[cc-licenses] Distribution of picture on the internet in US-law?

Karl Ebener myonlyb at vollbio.de
Thu Oct 4 02:59:50 EDT 2007


Hi,

most people should have noticed the discussion about the Virgin Mobile 
case. I have a question that arose when I read the comments from 
Lawrence Lessig and the CC Corporation on this topic:

In US law, how is the distribution of pictures of someone over the 
internet to be treated?

Lessig writes 
(http://lessig.org/blog/2007/09/on_the_texas_suit_against_virg.html):
"I doubt that any court would find the photographer in this case had 
violated any right of privacy merely by posting a photograph like this 
on Flickr."

and CC writes (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680):
"So did the photographer violate Ms. Chang’s rights?
We certainly don’t think so. We don’t believe any court should find that 
Justin Wong had violated Ms. Chang’s rights simply by posting this photo 
of her in Flickr, however it was licensed. Cool (as in using Flickr, and 
even better, using Flickr with CC licenses) can’t be a crime."

Is that so in US law (after having read above, I assume so)? And if so: 
why? Is there any written law/decision(s) on this topic? Or any source 
where I could look this up?

I ask, because in Germany the right to a picture of you is part of the 
general moral rights and any distribution is subject to your consent... 
Thus, in Germany, the question "So did the photographer violate Ms. 
Chang’s rights?" would most like be answered with "Yes"...

Thank you very much
Karl



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