The bill has been passed by the country’s National Assembly and would allow courts to ban parents from posting photos of their children on social media. Even if one parent shares images online, both father and mother would be jointly held responsible for their children’s image rights.
In Short
- A new bill has been passed in France to offer kids better control over their photos.
- Parents will get banned from posting anything online if they share photos of child.
- Parents will reportedly be required to take consent of youngsters before posting anything online.
By Ankita GargA new bill has been passed in France to offer kids better privacy over their photos or videos. It will restrict French parents from sharing photos of their children on social media. The bill, which was represented by MP Bruno Studer, aims to ’empower parents’ and make youngsters realize that they have full control over their images and that no one else will have the right to their private photos.
The bill has been passed by the country’s National Assembly and would allow courts to ban parents from posting photos of their children on social media. Even if one parent shares images online, both father and mother would be jointly held responsible for their children’s image rights.
Moreover, it is also being said that if parents decide to upload private images online, then they will also have to involve the child based on “his or her age and degree of maturity” before posting them. In simpler terms, parents would be required to take the consent of their child before posting anything on social media. The parents will reportedly get banned from posting anything online if they disagree.
The proposed bill comes at a time when we are seeing growth in ‘sharenting’, which is putting the privacy of children at risk, according to the details mentioned in the bill. Sharenting is basically parents creating accounts on social media and sharing information or photos of their children online. This is something that we have been seeing on apps like Instagram.
Studer explained that the photos of children can be “misused for child pornography” or can “lead to bullying in the school environment.” In an interview with Le Monde, he said that he has seen an average of 1,300 images of a 13-year-old child circulating on the internet, which could put his or her privacy at risk. It is being 50 per cent of photographs used in child pornography forums have been taken from accounts that parents use on social media.
In the most extreme cases, the family judge will be allowed to “make a forced partial delegation of parental authority for the specific case of an exercise of image rights.” It is important to note that the bill still needs to be passed by the French Senate and made official by the president, after which it will become a law in the country.
Wilmer Bode
Kraig Prohaska
Benny Borer