Woman faces £9,000 fine if she posts pictures of her son on Facebook

Teenager's mother will also have to remove all previous images of him

Court ruled in favour of teenager and ordered mother to take down photos (Getty)

A mother will have to pay a 10,000 euro (£9,000) fine if she posts pictures of her teenage son on Facebook without his consent, after a court in Rome ruled in his favour.

The 16-year-old raised the issue during divorce proceedings involving the boy's parents.

Under Italian law, the subject of the photo owns the copyright, rather than the person who took the picture, as is the case in the UK.

So as the teenager was featured in the pictures his mother was sharing, the judges ruled that he could lawfully request their removal from the social media site.

As a result, they made an order in December for her to remove photos and videos of the boy or face a fine, La Repubblica newspaper reported.

She will also have to pay her son if she posts new images of him.

Privacy and copywright laws vary from nation to nation.

In France, anyone convicted of publishing and distributing images of another person without their consent can face a fine of 45,000 euros (£40,000) and up to a year in prison.

In 2016, French police urged parents to avoid posting photos of their children on social media. They said the images could infringe on their privacy and security.

In the same year, a woman in Austria sued her parents for post her childhood pictures on Facebook.

The woman, who was 18 at the time, said she had repeatedly asked her parents to remove more than 500 photos of her from the social media site, but they had refused.

“They knew no shame and no limit - and didn’t care whether it was a picture of me sitting on the toilet or lying naked in my cot - every stage was photographed and then made public,” she said.