School Event Photos on Facebook

[JellyBelly10]

My DS's school has always had a policy of allowing parents to take photos at events. They have the usual permission forms so that they know that people are happy for their children to have photos taken by the school, but also that they may appear in other family's photos in the background.
Today we have received a letter from the HT saying that it has come to her attention that people are putting pictures of their children at school events onto Facebook and that she wants parents to remove them immediately (unless they only involve their own child, no other people in the background). She has included a new revised form about permission to take photos which now includes a new bit about not using the pictures on social networking sites.
Do other schools have policies like this? How is it enforcable? For some people sites like Facebook are the only way they correspond and communicate with far away family and friends etc so are a very good way of sharing photos and news about their children. The school's own website has no privacy settings so absoultely anyone could access photos of the children on there so what's the diffrence??
What do other MNers think? I'm actually not sure where I stand on this....I personaly have no problem with my child being on other people's photos as these are school events and can often end up with photos in the local paper...so I don't really see what harm the same pictures on Facebook are doing....

You only need one child who's the subject of some kind of child protection order, the child of a woman fleeing a dangerous and violent partner for example, to be pictured on fb and you're taking huge risks.

The school site is a different matter. The children pictured on there will have had their parents agreeing to it.

It's strict but necessary.

Unfortunately very few people know how to use FB properly. If people learnt about security settings and tagging most problems would be avoided. If you have your settings set to the highest, allow invited people access to albums and do not tag then FB is not a risk.

I hadn't thought about the situation of a child being subject to a protection order...I can see why FB would be a bit of a risk then! Yes, if people all used FB correctly it wouldn't be a problem, but lots of people have totally open accounts or allow "friends of friends" to see things...which can extend to thousands of people who ahve absolutely nothing to do with the original person...mmmmmm....I am being persuaded that the school is being sensible...

I think it's a pretty reasonable request for the school to make.
They could just have easily said no photos at all on school premises. Then nobody would have any pictures of their children doing these things at all.

Def a sensible request.
I never put photos on facebook of children if I haven't checked with parents first - even though my privacy settings are set to friends only.
This includes photos I have taken at my DS's and DD's birthday parties and at various cub events.

Our school definitely won't let us put pics on FB. I respect this and am just pleased that I can take pics at their events.

I think the school is right.

School is absolutely right on this one. I don't post pictures of my DC anywhere online, and I don't expect to find anyone else has done so either.

School is right, ours allows us to take photos at all school events but nothing is allowed up on Facebook or other social networking sites.
The school website only has pictures that contain children that consent has expressly been given to be used in this way.
The school take photos all the time as part of school life and documentation, at the end of my dd's reception year all parents received a CD full of pictures of our children through there first year of school, naturally very few of these pictures only contained one child, we all had to return consent for CD's to be given out (had one set of parents objected then no one would have got a CD) and also give signed agreement that the pictures where not to be put online in anyway or sent by email to other people. That worked well for us.

My DSs old primary school allowed photos at all events, but we were always reminded that no photos at all were to be put on the internet. I think the school is completely correct. Any photos on FB become the property of FB and they can do whatever they want with them.

Also, photos seem to become tagged and that could be problematic for some children.

If you want to send photos to friends and family then you can send them an e-mail and attach the photos.

Our school has a policy for school performances where parents have to sign a form stating the photos/films will only be for personal use and not uploaded onto the Internet. Once the form is signed you have to wear on 'Official Photographers' badge or else you will be thrown out of the performance!

However, I think your HT is trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted requesting parents to remove already uploaded photos as the school has no jurisdiction.

At my kids school there were a couple of kids who were covered exactly by such orders.
The Head got round it very neatly.
No pictures or filming during the performance
then in the kerfuffle at the end those kids were quietly whisked away and we were all free to picture our DCs and their friends by the manger etc
It took quite a while (around 2 years) for most parents to click which children were missing

beyond that it is really none of the schools business what we do with pictures of our own children.
Any such ban is utterly unenforcable.

You wait till your DC's get to secondary or uni and have their own FB accounts !!!!

No, the school has no jurisdiction over what you do with pictures you take. However, if parents ignore requests to keep pictures for personal use only, and post pictures featuring other children online without the express consent of their parents, the aggrieved parents may well complain. Which would probably mean that all non-official photography gets banned by the school to prevent further hassle in future.

"For some people sites like Facebook are the only way they correspond and communicate with far away family and friends etc so are a very good way of sharing photos and news about their children"

Why could they not send them an email. Is it really likely this is the only way.

jelly our school requested this before the xma splay that we dont put on the internet Fb etc and explained tha soem dc may well have good grounds for not being seen on internet and same with films must be lept private

My dd is one of them due to her wanker of a father and his friends.I have picturs of her and ds3 on my Fb but mine is screwed down tight only a few people can see not even all my friends list

disclaimer head did inform me that dd is not the only child in this case.But i to did not want the school banning parents from videoing it infact one of the dads is giving me a copy of the xmas play

Notevenamouse - facebook was / is my way of communicating with my friends on a daily basis. I have very tight controls on who can see what (and restrict the number of friends) but I am aware that if one of my friends comments on my pics or status then other people I am not friends with may see it.

I have just posted a pic of my DS as Angel Gabriel. His wings were so big that other children couldn't get very close. Of course the best pic showed another child sitting under his wing. It was quite easy to use the blemish option to blurred out this child and I then figured I would be ok to use it as I would normally.

It's very new to me because this sort of thing really wasn't talked about when I was in a different country and we just snapped away and posted on facebook certificate ceremonies etc etc. We took cameras to the beach, swimming pool, water parks, indoor play centres where ever.

Poppet if may well be your way of communcating with friends but it is rarely if ever the only way a person can do this if they have a computer. Being identified would put some children at risk for various reasons. Sometimes these reasons can be very serious. You may be sensible enough to respect the privacy rules etc but not everyone is. Therefore, it is better for the school to say it is never allowed.

note

I do not quite understand how being in the background of somebody else's picture "identifies" a person.

I have pics of my kids online.
A friend of mine posts pics of her son but very pointedly never names him in the photo descriptions or tags him so we all respect and support her view.

When he turns 14 he'll be tagging himself and his friends in all their baby photos anyway.

Emailing pictures is a poor option for somebody with a limited size mailbox and if sent to 20 people is a very poor use of bandwidth.

"I do not quite understand how being in the background of somebody else's picture "identifies" a person"

If a child is recognised it may be possible to work out which school they attend or what area they live, While this wouldn't be an issue for the majority of children. For some it will be.

I don't use fb, but I do post on Flickr. I only put pictures up containing other peoples children, unless I've asked permission. If I can't get permission I would clone out or blur the background.

If people aren't sensible and continue to post pictures when they're not meant to, photography will soon become banned in public places, schools, birthday parties, beaches etc..
This would be a great shame for our children and future generations.

School is right and no school event photos are allowed on FB at my DC's school.

Fair enough imo

It is very easy to find children in this way and some people do tag their childrens friends. Some people on a variety of sites linked together in various ways give out their location, school the child attends, pictures of the child hobbies and activities attended, names of children that they know that attend them. Some people make their calendars public etc. Some people link their flickr account to their blog which is linked to facebook. Just because you would not does not mean that other people do not. Some children need to remain hidden it is sad but true. I don't think that the limited size of peoples in box outweighs their safety.