The Right for Image of a Citizen: Issues of Implementation

Abstract

The right to an image of a citizen is one of the personal rights that had relatively recently received legal formalization in the norms of the first part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Due to the development of information technologies, the image of a citizen is exposed to additional risks of its illegal use, dissemination and distortion, which makes it an urgent task to study the legal regime of the right to an image and analyze the emerging law enforcement practice. Purpose: based on the analysis of doctrinal sources, norms of current Russian legislation, and practice of their application, to identify emerging legal problems and propose an optimal model for the legal regulation of image rights. Methods: general research and private scholar research methods were used: formal and dialectical logic, methods of description, comparison, interpretation, legal-dogmatic, historical and method of interpretation of legal norms. Results: an analysis of the norms of current legislation and the practice of their application has shown that a number of provisions of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation on image protection require clarification and elaboration. The courts have difficulties qualifying an interest as private or public, which is important for determining the limits of free use and dissemination of a citizen’s image. Disputes also arise in connection with the use of such categories as “a place open to the public” and “a public event”. The possibility of exercising the right to an image after the death of its bearer actualizes the issue of the legal nature of personal rights. The use of an image (as well as a name) after the death of a person for commercial purposes can generate income, which does not fit into the acting model of personal non-property rights. Conclusions: the right to an image (as well as the right to a name) occupies a special place in the system of personal rights. In the event of the death of the bearer, such rights do not cease. Questions about the legal nature of personal rights, the inclusion of the right to an image in the inheritance, and the determination of the place of the right to a digital image in the system of personal rights and digital rights need in further study.