I often see blogs from other countries that contain photos that appear to have been taken in public spaces and then used to illustrate new posts, and I am sure that many of those authors don’t give a second thought to using them.

And yet using such photos on German blogs can lead to all sorts of complicated issues, which fall under a variety of categories.  However the phrase use are most likely to hear is the “Recht am eigenen Bild” – the right to one’s own image.

There are situations that are probably just obvious.  Using someone else’s photo without asking would infringe on their copyright, something that most people understand.  But these days people are more “up” on what copyright is and defend it accordingly. [Read more…]