Aubry C. Éditions Vice versa Inc.
Aubry C. Éditions Vice versa Inc. is the heading of a decision of the Supreme court of Canada in which the applicant, Pascale Claude Aubry, brought an legal action because of the publication of a photograph where it appears in a public medium. This cause is part from now on of Canadian jurisprudence , it says that a photographer can take photographs in the public places, but cannot publish them, without the agreement of the subject.
The Court brings obviously temperaments to this principle. A person whose photograph would be taken at the time of an event of public interest, i.e. a person finding itself temporarily under fires of the slope, could not assert her right to the image. In the same way, a person hitherto unknown finding itself implied in a business of public domain (an important lawsuit, a major economic event, etc) could not prevail herself of her right to the image. Lastly, any person being reproduced in an additional way on a photograph, let us think of a photograph of a monument or of a landscape, the Court says that the person will belong to the decoration and its violated right will not see.
The regroupings of photographers and photojournalists gave a report on a potential “effect of cooling” (chilling effect) on the artistic and journalistic practice of photography because of this new requirement. Many are those which complained that such a decision would result in to remove any spontaneousness with the photographic art and would prevent the photographers from crunching subjects on the sharp one. With that, some could say that nothing prevented a photographer to take photographs and to try to obtain the assent of the subject a posteriori. Moreover, for the artist, the mean possibility that the subject discovers that its image was published overrides the cost of a potential continuation.
Paradoxically, the photograph published which carried damage to the person is public domain today because it was given like proof to the Supreme court of Canada.
External bonds
- Text of the decision of the supreme court
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