Ready to ditch your significant other but a little worried about those, ahem, erotic photos you posed for? If only you lived in Germany... A German court on Tuesday ruled that intimate videos and photographs must be deleted if they are of the owner’s former partner and that ex-partner requests it. The case involved two no-longer-paramours, one a photographer, the other a woman who featured in intimate photos and videos the two had made. The man refused to delete the material, though he said he had no intention of making it public. But the regional court ordered him to get rid of it, even though his partner had consented to the shots, the Local reports.
The personal rights of the subject trump the ownership rights of the photographer, the court found. The photographer's one consolation prize: He can keep all of his pictures of his ex fully clothed, as they "have 'little, if any capacity' to compromise the claimant." No word on whether he'll appeal. So does this ruling have links to the "right to be forgotten" ruling against Google earlier this month? In a word, no, a professor of Internet regulation at Oxford tells the Guardian. The sexy photo decision "was not about data protection but the 'right for one's own image', which is a special construction of continental European jurisprudence." But "these two rulings may make more and more people aware of their personal rights in the digital sphere ... [and] embolden future claimants who pro-actively want to prevent revenge porn." (More online privacy stories.)
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