Woman loses privacy case over Bebo pictures

A recent ruling by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has highlighted how careful people should be about what they publish online.

A woman complained to the press self-regulatory body that an article, entitled 'Wanted! The Epic Boobs girl!', published in Loaded magazine in February had infringed her privacy.

The woman said the magazine had used a number of photographs that she had uploaded to social-networking site Bebo when she was 15 years old without her permission.

The magazine had also offered a £500 ‘reward’ to anyone who could persuade the woman to appear in one of its photo shoots.

The PCC said that although it had “some sympathy with the complainant" and the article was “in poor taste”, the publishers had not invaded her privacy.

This is because the pictures had been taken from her Bebo page by others, and were already in wide circulation on the internet.

It also said it could not rule on issues of taste and offence or questions about the legality of the material as it could only look at the complaint under the terms of the Editors' Code.

"The magazine had not taken the material from the complainant's Bebo site; rather it had published a piece commenting on something that had widespread circulation online (having been taken from the Bebo page sometime ago by others) and was easily accessed by Google searches," said the PCC's ruling.

The PCC ruling went on to say that therefore it also felt it could not order the magazine not to use material that had been so widely circulated and in the public domain.