What’s the best way to store consent forms for your visual content?
Consent forms for photo and video material are essential for demonstrating that you have permission to capture images of individuals and use those images. They form a crucial foundation under the GDPR and protect both your organization and the data subjects.
Where things go wrong today with photo and video consent and GDPR compliance
In the organizations we work with, we often see the same challenges recurring regarding photo and video consent:
- Fragmented storage of evidence: In practice, however, things often go wrong with storage. Consent forms are stored separately in OneDrive folders, file servers, SharePoint, and emails, while the corresponding images are stored elsewhere. No one is sure which form belongs to which photo.
- Missing and scattered consent forms create legal uncertainty: Can this photo or video be used? Is the consent still valid? For which channels was consent given?
- No audit or evidence management structure: During an audit or complaint, staff often have to work manually. They must search for consent forms, link them to images, and reconstruct the evidence. This is a time-consuming and error-prone process for which you’d prefer to be well-prepared during an audit.
A good permission management system ensures that this process becomes simpler and more secure, both for your organization’s internal operations and in the event of audits and legal disputes.
From Separate Documents to Linked Image Management
The biggest improvement lies in how you store & manage permissions. Instead of keeping forms separately, they are ideally linked to the corresponding photo or video itself.
This means:
- Every image has its corresponding permission.
- You can immediately see whether an image may be used and for what purposes.
- You avoid errors when publishing or reusing content
- You can more easily demonstrate that you are GDPR compliant
- You work more efficiently without manual searches
- You reduce risk when publishing content
How this works in MediaHaven
On our platform, consent forms are no longer stored separately but are directly linked to the media files themselves. You can easily link consent forms to your object or collections via the “Relationships” tab on the detail page.
Each photo or video gets its own file where you can see at a glance:
- Which permissions are linked
- What the image may be used for
- When and by whom permission was granted
This eliminates the need to search through separate folders or documents, and you always work from a single source of truth: more control, less risk, and greater efficiency!
