Never heard of that term before. Apparently it’s the agreement between photographer (or publisher) and human subject about picture rights and further picture use [Wikipedia explains it better].
How come?
I was reading a post about the issue were Virgin Mobile took a photo from Flickr and used it in an ad campaign. The photo was licensed under Creative Commons (CC). As you can see on the picture of the ad, Virgin Mobile fulfilled the attribution condition by properly indicating the author. What happened was that the girl showing up on the picture felt insulted (and well, her family smelt the money I suppose) and filed a lawsuit against Virgin Mobile and others.
As far as I understood, and I’m no lawyer, the one violating the girl’s rights was the Flickr user and not Virgin Mobile. It was the Flickr user who published the taken picture online under a CC license without holding the model release in his hands. Virgin Mobile made use of the picture by respecting the underlying license. But that’s just my theory.
The outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting though. Especially the piont what’s a Creative Commons license worth in a court. Supposedly the same as any other license agreement, but you never can tell.
I have a Flickr account too, meaning I publish pictures online. All of my photos are licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA and on some of them you can identify random persons, and I do not own a single model release.
Should I be concerned?
I’m not quite sure. According to the rather simple CC license text, anybody who wants to use my pictures commercially must ask for my permission first. So Virgin Mobile couldn’t just use my picture in a campaign without letting me know. On the other hand my license does allow non-commercial sharing, under certain conditions, but basically it gives me no control where my photos are going to show up.
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