What are the laws on taking a photograph in someone’s bedroom and posting it online without permission from homeowner?

Question

Someone takes a photo of themselves in their friend’s bedroom, without their friend’s knowledge or consent, and posts it online. Some of the art on the wall is handmade by the friend, and was not meant to be shared online. Does the friend have any rights in getting social media to take it down?

Answer 1

This answer is under U.S. law, which would apply to many leading social media platforms even if the posters were not located in the U.S. since most of them are based in California and have a choice of law term in their terms of service (TOS).

There are some jurisdictions that impose liability on someone for secretly taking photographs of someone else without their permission. These laws generally impose criminal and/or civil liability on the person taking the photo without the permission of the subject of the aspect of the photo that is problematic, without regard to who owns the premises.

Since original artwork has a copyright by operation of law, taking a picture of it without permission and distributing that picture to the public on social media could be a copyright violation. But standing to seek remedies for copyright infringement would belong to the copyright owner, i.e. usually the author of the copyright or a transferee of the copyright (in this case the friend), and not to the homeowner, if the homeowner is someone different than the copyright holder of the art.

Among other things, the friend who is the person who made the art could validly file a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with the Social Media company in question.

There are common law privacy torts (i.e. grounds for private lawsuits) for public disclose of private facts. But normally, this would not extend to the appearance of someone's bedroom unless there were an express non-disclosure agreement, or a relationship (e.g. confessional priest, attorney, psychotherapist, treating physician) to which a duty of confidentiality arises by operation of law. The common law right would normally extend only to embarrassing private facts.