At 07:18 PM 8/27/2002 +0000, you wrote: > I have a doubt about international regulation about photo copyright. > If I go abroad and take some street portraits can I publish or sell this > photos without a single permition of each people??? Copyright and needing permission of the people are two completely different topics. Copyright has to do with protecting an artists works from being copied, duplicated, stolen, etc. You as the photographer are the artist. Here in the US, your photos are copyrighted as soon as you take them and if someone makes a copy without your permission, they have violated the law. Needing permission to photograph someone has nothing to do with that. There are two scenarios when taking photos of people. The first scenario has to do with photographing someone in a private place. You have to have their permission to be there, verbal or written, or its called trespassing or breaking and entering. You cannot legally enter a private citizens home without their permission. The second scenario has to do with being in a public place. You pretty much in the US at least have the right to photograph someone in a public place from a public place. There is little from a criminal court standpoint that here in US that you have to worry about. Other countries may have different laws. The US however has this thing called the Civil courts. This is where people and business sue each other. No one goes to jail from the Civil courts, it just costs people money or they may be forced to stop a behavior or something. A good example is you could photograph a couple kissing by a lake. You run that photo in an advertisement for Certs breath mints and make a lot of money. However, the man happens to be Bill Gates (or some other rich person with a lot of lawyers) and the woman happens to not be his wife. He sees that ad, and his army of lawyers hauls your butt into court and ends up taking everything you have. The "permission" you are talking about is called a model release. Its a written document where your photo subject (and anyone identifiable in the photo, including large crowds) gives you permission to use the photo for whatever you want. This isn't 100% protection from a law suit or being drug into court, but it helps. You have to analyze the risk of shooting a persons photo without permission vs. them suing your behind. Its possible you could shoot a photo, run a world class ad, and never get sued at all. Its also possible to shoot it for your personal use, exhibit it in a library and get sued. There are far two many variables to determine a risk level from no real data. Your judge could look at a case and just throw it out or he could have had a spat with his wife that morning and is looking to ruin someone's day;. Rob -- Rob Miracle Photographic Miracles 203 Carpenter Brook Dr. Apex, NC 27502 http://www.photo-miracles.com
