On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:Define "private situations".
> Would you feel that is sufficient? This would make it clearer that editors
> are expected to obtain subject consent before uploading images taken in
> private situations to Wikimedia websites.
Thank you.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board affirms the value of freely licensed content, and we pay special attention to the provenance of this content. We also value the right to privacy, for our editors and readers as well as on our projects. Policies of notability have been crafted on the projects to limit unbalanced coverage of subjects, and we have affirmed the need to take into account human dignity and respect for personal privacy when publishing biographies of living persons.
However, these concerns are not always taken into account with regards to media, including photographs and videos, which may be released under a free license although they portray identifiable living persons in a private place or situation without permission. We feel that it is important and ethical to obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with our special mission as an educational and free project. We feel that seeking consent from an image's subject is especially important in light of the proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as Flickr, where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent difficult to verify.
In alignment with these principles, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to:
The right of privacy is the right to be left alone and not to be made the subject of public scrutiny without consent. The right to privacy is enshrined in several international laws though the details with regard to photographs vary from country to country. Images must not unreasonably intrude into the subject's private or family life.
The law on privacy concerning photographs can be crudely divided into whether the photograph was taken in a private or public place. A private place is somewhere the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a public place is somewhere where the subject has no such expectation. The terms are unrelated to whether the land is privately or publicly owned. For example, a tent on a beach is a private place on public land and a concert is a public place on private property. A place may be publicly accessible but still retain an expectation of privacy concerning photography, for example a hospital ward during visiting hours. Whether the place is private or not may also depend on the situation at the time: for example that same hospital ward would have been a public place during a tour before it opens.
In the United States (where the Commons servers are located), consent is not as a rule required to photograph people in public places and publish those photos. Hence, unless there are specific local laws to the contrary, overriding legal concerns (e.g., defamation) or moral concerns (e.g., picture unfairly obtained), the Commons community does not normally require that an identifiable subject of a photograph taken in a public place has consented to the image being taken or uploaded. This is so whether the image is of a famous personality or of an unknown individual.
In many countries the subject's consent is needed to just take a picture, and/or to publish it and/or to use it commercially even if the person is in a public place. Further nuances may include the age of the subject, what the subject is doing at the time, whether the subject is famous, whether the image concerns news of public interest, etc. See Commons:Country specific consent requirements for details.
Because of the expectation of privacy, the consent of the subject should normally be sought before uploading any photograph featuring an identifiable individual that has been taken in a private place, whether or not the subject is named. Even in countries that have no law of privacy, there is a moral obligation on us not to upload photographs which infringe the subject's reasonable expectation of privacy.