Personal Image Ownership

No, this is not Liz Taylor.

With the recent demise of Patrick Swayze I was reminded of all the tabloid photographs of him during his fight with cancer and how angry they made me owing to their exploitative nature. Not that I really cared particularly about Mr. Swayze one way or the other, but it seemed an obvious line had been crossed. I think that people should have exclusive rights to their own image, providing they can be identified from it, or it is ascribed to them either directly or through context (to prevent identity being added to a photograph by other means). This would mean that you would be effectively anonymous photographically, unless you'd signed a release. For specific events, people could sign blanket releases and those shot in large crowds can simply have their features blurred slightly to prevent identification. The technology to do this is now extremely simple and should pose no significant restriction. Additionally, it may be desirable to limit the potential practice of having an unidentifiable photograph to which an identity is implied even though it is not in fact of the subject in question. An example of this would be an embarrassing photo of a random person in which a face isn't visible, but put in the context of an article about someone specific. The implication would be that the picture is of them, even though it is not. If the photo were easily identifiable as not being the individual in question, that would of course be acceptable.