Arkansas Senate Passes Bill to Make Street Photography Illegal in State [View all]

[LiberalArkie]

https://fstoppers.com/news/arkansas-senate-passes-bill-make-street-photography-illegal-state-65704




Over the past week, Arkansas Senate has been working diligently to pass SB-79 - known as the Personal Rights Protection Act. While the bill is designed to protect the privacy and rights of the citizens within the state, it also effectively makes Street Photography illegal from viewing or taking in the state of Arkansas.

The bill's full name does a lot as to explaining the bill. Entitled “To Enact the Personal Rights Protection Act: and to Protect the Property Rights of an Individual to the Use of the Individual’s Name, Voice, Signature, and Likeness”, this bill is designed to take an individual's Rights of Publicity to an extreme, by allowing it illegal for them to be photographed or filmed on public grounds without a written consent.



As the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) explains --

The implications of this bill are staggering. For example, an image showing recognizable people posted to the Internet for a use that would not require written consent anywhere else in the world could leave you open to a lawsuit just because someone in Arkansas could view it online.

SB-79 places an unprecedented burden on all photographers whose work could be viewed within the state of Arkansas to either get explicit consent from every individual whose likeness appears in all of their photographs or risk defending themselves in a lawsuit where they will have to shoulder the burden of proving the use of their photographs qualifies as an exempted use

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Note: The bill appears to ban any photo, video or picture which does not written permission from every person, group or organization depicted in the picture, photo or video.

Gee that national strategy of only spending money on national elections is working out quite well.