IANAL but it seems like this is harassment of some sort.

Also, when close minded people make fun of the diversity of a particular city, the people of that city can be brutal in their response. This is already evident in the fact that the Times picked this story up and ran it.

I think there is a response along the lines of "Yeah. There are weirdos on the bus. And, yeah, we sometimes snicker. But they are OUR weirdos in OUR city and no one messes with that."

It seems to me that they are profiting from the commercial use of her likeness.

That was my implication -- that if they're guilty of anything(other than being total assholes), it's this (and not the privacy issue).

Yes, I thought you were implying that but I wanted to make it more concrete.

People seemed to have misunderstood the title of the link -- I meant it as a declarative statement, not a surprised exclamation. Perhaps I should have added "consequences of" to the beginning, but my point was just to share a particularly unpleasant experience.

On the plus side, the discussions below about using AdSense to monetize a website dedicated to profiting off non-consensual pictures of people is quite interesting.

> the discussions below about using AdSense to monetize a website dedicated to profiting off non-consensual pictures of people is quite interesting.

Yeah, there are a few sites like this now ("People of Wal-Mart", some content on "Look at this fucking hipster") and I've always wondered about the same thing.

You're usually in the clear if you're just creating one-off works of art or news/editorial commentary -- and not primarily seeking merch sales or ad revenue... But these sites are pull wholesale exploitation of public photos for ad revenue. (Although, "People of Wal-Mart" claims to honor takedown requests and I haven't heard any hub-bub about them pulling a stunt like this one. And since most of the photos on that site are indoor, within Wal-Mart private property, there's that issue they could theoretically put up with.)

In my mind, sites like these could be a lot harder to police than copyright infringement (on say, YouTube or elsewhere) since the onus of litigation is on an individual being photographed, rather than a large multinational rights-holding company. (Personally, I really don't have the time to go looking for photos of myself that others may have taken of me.)

That might make an interesting court case. How would that be different from the journalistic exception? After all, newspapers make their money by selling ads too.

> Hell, you can take photographs of people and things on private property as long as it's readily visible from public property and you're not trespassing on the private property.

…In the United States. EU is a little different in this respect, at least.