From: Paul Stenquist
As far as I know we don't have a rule or law -- other than the first amendment to the Constitution. -- that says you can take pictures of people in public. But we have court precedents. You don't need model releases for pictures or people taken in public unless they're used for profit in a promotion of some sort. The people who manage the Pentax Gallery seem to have a rather limited understanding of both legal requirements and the methodology of digital photography. In determining whether a pic is appropriate for submission, I think it's best to let common sense prevail.
The people who manage Pentax Gallery are trying to keep anyone from winning a lawsuit against them.
They're listening to the same corporate lawyers who require electric heaters to have a specific warning label telling you not to use them while you're in the bathtub.
Defensive law - "Our policy requires the photographer to have a model release. When the photographer agreed to our Terms of Use, he agreed he would have one for every photo he uploaded. If he doesn't have a model release, that's not our problem, he said he did. You need to sue the photographer instead."
The court is going to follow precedent, and common sense does occasionally apply ... but all the policy is intended to do is to assure Pentax that *YOU* are the one who's going to end up paying the lawyers to cite those precedents are and argue in court whose version of "common sense" should prevail.
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