Legal Question in Technology Law in California

Re: peer to peer

I think the answer depends upon your motivation, the result, and whether harm results.

If the picture is a copyrighted work of art (or copyrighted anything), you would get a Napster kind of result.

If the picture is a photograph of a living person, or even a now-dead person if that person were a celebrity while alive, there could be invasion of privacy issues, especially if the result were some kind of commercial exploitation.

The fact that you mention the possible necessity of a release strongly suggests that there is a copyright holder and/or an individual with a privacy or commercial-exploitation interest in the picture. Making it available on a peer-to-peer sharing system is not the same as posting it, I agree, but on the other hand I don't think it's sufficiently different to have a qualitatively different legal result -- i.e. the damages may be less because there is less exposure, but the basic principle of liability for impermissible re-publication still hangs over the practice.