Re: Images

Don Zier writes:
>
> My question: who owns the copyright to the images? Since they're not
> "fixed" until the University digitizes and stores them, do they belong
> to the University? It seems against common sense that one doesn't own
> the copyright to one's face, but that seems the implication. I a
> release of some kind in order?

    The photographer -- or the school if the photographer is its employee (which may be a complex matter, and probably one irrelvant to your question) -- owns the copyright.

    The proposal might raise some privacy issues -- I don't know that area of the law -- but I'd guess more about the SS# than about the photograph.

    If you use the photograph for advertising purposes you might also run into right of publicity claims (that's where the "one owns one's face" intuition comes in), but it sounds like you won't be doing that.

• Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law <volokh[_at_]law.ucla.edu>