Nowadays, street style photograph is one of the hottest items within the fashion industry since it becomes the new way for fashion brands to promote their products through many parties such as highly-followers fashion influencers, models, and artists. So many fashion brands dig deeply their pocket to give their products as a gift to highly-followers fashion influencers, models, and artists for the purpose of street style marketing.[1] In this case, we need to note that street style photograph is the result of the creative process of street style photographers, hence, street style photograph is considered as one of the objects of protection of copyright law. The photos of the street style photographers will be automatically protected under copyright law as soon as the street style photographers take the photos. Moreover, the street style photographers can enjoy the protection of their photos by licensing their rights to a magazine or fashion website.
In the meantime, the following question coming from this case is whether or not the subject of the photos of the street style photographers will enjoy the same copyright protection just like the common photographers. In this case, under the United State of America’s copyright law, the subject of the photos is not protected by copyright law and the only party that can enjoy the protection is the creator of the photo which is the street style photographer.
However, under the Indonesia’s Copyright Law No. 28 of 2014 (Indonesian Copyright Law), the protection of the photo covers the rights of the subject photo since according to Article 12 Paragraphs (1) and (2) of the Indonesian Copyright Law stating as follows:
“Every person is prohibited from engaging in Commercial Use, Reproduction, Publication, Distribution and/or Communication of a Portrait taken for commercial billboards or advertising purposes without the written consent of the persons in the portrait or their heirs”.
“The Commercial Use, Reproduction, Publication, Distribution and/or Communication of the portrait as referred to in section (1), containing portraits of 2 (two) or more persons, are obligated to request the consent of the persons in the Portrait or their heirs”.
In view of the above matters, it is clear that the street style photographers should ask for written consent from the person(s) that becomes the subject of their photos. If the photographers do not ask their permission, they can be accused of infringing the copyright of the person(s) in the portrait. Thus, in Indonesia, the street style photographers cannot enjoy the copyright of their portraits until they ensure that the person(s) used as their subject of the photos agrees and gives their consent to use the photos commercially.
Source:
- http://www.thefashionlaw.com/home/the-laws-at-play-for-street-style-photography, accessed on November 18, 2019
- Law No.28 of 2014 on Copyright
