3 ms·

> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear defin

by jfk13 5y ago

> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear definition of "a photo of people"? Taking a close-up portrait of a random stranger in public would be one extreme (and I guess most people would agree it should require permission). Presumably a photo of my kids and their friends having fun at the park is still clearly "a photo of people", and therefore also requires permission. But if I take a photo of a street scene in Berlin, do I have to get permission from every passer-by who happens to appear? How about a landscape photo where I only realise later, on reviewing the picture, that there were a couple of hikers on a distant hill? To my mind, that's not "a photo of people", yet there are people in the photo. Somewhere between the extremes, it seems to me there's an awfully wide grey area.

okasaki 5y ago
Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Just because there might be a grey area doesn't mean it's arbitrary. 99% of cases are going to be pretty clear.
gjulianm 5y ago
> I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Most of the time, the prohibition is on distribution. And it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. A street scene in Berlin where you barely see people's faces or two hikers on a distant hill wouldn't be problematic.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  > it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. I think the law needs to be updated, since face recognition software is now available.
morsch 5y ago
Edited to preface: I'm not a lawyer, I'm mostly paraphrasing and translating the source below. There are three cases where you can publish[1] a photo without consent: - Person of special public interest (literally: person of contemporary history, this is an idiomatic term and sounds less strange in German), which means you can take a picture of a politician holding a speech or an artist doing a public performance or a CEO addressing employees. Important exception for professionals, but there are various rules one needs to be aware of, for instance you probably cannot take a photo of the same CEO buying new shoes or eating dinner at a restaurant. - The photograph does not primarily depict the person. Your landscape photo would be fine, for example, and your street scene may or may not be. Apparently the test criterion is: is the picture materially changed if the person is removed? So a photo of a beach landscape is permissible, but not so much if there's people bathing in the foreground. - The photo is of a public gathering: a public concert, a political rally, though this only applies if it's a photo of the gathering as a whole, and not specifically an individual in it. So, yes, in the end it is a bit of a case of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". In practice, you just err on the side of caution, and it works out fine. E.g. I don't really worry about if when I take a photo of a friend outside and there's a few people in the background (due to rule #2). Source (German): https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/158-recht-am-eigenen-bild-personenfoto.html https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/... [1] I'm not sure how the law handles the case of merely taking a photo and never publishing it, nor what exactly constitutes publishing, e.g. presumably showing holiday snaps at a family gathering does not constitute publishing
- interactivecode 5y ago
  publishing usualy mean "making public" so showing photos in a private context is obviously not public.
  - morsch 5y ago
    That obviously makes sense to me, but IANAL, so I'll refrain from making any definitive judgement. A huge percentage of pictures are immediately shared with a third party (by being uploaded to the cloud). Beyond that, while the rules outlined above deal with publishing, there are also rules for merely taking pictures. The exact rules for that aren't 100% clear to me[1], but if it's permissible to publish them, it must also be permissible to take the photo in the first place. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutschland)#(Blo%C3%9Fes)_Erstellen_von_Bildern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch... it seems complicated

by jfk13 5y ago

okasaki 5y ago

Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...

newaccount74 5y ago
Just because there might be a grey area doesn't mean it's arbitrary. 99% of cases are going to be pretty clear.

gjulianm 5y ago

> I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Most of the time, the prohibition is on distribution. And it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. A street scene in Berlin where you barely see people's faces or two hikers on a distant hill wouldn't be problematic.

CodesInChaos 5y ago
> it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. I think the law needs to be updated, since face recognition software is now available.

morsch 5y ago

Edited to preface: I'm not a lawyer, I'm mostly paraphrasing and translating the source below. There are three cases where you can publish[1] a photo without consent: - Person of special public interest (literally: person of contemporary history, this is an idiomatic term and sounds less strange in German), which means you can take a picture of a politician holding a speech or an artist doing a public performance or a CEO addressing employees. Important exception for professionals, but there are various rules one needs to be aware of, for instance you probably cannot take a photo of the same CEO buying new shoes or eating dinner at a restaurant. - The photograph does not primarily depict the person. Your landscape photo would be fine, for example, and your street scene may or may not be. Apparently the test criterion is: is the picture materially changed if the person is removed? So a photo of a beach landscape is permissible, but not so much if there's people bathing in the foreground. - The photo is of a public gathering: a public concert, a political rally, though this only applies if it's a photo of the gathering as a whole, and not specifically an individual in it. So, yes, in the end it is a bit of a case of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". In practice, you just err on the side of caution, and it works out fine. E.g. I don't really worry about if when I take a photo of a friend outside and there's a few people in the background (due to rule #2). Source (German): https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/158-recht-am-eigenen-bild-personenfoto.html https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/... [1] I'm not sure how the law handles the case of merely taking a photo and never publishing it, nor what exactly constitutes publishing, e.g. presumably showing holiday snaps at a family gathering does not constitute publishing

interactivecode 5y ago
publishing usualy mean "making public" so showing photos in a private context is obviously not public.
- morsch 5y ago
  That obviously makes sense to me, but IANAL, so I'll refrain from making any definitive judgement. A huge percentage of pictures are immediately shared with a third party (by being uploaded to the cloud). Beyond that, while the rules outlined above deal with publishing, there are also rules for merely taking pictures. The exact rules for that aren't 100% clear to me[1], but if it's permissible to publish them, it must also be permissible to take the photo in the first place. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutschland)#(Blo%C3%9Fes)_Erstellen_von_Bildern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch... it seems complicated