Flickr: manu_le

I live in the suburbs of Paris, France. I use a Canon Powershot S3 IS.

Comments on my pictures are very much appreciated.

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French law forbids publishing pictures of people taken in a public place, such as a street, without them signing a written form allowing such pictures to be published. So it should go like:

- Hi, can I snap your picture ?
- Huh, ok, but be quick.
- Sure. Click.
- Bye.
- Hold on, can you please just sign this page-long form ? It's just a formal authorization for me to publish your picture on the internet.

Riiight... And those are the French laws for a public place. As far as private places are concerned, such as restaurants, museums, even just taking a picture of someone is forbidden, never mind publishing it, and can result in a huge fine or even jail.

If I understood clearly, those laws were put in place in order to deal with the problem of papparazzi photographers harassing french celebrities.

There is an exception to this law. French juges have ruled that any picture may be taken in a public place and published freely if it was taken during a demonstration, and people give up their right to privacy while they participate in the demonstration.

Now, pictures of people are often more interesting than landscapes or nature (but that's just my opinion). That's why there are mostly pictures of people during demonstrations on my flickr account.

I do not endorse any of the causes in the demonstrations I attend, whether right, left, or other political affiliations. My political opinions are not that important. I like to tell a story of the demonstration as I saw it, with as little bias as possible.

Even though taking pictures in demonstrations is legal, some people don't like it. Many political militants advocate or even demand that faces of participants be blurred, so that the police or their political opponents are unable to recognize them. Which would bring me back to square one: no pictures of people in the street. It's a good thing that most people are willing to have their pictures taken, though.

The thing is, if you really want to be paranoid, you have to realize that the police probably do have some serious cameras that they can use, and could just match a person with one of their own pictures by using the clothes that person is wearing.

Most of the time, I try to contact the demonstration organizer in order to point to the pictures. so that they may use them for their own needs, and also to make sure they don't have a problem with any of them.