About a week ago Kathryn Greenhill wrote about asking permission before you take and/or use a stranger’s photograph.
What’s the right thing to do? I’ve never really given it much thought before. At MPOW we have a consent form that people sign before we use their photo on our website. I assume we ask for permission before we take the photo itself.
We generally also ask people to let us know if they are going to take photos or do any filming in the library, but I’ve been told that that’s just so that we can ensure they don’t obstruct or disturb other users of the library, and not for any other reason. So we might ask them not to take pictures on the first day of semester when it’s extremely busy in the library, for example. But I don’t think we generally refuse permission otherwise.
Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?
Last week I was talking about photos and permission with a colleague. She argues that it is actually illegal to take someone’s photo, even in a public place, without their permission. I was quite surprised to hear this - I think that it is just a courtesy to ask for permission - but that got me wondering, is there any law or injunction against taking photos without permission? I just don’t see how such a law would be enforceable. I can imagine that for certain military installations, and in certain venues, like in a court, one could be forbidden to take photos or videos. And I suppose if one was in a shop the shopkeeper could reasonably refuse to allow you to take a picture - a shop isn’t really a public space - someone owns or leases it for business purposes.
My colleague also thought that we have a responsibility to protect our clientele from being photographed or filmed without permission, but I really can’t see how we can stop anyone from taking a snap of anyone else. (Nor would I want to!) Especially these days with cameras so handily embedded on mobile phones and things like that. Wouldn’t that be an issue for the photographer and the person being photographed to sort out themselves?
Am I completely wrong here?
You would, of course, ensure that if you were going to take photos of someone and create a photo essay or caption about that person, that you would get the facts straight. But that’s another issue altogether.
