Yetra Flam]

what is this regarding? is someone taking photos of you turd?

[paul jones]

the world's gone mad

[russhie]

I guess it depends what you do with it.

I do know that you're not allowed to publish pictures/video that insinuate something negative about that person, but I also thought that it was kinda illegal to take pictures/video of someone without their knowledge anyway.

[tracky]

It probably comes down to the way the photos are published, like russhie said, using them in a negative way.

Like if a newspaper photographer takes a picture of a building and it's published with a caption such as "The whatever building scheduled to be demolished whenever" then the people who happen to be in the photo are inconsequential. However if it were published with "a group of peadophiles gather around a small child" then it counts as defamation and you could probably sue. Unless every person in the photo was a peadophile and they were gathering around a small child. Then it's ok.

[TurdBerglar]

on the local news around here they would blur out the peoples' faces for the demolition example or they pan the camera a certain way so the faces are not in the shot. but then sometimes they don't blur their faces out. like if a reporter is at a local fair. all the people in the background do not have their faces blured. maybe it's just the local news around here that does this.

[russhie]

They blur faces so that people become virtually unrecognisable. It protects the TV station from possible defamation action.

Say the station was covering a story about alcoholism, and they ran some shots of people drinking at a bar. The people filmed (if not made anonymous) then have grounds to say that the TV station has labeled them alcoholics, and broadast this to a wide audience, potentially harming their reputation.

[TurdBerglar]

but if they had taken a photograph of the same situation and published it in a magazine it seems that it's totally ok

[russhie]

I think it's more to do with the fact that print is a more permenant medium - you can see that an article about alcoholism isn't going to necessarily refer directly to the picture. It'll clearly state something like "alcoholism on the rise" and the accompanying pic will be captioned with something like "Dave, an occasional beer drinker" or whatever, clearly distinguishing him as not being an alcoholic, but someone who can offer a relatively educated POV on the matter (being that he is a consumer of alcohol).

TV is a less permenant medium - the pictures move fast and it isn't easy for the viewer to make such distinctions. The narrator will be more concerned with making the story a neat package for viewers, and won't have time to identify each person and their status/opinion on the matter. It's also not something that can be retained and reviewed to clear up any ideas the audience may have gotten from it. They'll simply hear about alcoholism, and the accompanying visuals will represent what they're hearing, so Dave will be seen drinking his beer and could potentially be labeled an alcoholic because of the insinuations the narrator has made.

If that makes sense?

[TurdBerglar]

yeah that makes sense


but i also feel you shouldn't be able to take a picture or video of anyone and publish it or make it available to many people with out the persons' permission. it seems like a huge invasion of privacy to me.

[yeahwho]

I don't think our forefathers knew youtube was going to come along and everybody would have a video cam.

At the very least there should be some sort of registration and permit system because some of the stuff I've seen this past decade qualifies for severe punishment in our justice system.

Not everybody is Martin Scorsese.

[Nivvie]

According to the photography books and forums, you do need permission to publish someone's picture, but only if you have a clear shot of their face. They have to be clearly regconisable, and not just passing traffic, fractions of a body, etc, or they can get you for using their image.

I have had to sign things in the past as a parent giving Brownie leaders/teachers permission to have photos of the stuff they do put in the local paper.

[JohnnyChavello]

According to the photography books and forums, you do need permission to publish someone's picture, but only if you have a clear shot of their face. They have to be clearly regconisable, and not just passing traffic, fractions of a body, etc, or they can get you for using their image.

I have had to sign things in the past as a parent giving Brownie leaders/teachers permission to have photos of the stuff they do put in the local paper.

Consent forms are most often used preemptively, in order to make things a lot easier if anyone decides they'd rather not be involved in the video/photo. There are a few ways you can get into trouble for publishing a picture/photo of someone: 1) if it is defamatory (as mentioned, 2) if it portrays the person in a false light (depending on which state you live in), 3) or if it is obtained through covert surveillance under conditions in which an individual would have a reasonable expectation of privacy (restroom, home, etc.). If you take a photo/video of a person or including a person in a public place, that does not contain any false claims about that person, there is no individual right to prevent the photo/video from being published. I don't know specifcally why videos blur images more often, but it may have something to do with the fact that videos, in a lot of cases, are distributed more widely (films, TV news programs, etc.). That's not always the case, but it could be. It could also be that, given the longer history of the photograph as opposed to the motion picture, the law is more clearly defined in photographs. Either way, people give out consent forms not because they necessarily have to, but because it's a lot cheaper in the long run than hoping nobody changes their mind later.

[TurdBerglar]

is it different for celebrities?

[JohnnyChavello]

Not exactly, but a little bit. First of all, defamation laws are limited in certain ways to protect free speech. In the case of public figures, in order to show that a statement is defamatory, the plaintiff has to show actual malice, which means that the defendant published the statement knowing that it was false, or published it with a reckless disregard for its truth. This is a higher standard than that for non-public figures on issues not part of the public concern, who only have to show negligence as to truth or falsity. It is much harder for a celebrity or any public figure to establish defamation.

In addition, under certain state laws protecting the right of privacy, individuals are protected against misappropriation of their image, likeness, voice, and signature for commercial purposes. In these situations it is easier for a celebrity to establish a violation of a right of publicity because the image is naturally being used in an advertising sense. The right of publicity laws and other common law rights of privacy are not consistent state by state, however, and are also open to attack on First Amendment grounds, so it's still kind of an open issue.