Online publishing of photos

[Claire]

Hi,
I'm wondering what the laws on what kind of picture you can publish are within your country.

In Sweden we have PUL, a law to protect the private individual's integrity. You're not allowed to give out details like names, address, health etc in various situations.
When it comes to photos you're allowed to take a picture of anyone if it's in a public place. You may use these for your personal viewing pleasure, but need a model release for commercial use.

Photos of people can be used without release if it's within editorial context (paper/tv news/online news).

Now, the thing is that over in Sweden you're actually not allowed to publish a photo of someone online. That's illegal as a face is seen as an ID and for that to be used on a e.g. a personal website you should have the person's permission. Exceptions are photos that go under art and "unharmful".
As art and "unharmful" is very loose terms, everyone basically publishes things any way they want. They know they won't get into trouble for it.

How does it work in your country? And which country's rules are you supposed to follow really? I mean, if I take pics of people while in US the law might say I'm not allowed to publish them online blah blah, but I do it in Sweden, on a Danish server! No clue who's laws I'm to follow; the Swedish or US. Can I just snap pics of people on my trip there in April, or will I have to "fear" a law suit threat if someone saw themselves online?

You get the idea.

/Claire

[robertwgross]

How does it work in your country? And which country's rules are you supposed to follow really? I mean, if I take pics of people while in US the law might say I'm not allowed to publish them online blah blah, but I do it in Sweden, on a Danish server! No clue who's laws I'm to follow; the Swedish or US.

Welcome to the Internet!

---Bob Gross---

[Scottes]

Yeah, the laws do get muddy around here....

[Claire]

Yeah, the laws are muddy here too. ;)

What are the general regulations where/how I can photograph in the US? Curious. Don't want some big security guy running up to me and yelling at me. Or end up with a law suit (hey, I hear horror stories of US law suits over here! lol)

[PhotosGuy]

Don't want some big security guy running up to me and yelling at me. They'll do that even if you have written permission!
Or end up with a law suit Nothing can stop people from suing. Doesn't mean that they have any grounds or will win! But it will still cost you over here.

[primoz]

Internet business is my real job (photography is fun and some extra money... to pay for outrages expensive equipment :) ) so I know few things about this. Until recently US courts didn't have any legal rights to shut down your server etc. (apparently this changed month or two ago when they shut down few servers in UK based on US court order, even though there's no way I would shut down any of our users based on US court order). So if someone wants to sue you for publishing photos, he (or she) should do it in Sweden. They can actually sue you in US and they would probably even win, but that wouldn't mean anything to you. Especially if you don't have plans to returning to USA :) Even though Internet is world wide network, there are your own country's laws which are important to you. At least for now US laws are not official laws of Internet (even though lot of people think otherwise).

PS & completely out of topic: I'm going for 1 month holidays to US in summer too. Any suggestion for nice trip with nice things to see (somewhere from California to Colorado and back)? :)

[Paul_O]

I think we're still pretty lucky here in Australia however since our involvement in the Middle East things are surely changing. I've read a lot about the defendant "A" being sued in the USA for taking a sunset picture over a California beach with a 17-40L when there is a 5 year old getting changed 2 miles away behinf closed doors but I'm sure it's only a matter of time until that's the way the world turns. Whilst I'm sure there is a framework of privacy laws in place here, unless the subject tells you to F*** Off, the easy going nature of most in Australia usually shrug it off.

Paul

[PhotosGuy]

Not all Americans are like me. They passed a law. :D:D:D