At the same time he never consented to a nude image of himself being plastered on one of the most popular albums ever made. Even if it is a cash grab I think he's got a point.
Otherwise any adult who felt embarrassment over their appearance in media as a minor could sue and parental consent to do those activities has no meaning.
ADDED: And if your response is that "But he was nude" then your beef is with the law that didn't make this illegal. There are of course borderline cases. See Brooke Shields in "Pretty Baby" for example which caused quite a bit of controversy at the time. (And, indeed, as I wrote elsewhere, I'm pretty sure no major record label would go near this cover with a 100 foot pole today not because it would likely be illegal but because it would be a lightning rod.)
The record company should (only slightly ironically) keep records.
If they exist this case is going nowhere. If they don't - that might get interesting.
It's hard to imagine a situation where a record company ends up with naked pictures of someones kid, the parent gets paid, and the parent is genuinely not ok with the pics appearing on an album cover.
I agree it's more interesting if there's no consent form, but I still would hope the court would side with the record company.
The money was given for some reason. What reason did the parents think?
A written agreement definitely helps to clarify the matter, but is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee a resolution.
A verbal agreement absolutely can be an enforceable contract. The crux is whether there was a meeting of the minds. Of course, without documentation this is hard to prove, so you find people arguing it either direction in legal disputes.
Major record companies have legal departments. They're not going to greenlight an album cover without rights to the images. Anyone who works in publishing knows how strictly this stuff is treated at a major label.
The nudity and the scale.
I don't think anyone expected this album to be a commercial success, much less one of the most iconic rock albums in history.
Naturally, it does not help that we now effectively have no privacy.
Apple have a list of photos they know are CSAM, or rather hashes of them, and the look for those and only those on your device.
They also introduced another thing that scans your kid's incoming and outgoing messages for what look like dodgy photos - that does look at general photo content (rather than compare to a list) which has been the source of a lot of the confusion.
(FWIW I still think the CSAM scanning is an incredibly bad idea and horribly slippery slope to start sliding on.)
In a practical sense, they could have called it anything and since they announced it in the same breath, my mental map keeps it under the same umbrella. It is not on me that Apple communicates poorly.
But lets get past that. The 'dodgy photos' functionality ( because that was indeed what I was referring to vs hash db ) is where it is going to get tricky. I am sure there will be parents, who will absolutely love it. Just as I am sure that there will be ones who think this will not end well.
Technically, that government agencies claim are CSAM and the "hash" is highly vulnerable to preimage attacks: I can take random unrelated photos and make them match other hashes, https://github.com/AsuharietYgvar/AppleNeuralHash2ONNX/issue...
This means people can take child porn images and modify them so they match targeted innocent images, and take innocent images and modify them so they match child porn.
Let’s not pretend that he would be suing Nirvana if that album sold 5000 copies either.
According to the article, there was informal consent but no signed release. I'm was pretty surprised to hear that -- isn't obtaining releases pretty standard for large corporations?
>Elden says his parents never signed a release authorising the use of his image on the album.
Sorry I meant, what would be the legal basis for the suit?
Nirvana should be covered by his parents giving their consent, since they was his legal guardian. If he doesn't think that consent should have been given he needs to go after the people who gave it. But I don't think that case would go very far either.