Image rights and privacy are subjects that always entertain at conferences and last week's IBA gathering was no different as media lawyers from around the world jousted over the issue. The highlight came when delegates peered at an enlarged photograph of men attending a recent Barcelona Erotic Film Festival who were taking a keen interest in a pole-dancing exhibition. A Spanish lawyer suggested that the men would have a cause of action in his country in privacy and image rights if they had not authorised the photograph's publication. That prompted one renowned London-based English media lawyer to bring some finely tuned legal thinking to the debate. 'Rubbish,' he snorted loudly from the session floor, 'they're just a load of wankers.' A German lawyer then riposted with a strong defence of his 'right to walk into any Prague brothel without being photographed' and then seeing those photographs in the newspapers the next day. Where would the international legal profession be without this conference as a platform for such high-minded discussion?