Could An Employee Force A Youtube Featuring Them To Be Removed When They Leave?

[Quoi]

When an employee leaves, could they force the company to remove a series of youtube training videos they appeared in to be removed.
I can see they might want to because they wont want to be associated with the company any more but surely the IP must belong to the company or that could be a very big waste of time to reproduce the vids.

[VHG]

Under what "law" can they force them to remove the videos?

I assume they signed a form before the videos were made and their image was used in the videos.

If so I don't think they have a case.

[Mosaic]

I think the answer to this will lie in how much the (former) employee is prepared to do.
From the firm's side, the employee was effectively paid to appear in the video - they were on the payroll when the vid was made.
From the FE's side, they may not have been given to understand that their image would be put online.
So the first base is to establish how and when the form obtained employee consents to use employees in promotional videos and put them online (same applies to still photos).
When I last dealt with these matters on a daily basis, the law stated that organisations could only do so with explicit consent of indviduals, and that the consent had to be re-obtained annually.
Practically nobody followed this ruling.
Getting legal support that understands this issue and is affordable by the FE may be impossible.

[Quoi]

Thanks for your answers - I should have put this bit in from the employee contract....

"Title and copyright
With no exclusions, the company shall be entitled to the intellectual property rights and all other rights to any work produced by the employee during the employment period".

Although this is a part of the employment contract, it might be deemed an unfair clause possibly.
Would the youtube video be classed as 'work produced'?

The problem I see is that it is in the public domain and it could affect the person if he then works for a competitor maybe.

[Mosaic]

From my use of this legislation, irrespective of the clause you cite the firm would need to have a separate internet usage agreement in place and reviewed every year. (2010 when I last worked in this)
In addition they may not keep images on servers for more than 1 year.
This is part and parcel of safeguarding legislation.

[Quoi]

Thanks Mosaic - I will have a further look into this - There is no way the employee would give further permission after they leave so I may as well plan to redo them.
when we do I will make sure there are no employee appearances - too expensive to use professionals.

[Hopkirk]

Can you remove a video from Youtube?

I genuinely don't know.

[Mosaic]

The salient phrase was about the identifiability of individuals.So angles of filming that do not include full face, not using real names out loud, and even blurring individuals faces can all overcome identifiability.
As I recall renewing and obtaining permissions is only an issue where an individual can be clearly identified.

[Mosaic]

Hopkirk, whoever put the vid on YouTube can pull it.

[Hopkirk]

Well in that case why not just pull the videos off youtube, and keep them for inhouse training only?

[Quoi]

Hopkirk - the training videos were produced for customers using software not internal training. They are not full training - just used to demonstrate certain parts of the software - more for marketing purposes.

[Hopkirk]

Ah, I see

[joko]

most people understand that when they agree to being filmed for some purpose they do not own the rights to that footage unless previously agreed.

most have it written into the contracts - so situations such as you mention cannot happen

it is likely that they have no rights to refuse permission at all - as they have already given it.

[joko]

are these just you with a camera phone, filming someone in your office?
or professionally shot films?

that may be a different matter.