A video of you goes viral without your consent, what does the law say?

Going viral was once a dream for creative types hoping to make it big on YouTube. But in the age of live streaming and public shaming, now it’s a nightmare. TikTok trends, jokes, and even “acts of kindness” have led to people finding accidental viral fame without their consent, or even without their knowledge.

If you have been filmed or photographed and it has gone viral, you may be wondering if there is any legal action you can take. In many areas, the law has not caught up with technology and accompanying social trends, but in certain circumstances it can be on your side.

Privacy rights are protected by the UK Human Rights Act 1998, which is intended to prevent others from interfering with your life. It stipulates that personal information about you, including photographs and correspondence, such as letters and emails, must not be shared publicly without your permission. Other personal information, such as your address and phone number, is protected by the Data Protection Act of 2018.

Quarter life, a series of The Conversation

This article is part of Quarter Life, a series on issues that affect those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of starting a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet, or just making friends as adults. The articles in this series explore the questions and provide answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

You may be interested in:

Social networks: how to protect your mental health

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder: the terrifying psychological condition suffered by Dixie D’Amelio

Cost of living crisis: what are your rights if your landlord wants to raise your rent?

The problem with privacy law is that it only applies where there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This means that your rights would be violated if someone hacked into your phone and stole private photos, but not necessarily if your photo was taken on public transport or in another public place.

Defamation law may protect you if someone uses your image in a defamatory way. The legal test means that it has to cause, or is likely to cause, serious damage to her reputation and only applies if what the person shares is not true. So if the photo of you is real, it’s unlikely to apply, but if the image is manipulated to make it look like you’re doing something you didn’t, like deep fakes, then it might apply.

These rights also apply to children, even when their parents post the image. Given the way parents document their children’s lives on social media, it’s likely that we’ll see legal cases about it soon.

Read more: Should I post photos of my children online? Here’s what new parents need to know about sharing

Since 2015, the law specifically prohibits sharing private sexual photos or videos of another person without their consent. Since 2021, this also includes threatening to reveal intimate sexual images. Upskirting, taking a photo under someone else’s clothing without their knowledge, was criminalized in 2019.

Criminal laws like these rely on the Crown Prosecution Service to bring charges against someone. This means that people have to report the incident to the police and trust them to deal with it.

Privacy, performance and public

When speaker and author Ed Gillespie tweeted a photo of a topless man working on his laptop on the train in the middle of a heat wave, it went viral. But he didn’t actually violate the man’s privacy rights, because privacy is not expected in a public place, according to the law. The person in the photo saw the tweet and replied, “Ed, I’m not sure why you felt entitled to photograph me and share it on Twitter without my permission, or why others feel entitled to comment,” leading to Gillespie to remove it and apologize. Unfortunately for the man, the image had already been republished by Mail Online, The Metro and The Sun.

Either way, Gillespie was the copyright holder of the photo. Copyright is a legal right that gives the owner the power to control the use of their content, including photos, videos, and correspondence. This is how Meghan Markle won her case against a newspaper that published a private letter that she wrote to her father.

The copyright holder is usually the person who took the photo, video, or wrote the letter. If another person publicly shares his own photos or videos, he can ask the websites to remove the content or sue them for copyright infringement. This may seem strange because we share other people’s content on social media all the time, but legally the rights holder is the one who took the photo, and copying it without permission is technically copyright infringement.

If someone else takes the photo or video, they own the copyright. This has been at the center of cases against celebrities, including Gigi Hadid and Khloe Kardashian, who shared paparazzi photos of themselves on their social media channels. The photographers, who owned the copyright, sued them. The cases were settled out of court. Although these are US cases, the laws are the same in the UK.

A top view of a woman scrolling on tiktok, with an influencer on the screen

TikTok is an online platform where videos from strangers can go viral incredibly quickly.
Kaspars Grinvalds

If you are being filmed, other UK rights that could come into play are performers’ rights. These can prevent someone from recording a live performance without permission and can prevent unauthorized copies of your performance from being shared. This right only applies if you are acting, singing, dancing, or performing a literary, dramatic, or musical work.

The legal rules about what does or doesn’t count as acting are pretty vague: magicians, clowns, jugglers, impersonations, interviews, and runway shows probably count, but sports performances don’t. Some argue that it also includes improvisation, so you might even get a proper performance if you’re filmed throwing a tantrum in public. And it doesn’t have to be a paid performance to qualify.

You’ve gone viral, now what?

If someone threatens to share, or has shared, explicit images or photos of you online, then this is a criminal offense and you should report the incident to the police.

If someone has filmed you at home or in a private place where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, this could be a violation of your right to privacy. If someone takes photos or videos made by you and shares them without your permission, this could be a violation of your privacy or an infringement of your copyright. In these cases, it is up to you to take legal action.

Privacy is a qualified right, which means that it can be infringed in certain circumstances, for example, if it is in the public interest. This can be a useful defense for newspapers that publish intimate photos of high-profile politicians whose behavior may reflect something important about their leadership.

Social media platforms also allow users to submit takedown requests if you believe someone’s content violates any of your rights explained above or does not follow the platform’s community guidelines against bullying, harassment or hate speech. . In cases where you have been publicly photographed or filmed that did not involve explicit content, this remains the best course of action for immediate resolution.

Source: news.google.com