Who goes to the station risks to be taken by a camera

No complaints if our image is taken and transmitted on TV during a public interest event.

The Supreme Court has thus decided (judgment 24.10.2013 no. 24110), rejecting the complaint of a person that had complained about having been taken by a camera at Milan station during a TV service on the Gay Pride of Rome to which this person was totally unrelated.

If it is true that the reproduction of the image can occur only after express consent of the person in the image (art. 96 of the Copyright Law), it is also true that such a rule does not apply when the take occurs in a public context.

Art. 97, 1 comma of the Copyright Law foresees that the reproduction cannot be deemed abusive when it is linked to facts, events or ceremonies of public interest or that have taken place in public. According to the Court, this link does not have to be interpreted in a strict sense with reference only to the event per sè but it has to and can comprise the related events.

In the present case, therefore, the take of the crowd leaving from Milano station to participate at the Gay Pride in Rome was to be considered an event related to the Gay Pride and as such reproducible without the consent of the people taken.

It does not count much that the person in question was not going to the event in Rome but was there for other reasons.

As it can be read in the judgment, «who is present at a station, also just in transit, or to take a train or to perform its personal private matters, shall accept the risk of eventually being abstractly identified in the crowd of passengers and it is, let’s say, within the risks of life that cannot be but accepted.»

In the present case, the take had occurred in a collective manner, as a take of the crowd, and the identification of the person was rather difficult. These circumstances have surely influenced the type of decision.