Ever since I started using Creative Commons as a licensing model for many of my pictures on flickr I have been wondering how to deal with pictures of other people. Since I'm just a hobby photographer I am new to the whole matter of rights and licensing of pictures but I have heard the term model release on several occasions.
Up to now, my modus operandi was to assign a CC license only to pictures that do not show individual people in a recognizable manner but using the all rights reserved setting for those. While this is certainly one possibility it imposes some limitations on the usefulness of CC licenses plus flickr doesn't allow others to view theses images in high resolutions.
After some online research I came across this story confirming what I was afraid of: Someone uploaded an image with a person on it under a CC license and someone else used the image for an advertisement and got sued.
This article gives some detailed information on the topic of model releases and on when it is required and by whom.
The essential point is that these two things don't have anything to do with each other. A publisher would need a model release for publishing an image with a person on it. The photographer does not need a model release and basically is not responsible for providing this to anyone. The Creative Commons license only states that anyone using the pictures is free to do so from the producer's point of view.
So what I will do from now on is license people shots as CC BY NC. If anyone has any thoughts on this or even some more "professional" advice or any other feedback is welcome!
Of course the general IANAL clause applies here. This is just what I found online and I summarized the crucial points. It is not supposed to be any legal advice.
