photography on private property

The key issue here is that permission was sought and denied. At this point you can go no further except to try and rescind that decision.
Had you taken the pics without seeking permission then you would probably have been fine as there is no ticketing or admission criteria to suggest otherwise.You could then comfortably argue that other people/students regularly took pics on campus without hindrance and thus a precedent was set for you to reasonably proceed.
As a point of note---It is highly unlikely that any serious legal objection would be made unless your photos were a serious source of offence as the costs of such action are prohibitively expensive.
The moral of the story is----Dont ask unless you are certain of the answer.
 
diggerz said:
Hello !!!! Has anybody heard of this going to court ?
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I doubt it very much :thinking: as this would be a 'civil' case and the costs would be huge for any real gain! Tbh. it's just the usual scare tactics employed by large organizations (we have the law on our side) and I would say "rubbish" the onus is on them to prove wrong doing, breach of contract etc, etc, etc blah blah blah.............. People need to stand up to this kind of intimidation by people and organisations like this, get some balls in their pants and tell them to go to a place where the sun don't shine :D.........Ooooops, Sorry rant over :lol:
 
JDholic said:
Sorry Steve, just to add to your comment, the police cannot remove your from the property, all they can do is observe. Tresspass is civil matter not a criminal one. :)
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You are correct.

However, A land owner may still call the police if he thinks a crime is being committed.


Steve.
 
Furtim said:
The owner of any private property has the right to impose conditions of entry upon that site. Those conditions may well be "You can take photographs, but you may not use them for commercial gain" for example.
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Whilst this is true, this is not law. It is just a condition of entry which you may or may not feel morally obliged to comply with.

However, once you have taken those photographs, even if they were taken on private land where photography is banned, they are yours and no one else's.

Taking a photograph on land where photography is not allowed is neither a breach of criminal law or civil law (although it could be considered breach of contract if an entry fee was charged) and all the land owner can do is ask you to leave the property.

Tampering with by means of deleting or confiscating film and/or cameras would be an illegal act if carried out by the land owner.

If the land owner pursued a breach of contract charge based on terms and conditions either printed on the ticket or clearly viewable before the ticket was purchased then he may have a case. However, a judgement in such a case is not to punish the photographer but to re-imburse the land owner for any loss. He would have difficulty proving a loss from someone taking photographs on his land.





Steve.
 
I've not read all of the posts, so this may have already been asked and answered.

How do documentary TV crews and togs get away with their candid filming and pics, eg the recent case of a nurse being struck off for breaking the nursing code of conduct and all the dodgy people you see on watchdog. If this is anything to go by i would expect that you could use the images.
 
*kev* said:
I've not read all of the posts, so this may have already been asked and answered.

How do documentary TV crews and togs get away with their candid filming and pics, eg the recent case of a nurse being struck off for breaking the nursing code of conduct and all the dodgy people you see on watchdog. If this is anything to go by i would expect that you could use the images.
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This is done by standing in a public place looking onto private property. Anything which can reasonably seen from a public palce is fair game (no using a 600mm supertelephoto though).

Any covert/undercover filming cannot be used in court as evidence, but it may be used to start an investigation if the correct authorities are interested
 
Steve Smith said:
Whilst this is true, this is not law. It is just a condition of entry which you may or may not feel morally obliged to comply with.
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The conditions of entry form a contract, which you accepted (by entering), and therefore is enforcably under law.

Steve Smith said:
However, once you have taken those photographs, even if they were taken on private land where photography is banned, they are yours and no one else's.
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Yes, you will own the copyright, but that alone does not allow you to use the photographs irespective of any contract, agreed or implied.

Steve Smith said:
Taking a photograph on land where photography is not allowed is neither a breach of criminal law or civil law (although it could be considered breach of contract if an entry fee was charged) and all the land owner can do is ask you to leave the property.
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Agreed - but you don't have to exchange money to form a contract.

Steve Smith said:
Tampering with by means of deleting or confiscating film and/or cameras would be an illegal act if carried out by the land owner.
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Agreed

Steve Smith said:
If the land owner pursued a breach of contract charge based on terms and conditions either printed on the ticket or clearly viewable before the ticket was purchased then he may have a case. However, a judgement in such a case is not to punish the photographer but to re-imburse the land owner for any loss. He would have difficulty proving a loss from someone taking photographs on his land.
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Again agreed, although the degree of difficulty is open to interpretation, and while the aim as you state is to re-compense the land owner, the likely impact would be in the pocket of the photographer.
 
*kev* said:
I've not read all of the posts, so this may have already been asked and answered.

How do documentary TV crews and togs get away with their candid filming and pics, eg the recent case of a nurse being struck off for breaking the nursing code of conduct and all the dodgy people you see on watchdog. If this is anything to go by i would expect that you could use the images.
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Remember the Nurse in the above example ended her career with this action. Quite wrongly I might say.

Each case is different. In the OP's case, they are a student at the University, then asked for permission, and they were denied. In the OP's case, I would be more concerned over any potential impact on their relationshop with the Uni than any legal proceedings.

It's one of the attributes of UK law that it is hard to draft hard and fast rules in these circumstances. If you feel you have a valid cause to publish, even through it means breaking a contract you may already have in place, you can. It's then up to someone else to listen to both sides of the argument and make a decision.
 
Furtim said:
The conditions of entry form a contract, which you accepted (by entering), and therefore is enforcably under law.
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Only if they are known to you before you purchase a ticket. If they can only be seen on a sign once you have bought the ticket, walked out of the ticket office and turned round a corner they cannot be considered as part of a contract as they are after the fact.

You cannot imposed additional terms to a contract after exchange of consideration.



Steve.
 
Furtim said:
Agreed - but you don't have to exchange money to form a contract.
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Correct. Money does not have to be involved but there needs to be a consideration on both sides.

e.g. You pay me £5 and I will allow you onto my land, you give me five potatoes and I will give you three cabbages, you allow me to photograph you and use the images in my portfolio and I will give you six 10x8 prints, etc, etc.

Allowing someone onto land for no charge, albeit with conditions attached, does not constitute a contract, merely a condition of entry.

A contract may also be void if one or more of the considerations is illegal. As an extreme example: If I paid a hitman £1000 to kill someone and he failed to do it, I could not pursue the hitman in court to recover my £1000 because in the eyes of the law the contract was illegal, therefore no valid contract existed.

Translating this to entry to private land, if one of the conditions of entry was actually illegal then as a contract, it would have no standing (I can't think of any example relating to this at the moment though!).


Steve.
 
Furtim said:
It's one of the attributes of UK law that it is hard to draft hard and fast rules in these circumstances. If you feel you have a valid cause to publish, even through it means breaking a contract you may already have in place, you can. It's then up to someone else to listen to both sides of the argument and make a decision.
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This is how English law has evolved over the years, especially civil law, by references to previous cases.

As I stated earlier, civil law exists, not to punish the offender, but to re-imburse the wronged party for any losses incurred.


Steve.
 
Steve Smith said:
This is how English law has evolved over the years, especially civil law, by references to previous cases.

As I stated earlier, civil law exists, not to punish the offender, but to re-imburse the wronged party for any losses incurred.


Steve.
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:agree:
 
most of this Private property stuff is academic.

In the case of education establishment the rules might be covered in the student contract. In which case breaking the rule would be subject to what ever sanctions are specified.

In all other cases NT or otherwise this is covered by Civil law. and the only sanction the owners have is to ask you to leave. They then have the option of suing you, not for the act of taking the photographs, but for breaking an agreement, defamation, or such like.
It is then up to the jury to ascribe damages or for the court to grant restrictions on the use of the photographs in future.

I do not know of any case that a photographer has been taken to court for this, except for some blatant misuse by photographers of NT property.

The fact that in very rare cases action has been taken, does not mean that action is either likely or would be successful in the future.

Large organisations use their power to bully rather than the courts. It is simply not worth their executive time and resources to pursue these matters. At worst they may send a solicitors letter and an invoice, neither of which has any standing, with out court sanction.
 
Can't really see what there is they could do about it tbh, they're unlikely to be able to show tort so most likely couldn't sue you, perhaps could get an injunction to have the photos removed but thats about it.

Its not a good idea to p*ss off your uni though, most have a clause written in, generic enough to be used to kick out anybody who provides enough of an annoyance. As mentioned above get your tutor to have a word.
 
Just as an acadedmic excersise, consider the case of a person buying a ticket to enter private land. In the ticket office there is a sign saying that photography is not allowed.

The considerations involved are the ticket price and permission to enter the site. The photography ban is a condition of entry.

If the person enters the property and is caught taking photographs, this is a breach of one of the conditions of the contract. The property owner can now consider that contract void and can take away the previously granted permission of entry - and no more.

Although some land owners may have rules which dictate how photographs can be used, these are impossible to enforce because there is no way to differentiate between a snapshot and a calendar image at the time of taking. All they can do, as some do, is ban certain types of equipment. e.g. professional looking large cameras and tripods.


Steve.
 
hyakuhei said:
Can't really see what there is they could do about it tbh, they're unlikely to be able to show tort so most likely couldn't sue you, perhaps could get an injunction to have the photos removed but thats about it.
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They also need to know who you are in order to sue you and you don't need to tell them.


Steve.
 
They can let you take photos on the condition that they are not used commercially. Breach of contract can then follow and whilst the photographer may not be penalised by being asked to leave the person who took the photo can be banned from entry in the future, and other establishments may also ban said person from entering as they do not follow rules.

It depends whether the courts would consider the breach of contract to be minor, which would result in a cost only claim against the photographer, or repudiatory breach.

You could also argue that at the time of taking the photo is was not intended for commercial gain so you could argue for a Rule of Construction not a Rule of Law
 
Any action which follows will be due to the way the photos are published. Taking a photo is very different from publishing it and no one could possibly prove any loss from the mere action of taking the photo.

If the photo is published in a non defammatory way, I doubt they would have a case but if you captioned it 'National Trust property Blah Blah House, Headquarters of Illegal Immigrant Paedophile Nazis' you could be in trouble!

p.s. Uneducated Rick sounds more like Very Well Educated Rick!


Steve.
 
just as an update: the university is having a 800year aniversary, so i tried contacting the team heading the celebrations related to that to see if i could get any sort of endorsement or similar. after not recieving anything back after nearly a week, i have decided to go ahead and publish the image. Reasoning being that since i am retaining some rights to the image, it is not technically in the public domain as they asked. If you are interested, it can be viewed on gigapan at http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=23168 or on my own website at http://lifeinmegapixels.com/locationtest.php?location=cms . The later is on a free hosting account, so uptime can be a bit sketchy
 
Should be fine around Number 10, you only need a permit for Trafalgar Square and somewhere else but I can't remember where right now
 
Listen to Steve Smith. He knows what he's talking about.
 
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