At Lowering the Bar, Kevin Underhill posts the rather bizarre story of how a family’s Christmas photo ended up gracing the front window of a grocery store in Prague.

Reports this week said that Jeff and Danielle Smith, of St. Louis, had learned that their 2008 Christmas-card family photo was being displayed in the window of a grocery store in Prague.  Like the Taster, the Smiths learned this only by chance, after a college friend visiting Prague happened to see their life-size images enticing Czechs to buy groceries. 

Now it’s one thing for a model to find out years later that his lovely face is on the Taster’s Choice label.  After all, at least the photo was of someone who chose to have his image shown to millions.  But absent a Christmas list the length of Harry Lipzig’s, this was not in the plans for the Smiths of St. Louis.

This goes beyond issues of online privacy, into issues of online sanity.  Every photo that’s openly available on the web is subject to being used, repurposed as some call it, by anyone anywhere for any use they choose.  It’s essentially two clicks away from celebrity, or notoriety, or commercial exploitation.  And chances of your finding out about it are slim.  I mean, Prague, of all places.  Not the locale of the Smith family’s last vacation.

Funny as this may seem on the surface, it’s filled with problems that may not be easily anticipated.  Initially, there is little to nothing you can do cross-border to stop someone from using your image for their commercial purposes.  You can retain a lawyer from the country where the use originated, but that involves costs and laws that may not reflect anything you think are sensible, usually problems that present an insurmountable barrier to action.  It’s not fair?  That’s right, it’s not.

Even when the use occurs within the United States, those who willingly place their image online and become part of a story of public interest are subject to fair use, allowing others to take your photo and display it in places you might wish it wasn’t.  It’s happened here.  For public figures, everything is fair game. 

While Kevin’s story is, thankfully, pretty funny and ends on a nice note, there is a far more insidious story lurking behind your online photos.  Ten minutes with photoshop and the two lovely children in the photo can have their angelic faces attached to naked bodies engaged in horrible sexual contact.  If you think it’s troubling to find your family as a blown-up come-on for a Prague grocery store, don’t even try to imagine how it would be to find your children’s heads attached to pornography. 

If you think it would be incredibly cool to see a pic of yourself or your family go viral on the internet, or have no issue with someone halfway around the world exploiting your photo for commercial use, then perhaps this is just silliness to you.  Post whatever foolish pics you want on your Facebook page, and let that image of your swilling booze with ten of your best half-naked friends engaged in behavior that your father will never know about become way your dream employer views you when he does a 12 second background search.  That’s your call. 

But as you post photos online, bear in mind that other people who happen to be in your pics, and especially children, yours or someone else’s, may not want to end up on a billboard, or worse.  Understand what you’re getting into and use some judgment.