It's not "recognizable" right?

I would say you absolutely do. Just think for a moment about all those important features that are visible and eminently recognizable - eyes, hairline, eyebrows, ears, not to mention other parts of the body.

Debates about this sort of thing happened many times - someone whose image was taken from behind but with lots of detail, for example - and the answer was almost always that if the person was the primary subject of the image, you need a model release.

If the person is in the distance, out of focus, not the main subject of the image and masked, then you're probably fine. But I doubt that's what you were asking about

I would say yes, a release is absolutely needed.
Of course that person is still "recognizable" with a face mask. If your husband, wife, child, best friend, mother, etc. puts on a facemask, do you suddenly not recognize them anymore?  Or would a person wearing a face mask not recognize themselves anymore on a photo? Because that is the main concern. If a person can recognize himself or herself on a photo that has been used commercially without their consent, they have the right to sue.

If it's not the main subject, some companies might ignore if you have it or not (except Getty, they are very sensitive of any human being on images). However, if you don't have a release form, it will always be a slippery field for you

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 10, 2023, 20:14

I would say you absolutely do. Just think for a moment about all those important features that are visible and eminently recognizable - eyes, hairline, eyebrows, ears, not to mention other parts of the body.

Jo Ann, just because my hairline *is* recognizable doesn�t mean I want it to be.

So something like this, you mean??

Yeah, right.... Because who doesn't remember the daily dramatic scenes at supermarkets, where people didn't recognize each other anymore because of face masks?
 Husbands searching for their wifes, wifes for their husband, asking each random person whether they are their partner, children crying out in desperation, because they don't recognize their parents anymore. Yep, happened all the time. 
Put on a facemask, and you are a totally different and not recognizeable person. Almost as good a disguise as Clark Kent's glasses.

Never wore one. And yeah - there were people I actually didn't recognize, some of whom I had known for years. In fact, I even had some people come up to me (hadn't seen for a couple years) and I had no clue who they were until they took the slavemuzzle off. (Aside from the fact you couldn't understand most people's muffled conversations, sounded like charlie brown's teacher from the cartoon).

One of the purposes of the slavemuzzles was to be dehumanizing. And sadly, some did start to act like 'animals', yelling/screaming/getting nasty because they felt they were 'in disguise', many became extremely irate because they were suffocating themselves/couldn't breathe/etc.

So I would say no - because the face is one of the major defining/distinguishing features between people. If you had a photo/video of just people's bodies (i.e., everything excluding the head), no model release would be required by pretty much all the agencies, because there was no 'distinguishing' feature. The slave muzzles basically accomplished the same thing, removed distinguishing features.