Letter concerning photographs

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 09:37:06AM +0300, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> On 04/08/2010 06:51 AM, Ian Weller wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 07:28:33PM -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
> >>
> >> Do we have any rules regarding things like needing consent from the
> >> photograph subject (if it is a person), regardless of license type?
> >> Particularly if they are pictures of minors? (Think students in a
> >> classroom, etc.)
> 
> Just to be safe, we better keep away from pictures with minors, this is 
> a huge can of worms.

I do agree with this.

> >> Other than that - this looks dandy to me.  Just want to avoid wading
> >> in those murky legal waters if we can. :)  I'm not sure how CC
> >> licensing handles these types of things offhand.
> >
> > CC does not take care of personality rights/consent at all.
> >
> > For the Fedora Picture Book, we used these:
> > https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/2/2c/Picture_book_release_form.pdf
> > But somebody needs to check with spot to see if we can reuse this or if
> > we need a different one.
> 
> In my experience, if we wait for the legalese to get this "proper" then 
> we miss all the deadlines and accomplish nothing. When we get all the 
> papers, the enthusiasm around the project would be long gone.

+1.

> I think a simple approach is to use subjects that have signed the CLA 
> (people who are known contributors)

It would be ideal to be able to avoid the problem.  We previously used
pictures only of actual contributors, as a point of fact.

I'm not sure about this, but the Picture Book was going to be offered
for sale, which might have changed the landscape of needing a release.
Our purpose here is obviously not commercial sale, and perhaps the
combination of that factor with having only our community members in
photographs avoids the problem.  On top of that, we could ask that the
photographs be taken in a public place which might further dilute the
need for a release.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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