an unusual question

Smithereens

I know this will sound like a strange question, but can someone tell me what the laws are on taking photos of gravestones and placing them on the Internet? In this case the names of the deceased and dates of death are clearly visible?

know of someone who does this regularily (mainly to have a good laugh at the gravestones)

I find this very disturbing and tasteless and would like to put a stop to it, but I tell her to stop she just laughs at me, so if there was some law against it (data protection etc...) it would scare her into stopping.

rymus

I've taken pics in graveyards and of gravestones myself on a few occasions.. I do agree with you that doing it just to have a laugh at the names is dispicable. respect for the dead is a trait all but lost on some people.

I can only think of one thing that may stop her.. give her a good slap across the gob the next time she does it. some day she'll be in one of those graves and people will be laughing at her if shes unlucky enough to have some slackjawed moron find her grave. afaik theres no law or anything against it.. I was in a very large graveyard in Cork recently taking pics late at night and ran into the caretaker several times with nothing said. Your idiotic friend just needs to gain some respect.

Bamboozled

A few things to think about if you need to research it because of not getting an answer here -
Graves are private property that have to be purchased. (deeds. but to erect anything on them you need to get permission from local authority)
Privacy issues for the living - are they the same as the deceased?

I've done a bit of a search and havent found anything related to the question.

Merrion

Anything written on a gravestone is in the public domain (effectively published) so there are no privacy issues with this.

It might be a copyright issue if the mason owns the copyright to the design used.

Not sure I'd condone it, but I'm very sure its not illegal...