Pictures Taken In Public - With A Twist

[jeff.gimbel at ndsu.edu (Jeff Gimbel)]

Thanks for the post on this Robert,  I am going to post this to my 
facebook (sans incriminating information) warning my FB friends on this 
danger

Jeff

Robert Miller wrote:
> While I know this is going to boil down to it happened in a public place 
> stop my whining... but this still upsets me and I have no legal recourse WTF
>
> <rant>
>
> A few weeks back my son, 12 years old, was at the local library after 
> school working on the computer when a local newspaper reporter came in 
> and took pictures of the people in the library using its services.  The 
> story was regarding the fact that my county is considering closing some 
> of the libraries.  Now after the interviews were completed and the 
> pictures were taken, the reporter told my kid to tell his folks his 
> picture would be in the paper that coming Sunday.  So as any parent who 
> gave a flying crap about their kid would pick the paper up to look at 
> the article.  As said to my son his picture was nice and big with his 
> first and last name along with a little blurb about why he don't want 
> the library closed.
>
> At first this really pissed me off since my son is under age and no one 
> asked for my permission, let alone offer a business card or a means to 
> contact anything about the article.  After a few days of mumbling, and 
> some deep investigation I found that I have ZERO legal recourse for this 
> happening so I rolled with the punch and picked my self up telling my 
> kid he displayed himself very well and expressed himself in his 
> statement like a young man should.  Then it hit me...
>
> I was on the local newspapers website and noticed my son's picture in an 
> article, not written the same as the newspaper itself but still 
> displaying my son's picture, well now I get concerned and begin to do 
> some digging on the metadata (thanks larry) to find misc normal data but 
> nothing too detailed.  Then it smacked me in the face like a truck load 
> of bricks!  Those (stealing a statement from Jack's comments earlier 
> just because I can :-) ) "... monkey sodomizing rat bastards..." have my 
> son's picture posted on the website for sale.  They are selling my son's 
> picture for profit, WHAT IN <many fool words omitted for John's safety> 
> gives these people the right to make a profit off my 12 year old son!
>
> Well I had sent an email to a well known photographer regarding this and 
> he consulted his lawyer only to find these newspaper organizations can 
> take the pictures of children and then sell them on their website as 
> "fine art", while I love my kid to death he is far from "fine art".  The 
> response this person got from their attorney was that unless a local law 
> prohibits the taking of children pictures in public places and selling 
> them I have no leg to stand on, which I have faced the fact.  It just 
> burns my butt that a child who knows no better, well didn't at the time, 
> was exploited to save a library and someone else NOT trying to raise the 
> money for the library is making a profit off this, no matter how small 
> that profit might be.  The attorney said if you want privacy don't leave 
> your home, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT CRAP, he is a child!  Does this mean a 
> child predator can sit 100 feet from a school and take pictures of 
> children walking home from school, throw up a website, call themselves a 
> freelance photographer, and sell these pictures as "fine art".
>
> We can borrow money from China and bail out businesses that made bad 
> choices but we can protect children from the basic protection of 
> exploitation for any reason, so long as that reason is a sad story of a 
> library closing and the newspaper can sell a couple prints.
>
> </rant>
>
> Sorry all this one just really hits me hard that a newspaper /  
> freelance photographer has all these freedoms to exploit citizens while 
> we fight to protect so much...
>
> - Robert
> arch3angel
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