IMAGE RIGHTS

To a limited extent we all have rights to our own image, but enforcing image rights is quite difficult and of very little importance to most people unless they are sports stars.  The focus on this was sharpened recently not by an individual but by a building when Manchester Cathedral was depicted in a computer game as the scene of a violent battle of alien creatures.  It showed remarkable misjudgement and insensitivity, but did the Cathedral have the legal right to prevent it?  A formal claim made by the Church resulted in an unreserved apology by Sony.  However the game was not removed from sale.  A similar lack of taste seems to have afflicted another game maker which depicted James Bulger being led away by his killers.  That has recently been withdrawn from sale for the images to be removed but whether that was due to fear of bad publicity rather than legal rights is open to doubt.

The Cathedral's case would depend either on a breach of copyright (which will be difficult to establish as such a right normally only survives for 70 years after the death of the architect) or defamation (which would require proof of damage to the reputation of the Church by it appearing to have condoned the game).  One hopes that this incident will lead to the game being withdrawn and to greater sense of responsibility in the production of future games.

Interestingly, the Cathedral's image appears in a painting in the Town Hall, depicting the Siege of Manchester in 1642.  In fact, it was a shot from a sniper in the Cathedral tower killing a Royalist commander on the Salford bank that led to the desertion of some Royalist troops and the lifting of the siege.  Perhaps this is not an exciting enough event for a computer game but there would be nothing in law to prevent that event being depicted.