VIC Business owner published non-public photos of my property

[willipy]

G'day all,
Another question on another matter. The tradie I hired to do some work took some pictures of my property, and published them on his site. He did it without my consent. He was on non-public part of my property when shooting, and one of the pictures shows my home internals behind big windows. I would not mind the pics usually, but in this case I have a payment dispute with him and don't want to allow him use those pics for his portfolio.
Are there any laws or acts which protect me in this situation? Which court can I use to acquire some court order to remove the pics and prevent re-publishing? Thanks a lot for any information.

 

[Scruff]

There is only two ways that I can think of that he may be breaching the law from what you describe:

1. if the photos show something occuring inside the house that a reasonable person would believe was intended to be a private act, or

2. he was on your property without your knowledge or consent at the time that he took the photos.​

We pretty much have no right to privacy at all anymore when it comes to photography. You would be surprised at what people can legally get away with these days.

 

[willipy]

Thank you. Not happy to read this, but it seems it is true.

 

[Rod]

Check the terms and conditions of use of the website where the photos were published. It may be you can report the publishing of the information as a breach of the site's terms.

And if you can reply again to the posting, I'd be saying something like "and if you annoy this tradie he'll post your address and photos online as he has done with me". This is probably incentive for him to remove the information, then you modify or remove the review.

 

[willipy]

Thank you, Rod. Unfortunately reporting does not work on his site.