What belabouring? First you tell me that nobody should ever have their picture taken or used without their express permission and then you put up a photo with a woman in the background, who most likely wasn’t consulted prior to having her photo taken and put on the net. By your own stated beliefs, isn’t it wrong of you to use her photo without verifying that you have her permission to do so? If you have her permission (written of course), why not just say so?

Or are you admitting that it’s impractical to get the permission of every single person who appears in the background of a photo?

I honestly want to know why Google needs to get everyone’s permission before using photos taken in public, but you feel you don’t need that woman’s permission before using her photo. Aren’t you indirectly profitting from the use of her photo just as you claim Google is indirectly profitting from its Street View pictures? As far as I can tell, the only difference is in the scale of the use. Is that your justification for not practicing what you preach? That a little unauthorized use of a person’s photo is ok, but large scale use isn’t?

Or does the opt-in rule only apply to companies you don’t like?

You may see this as trolling, but it’s a valid question: Why are you doing exactly what you said nobody should be allowed to do?

Nah. There’s not much point in belabouring the same obvious points to people who just can’t grasp them.

Cheers!

I guess that means that you finally understand just how impractical it would be to get the permission of every single person who happens to appear in a photo?

What’s wrong?

I’ve pointed out in the past, the impracticality of securing the permission of each and every person who might appear in the background of a photo and you told me in no uncertain terms that the difficulty of doing so was no excuse. You stated that it’s not only wrong, but illegal to take anyone’s photo without permission – period. Now Jon has a perfectly innocent looking photo of Bill Thompson, and he’s clearly the focus of the photo, however a woman also appears in the background of the photo. Was she asked for permission before her photo was taken? Does Mr. Thompson know her well enough to be absolutely sure that she wouldn’t object to having her photo on the net? Even if Mr. Thompson or the photographer secured her permission before or after the photo was taken, was such permission presented to P2PNet? I’m sure that Mr. Thompson is a trustworthy person, but do you really want to start relying on second-hand statements for permisison to use people’s images? Somehow I doubt that you’d be ok with Google accepting verbal permission, delivered second-hand.

Because of your strict opt-in stance, I figured you’d be firmly behind me on this, and demand that Jon either get permission directly from the woman in the photo, or edit it to remove her. Either the rules about having permission before photographing someone apply in every case, or not at all. You can’t just pick and choose when to apply the rules, based on what best suits your agenda.

After all, you wrote;

“It is currently illegal in Canada and the US to arbitrarily capture people in photos or videos without getting their informed consent.”

Somehow though, I suspect you’ll come up with some twisted logic of why using this woman’s photo without her express consent, is perfectly ok in this case, but everyone else still needs to get permission before even pointing a camera in someone’s general direction.