Comment by senectus1

17 hours ago

interesting idea.. i like it. question tho, what happens if your features change... so say you have an accident and gain a scar or disfigurment. does that mean that your pre-disfigurement image is no longer copyrighted? or is your image for your whole life and at every stage of your life is copyrighted?

Public photography? does this mean your image cant be sold if take in public? I'm sure there are many other scenarios that would be interesting to argue about as well.

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senectus1

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tfourb  4 hours ago

All of this has been resolved already. In Germany, as in many other E.U. countries, you have a "right to your own likeness" that covers all of your likenesses, no matter what age.

This right is restricted for people of public interest. An important politician might be an "absolute" person of public interest and as long as they remain in their public position, certain private acts might still be judged to be in the public interest to be documented and published.

But anybody can become a "relative" person of public interest. I.e. you were one of the people climbing the Berlin Wall during the night that it fell. If you get your picture taken at that point in time, there is an obvious public interest in publishing it. But just because you participated in this one public event, a reporter can't snap your picture and publish it a week later.

There is also an exception for "panorama" images, i.e. a person being in an image of a public place "by chance". In that scenario the person isn't allowed to be the main subject, their presence must be circumstantial.

All of this has been hashed out over decades by lawmakers and courts and it is quite easy to understand if you read up on it even a tiny bit. A common sense approach will get you 95% there.