Photography, Filming and Privacy
At an LRP event I was doing a little bit of filming for my own pleasure and some suggested that I should get permission from everyone in the room before doing so. There was also a discussion on the forums about permission regarding photographs, which set me thinking.
I am pretty sure you do not need permission to take photographs or film of a person as long as you are not breaking any other law (trespass, harrasment, breach of the peace). In the UK I am pretty sure you do not need there permission to publish those photographs either. In other countries an individual has the right of commerical exploitation of there image. This means someone could potentially sue if you made money from the sale of their image, but that is questionable if you give it away. There is talk of images being covered by the Data Protection Act in the UK but there is a specific exception for Journalist and Artistic Photography although this has not been tested.
So the question here is would posting a picture on the internet breach the regulation on commercial exploitation. There is the potential for them to do so, but I suspect as long as you do not charge for viewing then you are probably OK (that or you can never put you holiday photo's on the web ever again)
So that brings me back to the point that as long as I don't intend to make it internationally available nor gain any finanical benefit there I don't need permission to film. I think it is generally safer to get signed disclaimers if you wish to create a publicly available artistic work based on photography or film of someone else but it is by no means a legal requirement, and is certainly not a requirement for private photography and filming.
*edit*
This debate is proving realy useful for me, I will probably put the results on the 5minute film website as a reference later on.