Thank you for the clarification Manuel. The laws seem incredibly
restrictive, and surely mean that street photography is not possible in
France? What about photo-journalism, does this have some kind of
exemption? In fact as it's a reinterpretation of an 18th century law,
then would the law not cover all photos taken since 1789? Or is it only
since the date of the reinterpretation? If it's the former then in
theory a lot of great photos taken throughout the 2oth century could
never be exhibited or published, which is obviously unworkable. Just
realised that the Paris Match photos would have been taken before the
reinterpretation, so how can there be an exhibition of photos without
the necessary releases from those depicted? It seems an impossible
situation.
James
On 18 Jun 2005, at 11:25, Manuel Viet wrote:
>
> Le samedi 18 Juin 2005 08:29, James Royall a écrit :
>> On the subject of restricting what we can take pictures of, does
>> anyone
>> know what those French have done recently in passing a new law to give
>> more rights to those whose picture is taken?
>
> Sadly enough, your picture of the situation is mostly true, with the
> small
> restriction that it's not the result of a « new » law, but the very
> extensive
> interpretation of the old "individual rights" (as they were
> established back
> in 1789) as a whole.
>
> So, to put it shortly : if someone can be recognized on a picture, you
> have to
> settle a contract with him to make any kind of public display of the
> picture,
> by any mean. And this contract has to be limited in time, so you can
> use the
> picture for xx years. The risk of not setting a time frame with the
> model is
> that the model can retract it's authorization at any time afterward,
> because
> there's in french civil law a prohibition of perpetual contracts, so
> if no
> time frame is agreed upon at the beginning, any of the contractor can
> break
> the contract at will with minor obligations later on, without any
> fault.
>
> Finally, a true (and judicial) story which ended by a civil trial,
> where the
> photograph lost his case : once upon a time in 1968, a photograph did
> a cover
> for Paris Match of the events which where then happening near the
> Sorbonne
> University. In 1998, Match published an article for the "birthday" of
> those
> events, illustraded with pictures of the 1968 article. One of the
> protester
> depicted 30 years sooner sued the magazine and the photograph. And won.
>
> We call that « droit à l'image ».
> --
> Manuel Viet (lawyer).
>
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