Last Sunday, the New York Times' column called "The Ethicist" posted a question from David in Los Angeles about a family member requesting him not to post videos or photos of her children online. Here's Marian's response to The Ethicist.
Hi Randy,
I greatly appreciated you addressing this extremely topical issue in your column (that of privacy and posting of family videos, especially those containing images of children).
The best practice in this area is NOT to post photos/videos or information about children online. And if those children are not yours, then extreme caution should always be used. One reason is privacy. Now that so much of our lives is online anyway, many of us wish to protect our children’s emerging “identities” from overexposure. Example: have you ever run a 10K? The photo of you sweating away, your finish time, your address used to register is likely to be available online for anyone’s amusement. Or another, a photo of a Midwest US girl was posted to Flickr and ended up being used in a Virgin Mobile ad in Australia, without her permission.
The second reason is probably more disturbing. Pedophiles do use images of children they find online. They use them on their own websites to depict specific areas of their perversions; they trade images with others; they change the photos using imaging software. While the likelihood of your particular image or video being used in this way is probably small, why would anyone wish to have this happen? We had a particularly vile pedophile running around here in Los Angeles. He liked to go to the playgrounds, the public libraries and other child-friendly environments to take photos and then post to his website for the enjoyment of his “friends”. He also bragged about getting other images online. Any wonder that there is a little paranoia among loving parents? Protecting images of your loved ones keeps the comfort level a bit higher and harms no one. It also demonstrates respect for the boundaries and preferences of others.