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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Another unpopular opinion here but cash grab or not the facts are clear - he was a baby, he didn’t consent to the photo, and a lot of people made a lot of money from it.

The only internally consistent solution I can see is that children below age of consent should not be allowed to contribute to commercial art in any form. That’d mean no more child actors, and that would sound heretical to many, but I see no other solutio.

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Right now I'm looking at the instructions for a pediatric otoscope, showing how to use it on an infant, who probably didn't consent to this use of his photo.

There are literally billions of photos of infants and young children used in instruction manuals, text books, advertising, and as stock photos.

Should all of these be made illegal? Should manufacturers and advertisers be sued for using these photos without the subjects' consent?

I mean why not? Seems like a fairly small price to pay, ask them to draw it out.

Small price? Are we talking about the same thing? There are many millions of infants and small children that have appeared in photos and film. How much compensation do you think each should be awarded? How much might that add up to?

Going forward, do you propose we ban all infants and small children in movies and photographs? Do I need to apologize for letting my kids watch Look Who's Talking because its main characters were infants?

By this logic children can't have any surgical procedures, because u need to consent for that. That's why children have legal representatives.

I’m assuming a legal representative is still not enough to get a child a tattoo? Isn’t that the more appropriate comparison? a child needs medical procedures. It doesn’t have to model.

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