By Kim Rahn
It is in violation of portrait rights to use a photo on social networks for commercial purposes even if the photo has a hashtag attached for sharing, a local court said.
The Seoul Central District Court Thursday ordered a golf wear shop manager, surnamed Jeong, and the brand’s importer to pay a combined 1.3 million won ($1,167) in compensation to an Instagram user, surnamed Kim.
Kim posted a photo of himself wearing clothes of the brand on his Instagram account and put the brand’s name with a hashtag, according to the court. A hashtag is a label for social network services through which users can easily find messages or photos with a specific theme.
Jeong shared Kim’s photo on the shop’s community site in June last year, saying the photo had a hashtag of the brand.
Kim found this out two months later and called Jeong to complain. Jeong removed the photo from the website and posted an apology. The importer also had uploaded the photo on its Facebook account but removed it after receiving Kim’s complaint.
Kim filed the suit in October, claiming Jeong and the importer used his photo for commercial purposes without his consent and thus infringed on his portrait rights, demanding 8 million won in compensation.
Then Jeong and the company said they did not need Kim’s consent to use the photo because Instagram’s privacy rule states content opened to all users can be searched, used and shared by others.
But the court said the rule does not mean commercial use of such open content is allowed. It ordered Jeong to pay 1 million won and the company, 300,000 won.