I’m an aspiring photographer , and I love taking photos of moments of life on streets. Since I take my camera wherever I go, it was important to me to know the legal requirements of taking and publishing of such photos. I recently came across this nice table on Wikimedia, which categorizes countries on if a consent is required to take photos of identifiable people, and to publish them, and to use them commercially.
In a number of countries consent is needed for just taking a photograph of one or more identifiable people, not to mention publishing it and/or using it commercially, even if the person is in a public place.
However, there are many exceptions (orange cells) in the table, which indicates these rules are very complicated and it’s not practical in many cases.
This list is incomplete: Just because a country isn’t listed here, it does not reflect a fact that everyone is free to take/publish/commercially use pictures of people in public spaces in that country.