Children's image online, a recent right

Image rights derive from the right to privacy, and they belong to the child. Their exercise, however, falls under parental authority, which placed parents in a position to authorise publication on behalf of the person concerned. The principle rests on Article 9 of the Civil Code, under which everyone has the right to respect for their private life.

That configuration was criticised as publishing images of children on social networks became commonplace, and sometimes monetised.

The text writes respect for the child's privacy into the elements of parental authority and provides that parents exercise their child's image rights jointly. The text, promulgated on 19 February 2024, amends several articles of the Civil Code relating to parental authority to that end.

It also allows a judge to entrust the exercise of that right to a third party in the event of serious disagreement harming the child's dignity or moral integrity.

An earlier law, adopted in 2020, regulates the activity of children under sixteen on video-sharing platforms where that activity generates income, with declaration or authorisation requirements and the escrow of part of the sums. That text of 19 October 2020 targets what the press has called child influencers.

That scheme transposes to the digital world older rules applicable to child performers, which is the most frequent logic of legal adaptation in this area.

The European regulation provides specific protection for minors' data and a right to erasure whose implementation remains difficult for content copied and circulated beyond its source.

The regulation also sets at sixteen the age from which a minor may consent alone to the processing of their data by an online service, leaving States free to lower it to as little as thirteen; France opted for fifteen.

Data protection authorities regularly recall that a parent's consent does not extinguish the rights of the child, once an adult, over content concerning them.

A text regulating the exercise of a right only has effect if someone acts on it. In most of the situations targeted, both parents agree, so there is nobody to bring the matter before a judge. The case targeted first and foremost is that of conflictual separations, where one parent contests a publication decided by the other.

Its defenders reply that the law has a norm-setting and informational function, an argument identical to that made for other recent family law texts, and calling for the same caution about measuring its effect.