Paweł Czajkowski | In Principle

Dissemination of people’s images is an essential ingredient of the media, both traditional and new. In an audiovisual work, the absence of human images strips the scene of human characters, and without them the media impact is lost. Under the applicable regulations, as a rule there is a duty to obtain the permission of the person whose image is presented, but consent is not required when the image of an individual constitutes only a detail of a larger whole such as a gathering, landscape, or public event. This distinction seems understandable and even intuitive, but how should it be applied in practice? The answer is not so obvious, and requires more extensive analysis.