There are legal and ethical issues about being photographed or filmed on private/public property or capturing people in backgrounds without permission.
When taking film or photographs most people assume that they automatically have the right to use them (e.g. for causes such as selling them as stock photographs or videos). However that is not always the case. In order to publish photographs professionally or sell them people must first get permission to use all of the buildings and people which they have captured in their photographs. In order to achieve this they must either get verbal permission or a release form. There are three sorts of release forms which are vital in photography. These release forms are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Without obtaining the proper documentation, photographers can find themselves facing a range of legal and ethical issues. If a person finds that they have been photographed without their permission then they are able to take legal action against them or request that their image is removed. For example, the photographer Philip Lorca Dicorcia took a range of photographs of unaware people for one of his projects. One man who was unaware of this occurrence and had been photographed decided to take legal action against him as he believed that the photograph portrait him in an undesirable fashion (as a stereotypical Jewish man). Although the photograph had simply been of him walking through an area being unaware that photos had been taken of him, his offence to such images caused a range of problems for the photographer as he had been using the image commercially. It is therefore always better to obtain the proper documentation before taking a photograph or afterwards if it intended to be used either professionally or commercially.
In the media sector for photography it is always important to obey the laws set by people. To obtain permission to use people or buildings in their photographs, photographers must use release form with their models (even if they are unaware that the photograph was taken) otherwise they risk facing both legal and ethical issues after publishing their work. The release forms which are available are property release forms, minor (children) release forms and adult release forms. Although people are often unaware, buildings can have copyright on them. An example of a building with copyright on it is the Bluewater shopping centre in England. The reason for this copyright is that the architect believes that the building itself is an art piece. Due to this, photography is banned within the area and any photos taken of it must have proper permission from the copyright holders before publishing their photographs. Copyright (displayed via the © symbol) is a legal form of protection for people’s intellectual property (intellectual property is a unique thing created by somebody). Copyright can be used to protect:
· original literary and written work, like novels or content on websites
· original dramatic, musical and artistic works
· television, film, sound and music recordings
· computer software
· illustration and photography
· typographical arrangement of published editions
However the item must physically exist in order to be copyrighted and therefore people are unable to obtain copyright for only an idea. Copyright is not meant to restrict people’s creativity but to protect people’s original work. Another important thing is trademarking. Trademarks are things which make your brand recognisable (most commonly a logo or set of words) and registering a trademark allows you to stop people from using it without your permission first. Unfortunately trademarks have been abused in some cases. For example the company ‘King’ which is responsible for developing mobile apps such as the massively popular ‘Candy Crush Saga’ trademarked the word ‘Candy’. This caused massive controversy as candy is a common word and should not have even been able to be trademarked. They have since used this trademark to bully smaller developers and stop them making anything even related to the subject. Cases such as this show flaws in the legal system and if people are able to trademark common words like this then there shall soon be no words left in the dictionary to use.
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