Photography and French privacy laws

[mummynl]

Hi,
I'm very interested in this subject because of the following.
In the end of 2007 I visited the site of an unknown ruined castle in Normandy. To enter the site I walked past a cattle gate which stood ajar. I walked around for a couple of minutes and took some pictures of the ruins. I did not damage anything.
Back home in Holland I published the pictures together with historical information on my personal, non-commercial, informative website about castles. On the page about this castle I mentioned that the castle seemed to have no use and that I saw a temporary building at the site which seemed to be used as a holiday house. I clearly stated that the castle was private property and that it could not be visited.

A couple of days ago I recieved an email from the apparent owner of the castle. He said that since my visit holes dug by metal detectors have appeared on the site. He claims that I am jointly responsible for this and future damage, that my visit was illegal and that my website was an incentive to visit the site. He furthermore demanded that I remove the entire page, text and pictures, from my website.

I replied that I would remove the mention about the holiday house and would stress even more the private ownership and the site being off limits but that I would not remove text nor pictures. Also because the same kind of text and pictures can be found on other sites on the internet and the castle is even shown on a Michelin road map.

My questions are:
Does he have a chance in a French court to demand the removal of the page? Or to demand a financial compensation?
And am I liable to prosecution for any damage done to his property?

Oh, and I didn't use a tripod
Hope you can help, greetings,

Marko

[Bill_1856]

Anyone who thinks that Carties-Bresson couldn't work under present laws never saw him in action. Those perfectly composed images were made so quickly that most of the time the subjects had no idea that he was even using a camera.

[ic-racer]

(Note: actually, I don't normally lurk here, but as a friend suggested I might be able to make a modest contribution, I joined specially. Hope this helps.)

Cheers,

Roger

Hope you stay around. I gravitate toward books, articles, etc. with your name on them.