Copyright – Creative Administration

Written Consent Can Replace Release Forms for the Webministry

TL;DR: SCA web ministers and social media officers can now get consent to publish photos and creative works via informal text messages or emails, instead of requiring signatures on the old-fashioned release forms.

At the start of the year I was intrigued to hear from the Society Social Media Officer that signed release forms were not required by their office as long as there was another form of written consent.

The important thing is to have explicit permission for usage. […] Some groups […] have simply contacted the creator in writing and gained their agreement.
— Society Social Media Officer, 1 January 2025

This means that, for example, if someone posts a photo from a local event, and a local social media officer wants to re-post it to their branch’s social feeds, they do not need to get the photographer to print out and physically sign a “Photographer Grant of Use” form — they can just informally chat or email the photographer and ask “can I share this photo” and get their consent that way.

This policy also applies to folks who preemptively grant permission to share before being asked, either by writing something like “feel free to share this photo” or by using a hashtag that expresses this consent, such as #RegramMySCA.

(This might seem like a minor change, but having served as a local officer and having talked to a lot of others in the same position, I can tell you that the prospect of dealing with the release forms is routinely cited as the primary obstacle to publishing photographs.)

I’m pleased to report that the Society Web Minister has now indicated that this same standard is also sufficient for the webministry.

If the standard was relaxed for Social Media, then I agree it should be no different for the Webministry as the two offices should work in conjunction with one another.
— Society Web Minister, 17 March 2025

This policy interpretation was issued via email, but I believe it applies to the webministry as a whole and can be put into immediate effect in all kingdoms, unless you have a local policy which is more restrictive.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s now a free-for-all in which officers can post any random material we find online — we do need to actually reach out to the creator, in writing, and wait for them to give permission — but I hope that the decreased formality and simpler process here will result an increase in photographs and creative material published to our Society’s websites in the coming year.

[Update, April 12:] This policy interpretation was presented to the SCA’s Board of Directors and upheld during today’s quarterly meeting. The written minutes and video recording should become available over the next month or two.

[Update, April 23:] The discussion of this policy interpretation is at 3:32–3:36 in the recording of the April meeting.

The Webministry Should Relax Release Form Requirements

At the start of the year I learned that the Society Social Media Office was operating under a relaxed standard for permission to share photographs: rather than requiring a signature on an official release form, their office merely requires written consent from the photographer.

This might seem like a minor issue, but I have spoken to multiple webministers who simply do not publish photographs on a regular basis because the perceived hassle factor of handling release forms and persuading people to fill them out is too onerous.

Therefore I have written to the Society Web Minister, asking them for permission to operate under the same standard as is in use for social media. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’ll keep following up in hopes of eventually making some progress.

[Update, March 18:] I’m pleased to have heard back from the Society Web Minister with good news — I’ll publish a separate update about that.

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Web Minister Cc: SCA Publications Manager, Society Social Media Officer Date: 2 January 2025

Hello,

I recently learned that the Social Media office operates under a more-lenient standard than the Web Ministry regarding release forms — in short, they allow material to be published as long as there is explicit written consent, which could be a release form or some other explicit written form of consent.

As many of us have learned, it is much easier to get ask for permission in a Discord or Facebook chat — “can we use this photo for our group’s website?” “sure!” — than it is to get folks to fill out an official release form… and unfortunately, the current rules around release forms mean that some webministers simply avoid posting photos to their sites altogether.

Therefore I am writing to ask you whether those of us working as local branch web ministers may have your permission to operate under the same standard as the social media office, so that we can publish art and photos as long as we have some type of explicit written permission, even if it isn’t always a standard release form.

That will greatly simplify things and allow us to use the same photos for both our website and our social media in a coherent and seamless way.

Thank you for your consideration.

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Web Minister Cc: SCA Publications Manager, Society Social Media Officer Date: 3 March 2025

Hello again!

I’m checking in because a full two months have passed since I sent the below email and I haven’t heard back from anyone.

May those of us working on the local level of the webministry have permission to operate on the same standard as the Social Media office uses for obtaining consent to share and publish the photos and content created by our membership?

Thank you for any guidance you can offer.

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Web Minister Cc: SCA Publications Manager, Society Social Media Officer, Board Ombudsman for IT Date: 16 March 2025

Hello,

Another two weeks have passed and I have yet to receive even a one-sentence acknowledgement of the email I sent back at the start of January.

Perhaps there is some good legal or policy reason why the webministry is holding itself to a higher standard than other offices when it comes to release forms — at the cost of having fewer photographs on our websites.

But if this is an unforced error that we simply haven’t gotten around to addressing yet, I would encourage you to put this on the agenda for discussion and possible remediation.

Or if you’ve decided to simply ignore the issue, I would at least appreciate the courtesy of a reply telling me that, so I can stop wondering whether my email is all winding up in a junk filter.

Thank you,

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

From: Society Web Minister To: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin Cc: SCA Publications Manager, Society Social Media Officer, Board Ombudsman for IT Date: 17 March 2025

My apologies for the delay Mathghamhain.

I completely misunderstood your email […]

If the standard was relaxed for Social Media, then I agree it should be no different for the Webministry as the two offices should work in conjunction with one another.

Please understand I had not been purposefully ignoring you.

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Web Minister Cc: SCA Publications Manager, Society Social Media Officer, Board Ombudsman for IT Date: 18 March 2025

Thank you so much for this policy interpretation — I look forward to sharing it with the other folks in the webministry and hope to see an increase in photographs published to our Society’s websites in the coming year.

I completely understand [the delay], and I apologize for the somewhat frenetic tone of my last email — I know that you will be stepping down from this office in the coming months and was afraid that we’d lose the momentum we had built up in the course of the handoff to your successor.

Again, I really appreciate both this policy clarification and the other work you’ve done as Society Web Minister over these last few years.

It’s been a pleasure working with you,

— Mathghamhain

It’s Time to Revisit the Release Form Policies

Back in 2020–21, when I first got involved in trying to clarify the SCA’s release forms policies, my goal was for there to be an up-to-date reference that webministers, chroniclers, and social media officers could all share, which would incorporate the original policy written in 2009, and the various FAQs written in 2010, the policy interpretations that various Society officers had issued since then, into a single document.

In 2021–22 I put together a draft of that handbook — by and large a restatement of existing policy, with no significant changes — and handed it off to Society officers who then made some additional changes and published the result in early 2023. .

In the following months, as the new handbook was circulated, I talked to people serving in a bunch of different roles across the SCA to get their reactions, and wrote up a series of suggestions on how to improve the handbook based on that feedback:

Clarify that individual members of the populace do not need to fill out release forms when publishing their own material to social media or to other platforms like wikis. (March 2023)
Clarify that local officers can grant permission to redistribute material published by their office. (March 2023)
Correct typographic errors and confusing elements in the official release forms. (May 2023)
Clarify where content previously posted online by members of the populace can be re-shared by an officer without requiring a release form. (June 2024)
A revised Technology Contributor Agreement that addresses some concerns that volunteers developing software for the SCA. (November 2023)

However, the response from the Society Publications Manager — the officer that owns the Release Forms Handbook — has been to ignore me. The Society’s org chart shows that the Publications Manager supervises the Society Chronicler and the editors of the various Society-level publications, but they aren’t responsible for web publishing or social media, so the concerns of those offices are (understandably) less salient for them.

In 2024, I tried to find examples of people for whom the existing release forms were working well — who were able to publish a large number of photos, art, and text written by the membership each month, without experiencing a lot of friction around release forms — but I wasn’t able to find anyone for whom this was true… and when I wrote to various Society officers asking if they knew of any such success stories, they weren’t able to identify any either.

The Society Social Media Officer is able to publish a large amount of user-generated content without experiencing issues with the release forms… because they’ve decided that they don’t have to use the release forms. However, as far as I can tell, they never informed local social media officers of this policy interpretation, and dealing with release forms continues to be cited as a barrier by officers as a barrier to getting fresh material onto local websites and social media.

I think it’s time to have a round of discussion about updating the release forms policy to better serve the organization, but doing so is an uphill battle.

The release forms policy was written fifteen years ago by a cautious lawyer without a lot of Internet experience. The 2022 Release Forms Handbook restated that policy but did not update it to reflect the modern media landscape. The people who the current policy inconveniences have no power to change it, and the people who have power to change it aren’t themselves constrained by it.

Having a restrictive policy limits the organization’s legal liability, and if turns out that adhering to the policy causes so much friction that officers routinely ignore the policy, well… the Society’s leadership can just ignore that and hope that nothing ever goes wrong.

Written Consent Can Replace Release Forms for Social Media

Even with the addition of an email-only option for release forms two years ago, local officers that publish information for their SCA branches (including social media officers, web ministers, chroniclers, and others) have continued to describe the use of release forms as a burden to doing their work.

Given that context, I was excited to hear from the Society Social Media Officer that other forms of written consent can substitute for release forms.

They listed three distinct forms this consent could take:

a release form,
a written statement of permission, or
a hashtag that indicate permission, such as #sharemysca.

This brings the practices for copyright (photographers and artists) and likeness (models) in line with the existing practices for privacy (personal information), which also can be published after receiving a simpler type of written consent short of a full release form.

I hope that other offices will follow their lead!

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Social Media Officer Date: 21 September 2024

Good evening, Your Excellency,

Some of the social media officers I’ve spoken to here in the East have grumbled about the hassle involved in getting release forms filled out by photographers and people pictured in photos and videos, and then in keeping track of all of the resulting paperwork, and so I’ve been on the lookout for “success stories” of folks in the Society who are handling this challenge well in hopes that others can learn their techniques.

The Society’s official social media feeds on Instagram and Facebook share a dozen or more photographs every month and I’d love to hear how you manage the associated record-keeping.

Do you generally have people sign paper release forms, or sign the PDF forms electronically, or have them agree to the release via email?

Roughly what proportion of the photos you publish are considered “portrait style” and require a model release?

How do you keep track of all of the release forms you’ve collected over the years?

Thank you so much for any information you’re able to share!

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

From: Society Social Media Officer To: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin Date: 1 January 2025

Thanks for your patience.

The important thing is to have explicit permission for usage. Some groups have run education campaigns for use of hashtags that indicate the permission of the creator for use or have simply contacted the creator in writing and gained their agreement and kept this as a record. Examples of the hashtags include #regrammysca #sharemysca #regramcalontir

A full release will always be the ideal option but explicit permission from the creator reduces the risk exponentially.

Brigid

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin To: Society Social Media Officer Date: 2 January 2025

Thanks so much for that explanation!

It is often simple to get explicit permission from the creator, but significantly more challenging to get them to sign a release form — lowering the bar will make it much easier to collect great-looking material for our social media feeds!

Does this looser “explicit permission” standard only apply to the social media office, or does it also govern other offices such as the webministry?

— Mathghamhain

From: Society Social Media Officer To: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin Date: 2 January 2025

I can’t speak for other offices. This is for social media only.

Just remember you need documented explicit permission – so verbal isn’t enough

In Search of Release Form Success Stories

For the last year, I’ve been trying to find examples of offices which had demonstrated success in using the SCA’s release forms to collect consent from people for their likeness or creative works to be used in Society publications.

I was hoping that if we could identify a handful of folks who were doing this effectively, we could document the processes they used and share them with others.

Instead, I’ve found that nearly all offices fall into one of two groups:

Who Has Rights To Heraldic Illustrations Submitted to the College of Arms?

There’s often a bit of confusion about the rights to the pictures people submit to the SCA’s College of Arms when registering their personal devices and badges.

Does the SCA “own” or “have rights to” those heraldic images?

Draft Licensing Agreement for SCA Software Developers

TL;DR: If you write or manage software for the SCA, I’d love to get your feedback on this proposed license agreement intended to document the Society’s ability to continue using and maintaining the software even if you someday become unavailable.

Given the high proportion of technical professionals in the Society’s ranks, it is no surprise that the SCA has a long history of informal software development: folks developing small custom applications to facilitate some part of their office’s or local group’s operations. However, this process has by-and-large been uncoordinated, and policy for it has been slow to coalesce.

One recurrent issue in this area has been the lack of clear licensing practices. In a few cases, copyright has explicitly been transferred to the Society, but in the majority of cases the issue has not been considered, leaving the copyright in the hands of the original developer. In most cases, there is no written license agreement, which is usually fine while the original developer remains involved in local activities, but can become problematic if they move away or drop out of Society activities, as nobody knows for sure if the group has the right to to continue using the software, to make changes to it, or to share it with other branches of the SCA.

Update: SCA Disclaims Copyright to Heraldic Officers’ Work

Earlier this year I learned that the SCA has long relied on an unwritten interpretation of copyright law that does not seem to be well supported.

I’ve encouraged Society leadership to reconsider this approach, motivated in part by the fact that this would have implications for my work on the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art, but it’s been difficult to make much headway and now a month has passed since my last email without any reply.

While I am not a lawyer, I am profoundly skeptical that the Society’s interpretation holds any water, and so I have decided to move forwards without giving it any credence, as laid out in the letter below.

[Update:] I’m very happy to report that the Society Seneschal has responded, stating that they are not claiming copyright to the armorial depictions produced by heraldic and scribal officers.

It remains unclear to me on what grounds they claim copyright for some creative works created by volunteers but renounce it for others — however, as a first step in the right direction, I am pleased by this declaration.

Release Form Improvements

When the new Release Forms Handbook was published earlier this year, it included updated versions of the release forms themselves.

Although I had a chance to provide feedback on the contents of the handbook, the new forms unfortunately weren’t shared with me prior to publication, so I wasn’t able to proofread them or provide suggestions for their appearance.