Privacy and Consent is Integral
In a recent lecture from the Principles of PR course, I was introduced to the details and basic intricacies of privacy laws in Canada, how Privacy Laws affect PR, and privacy laws about consent. Being a PR professional in training and one who has only a minor understanding of Canadian law I came into the lesson ready to learn.
Throughout this course, we have been taught ethics and the ethical codes PR professionals are dedicated to upholding and following. So of course I assumed as much when it came to privacy and privacy laws there were certain standards PR professionals had to abide by when doing businesses. With all the issues and complications dealing fairly and ethically with the public brings I did not at first realize that privacy was an issue that was so common in PR.
The first surprise or to speak more plainly 'reminder' I had in the lecture was on the rules behind using a person’s name/likeness without permission. I had nearly forgotten that minors could be photographed or videotaped without a legal guardian's consent. This is something I once dealt with in my younger years with certain elementary school events. Just like in some cases with adults publishing a photo of a child without their consent, may be considered a breach of privacy, but with a child, they cannot legally consent without their parent or guardians' consent as protection for the child.
To go slightly against what was stated above, I learned that there are some exceptions to this type of issue with content for publishing photos/videos of people including children. Companies/Organizations can refuse requests to remove images from stories, a request can be put in to have it removed, but they are not obliged to. This is all applies to a situation where an image was captured in a public setting and used in a news story-type medium. I was surprised to learn that as long as it is taken on public property people are allowed to capture images of individuals i.e. background footage and images taken by news reporters/photographers.
Even more of an interesting thing to learn was that during a formal interview, you do not need to get a consent form signed as the interview is implied consent, implied consent is a communications law to be aware of something as simple as posing for a photo could be considered implied consent.
Continuing on past the portion of the lecture where the class was introduced to privacy and consent we transitioned to how to write a proper consent release form and the important elements of creating one that can protect you in cases of privacy and consent issues:
One of the first few elements is Consideration which covers how you will use this consent release form and if there is any need to doctor it. It was interesting and very important to learn that there is additional permission needed if you plan to need to/want to doctor the image you want to use.
More important aspects of the consent release you may not know involve the scope of the release the consent form is covering (where is it being used). The only places you can use the image are where you've specified it in the form. You have to make sure you have considered all possible uses of this image and identified them, if you miss one you could be sued.
A last important element of a consent release form that I never considered is that the form could sometimes be tied to a broader agreement like a contract. It was a little bit shocking or surprising to learn that sometimes in the smaller print you could be consenting to images being used in something like promotional materials for organizations/businesses. Registering for a public activity can have this type of consent built into contracts/agreements. The example we were given was if you go to sign up your child for swimming lessons at a public pool you could be signing in their consent form a release that lets them take photos of your child for the promotional material.
These were all very important lessons and takeaways from the lecture that I feel are integral to keep in mind when creating media releases in PR or when simply considering taking a photo of someone for a blog post you want to make. There is far more depth and consideration given to when, how, or if you can take a photo of someone than most, would give credit for, and having a basic or adept knowledge of the laws of privacy and consent surrounding photography and video taking could save you a lot of trouble and legal issues as a PR professional.
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