These days, Guiyang girl Xiaowei suicide continued to ferment online.

The cause of the incident was that Xiaowei, a depressed patient, went to the studio to take art photos in order to adjust her mood. Unexpectedly, the original price of two thousand yuan photography package soared to nearly twenty thousand yuan because of the photo studio’s tricks! Xiaowei had negotiated with the photo studio but failed all the times for which she was finally forced to commit suicide. The comment area was full of indignation and the netizens had a heated discussion about the ‘studio tricks’ and ‘forced suicide’. Let me join in the discussion.    

One, who own the digital nagative file?

As same as Xiaowei, many netizens also said that they had been tricked by the photo studio, the most common way is that the digital nagative files needs to be purchased at different prices of 30-80 yuan per digital nagative file for which many people have spent several times more on them, it is just like dumb eat huanglian but can not say his pain. Is the photo studio’s behavior legal?

Small tips~ the photography service contract is a kind of contract of hired workthat the photo studio provide photography services, deliver photos and corresponding digital nagative filesin accordance with the requirements of customers and the customer pay remuneration. (The contract of hired workis a contract whereby the contractor completes the work, delivers the work results and the ordering party pays the remuneration in accordance with the requirements of the ordering party.)

In order to make clear the attribution of digital nagative files, we need to discuss the classification.

The first are the digital nagative files of the photos in the package service, one of the obligations of the contract for which the studio should hand over the photos (including the digital nagative files) to the customers in a timely and complete manner. If the studio refuses to do so, the customers have the right to file a lawsuit named contract of hired workdispute to require the studio to fulfill the contractual obligations. If the digital nagative files are damaged, lost and hard to be delivered, the consumer can not only sue for breach of contract of the photo studio in accordance with the contract law but also sue for compensation ten times the price of the damaged or lost digital nagative files in accordance with the measures of Guangdong Province for the implementation of the law of the people's Republic of China on the protection of consumers' rights and interests. Note that you can only choose one of these two ways~    

The second are the digital nagative files of the photos outside the package service. Usually the photo studio will take more photos than the agreed number of photos for giving the consumers more choices, The ownership of these redundant photos and digital nagative files needs to be agreed upon by the contract or both parties. The ownership of these redundant photos’ digital nagative files is decided  by the contract or both parties. Note that such agreements will usually exempt or limit the liability of the photo studio so that according to the Contract Law, studio as a party provide format terms, need to take reasonable way to remind consumers in the contract or those clause are invalid! That is to say, if you have signed a photography service contract which has indicated that the rest of the digital nagative files are owned by the studio in a standout way, then sorry, as a result, consumers request for free reproduction only because of their rights of portrait is lack of fairness and rationality for the studio so that the law will not support it.      

Two, Xiaowei was forced to commit suicide, does the studio commit a crime?

Xiaowei had a minute voice call record with the staff one day before her death, also Xiaowei once said in the previous chat record, ‘do you want to force me? Do you want to trick the depressed patient? I've already bought sleeping pills’, these above inevitably make people think that Xiaowei' suicide is closely related to the photo studio. The question is, if Xiaowei really committed suicide due to the verbal stimulation of the studio, will the studio bear criminal responsibility for Xiaowei' s death?

Although Xiaowei had suicidal thoughts, but no suicide behavior, she was tricked by the studio and produced or enhanced the idea of suicide and then implement suicide behavior which there is no doubt that there is a causal relationship between Xiaowei' s death and the studio's behavior. However, according to the general theory of our country, the harmful acts that have causal relationship with the harmful results are not necessarily crimes. The existence of their criminal responsibility should depend on whether they meet the elements of criminal constitution.  

Here’ s a case.

One day in 2007, Liu climbed to the top beam of the 6th floor in the rain because of quarreling with her husband Fang, Fang repeatedly stimulated his wife with the words ‘jump, you can jump down’, later Liu really jump down and Fang called the police at once but Liu died because of ineffective rescue. The Ningbo intermediate people's Court of second instance held that Fang constituted the crime of causing death by negligence and sentenced him to one year's imprisonment.

In the above case, Liu enhanced the idea of suicide and committed suicide under the stimulation of her husband's words, which Liu' s death also has a causal relationship with Fang's stimulus words. In addition,  Fang's antecedent act of quarreling with Liu and make her climb up the beam which had put her in a highly dangerous state, so he had the duty of taking care her. But in this case, Fang already knew that she was in a highly dangerous state and he should foresee there might be harmful results but he credulously thought it could be avoided and stimulated Liu by words, resulting in the victim's suicide by jumping off the building, which his act has met the structure of the crime of negligent death and he should bear criminal responsibility.

Back to Xiaowei, according to the general life society experience, the contract dispute between Xiaowei and the studio will not necessarily lead to the occurrence of suicide, so the studio does not have the specific duty of care for Xiaowei in the criminal law. At the same time, from the existing information on the Internet, the behavior of the studio temporarily does not meet the criminal constitution of the crime. Therefore, to take professor Mingkai Zhang 's point of view, ‘if a wrong act or a slight illegal act causes another person to commit suicide, a crime will not be established’, the studio will not bear criminal responsibility for Xiaowei' s death. Of course, if the investigation finds that there are other behaviors of studio that meet the constitutive requirements of the crime, than it will be another pair of shoes.

This case have been over discussed~ Although the photo studio does not need to bear criminal responsibility as discussed above, its civil, administrative and moral responsibilities of routine consumption and forced consumption cannot be exempted. Life only have once and every life deserves to be treated well.