The right to ones image relative to ownership of ones body.

[Zelig]

Not the case. We routinely distinguish in law between possession for private use and dissemination.

Sure, in law, but not in photography in the real world.

There are lots of places where you go that have "no cameras" signs, I've never been anywhere with "cameras encouraged, distribution of images prohibited" signs.

Laws that can't be effectively and fairly be enforced shouldn't be on the books, they breed a lack of respect for laws in general.

No, it isn't. Establishing a difference between those two actions enables the press to take pictures at events with a large number of attendees and then only ask those for permission whom they want to depict.

Which if enforced would have exactly the same effect as simply banning cameras.

Spoiler :

I can take a photo of you. And Leoreth, Borachio, Zelig and i can meet for tea and our weekly round of bridge and i can show that photo to them, heck they may even copy it for the purpose of private archiving in one them things called photo albums.
That doesn't exactly make that photo "published".

What makes a photo "published"?

None of this so far entails a justification for photographing (and publishing) Borachio without cause when he leaves the house in the morning.

I'm taking a photograph of my car in my driveway, Borachio is spending the entire morning mowing his lawn in the background.

 

[metatron]

What makes a photo "published"?

Erm... I don't know. Just as a wild guess:
If you've made the photo available to a wide circle of people it's published.
If you have completely and absolutely lost track of whom you've made it available to, that's a pretty strong indicator, i suppose.

I'm taking a photograph of my car in my driveway, Borachio is spending the entire morning mowing his lawn in the background.

Not a problem.
Show it to your friends and family in a slide show at your silver anniversary. Not a problem either.

If you sell it to a newspaper and they want to print it that's a different matter.
If you make it publicly available on say your web page (about you, your house and your car or whatever) there can be all sorts of leniency. No harm, no foul. But if Borachio calls and is all like "What the heck!", i suppose you'd have to go through the immense trouble of a) editing him out of the photo or b) photographing your car again.

 

[BvBPL]

It's not really simple enough for broad-brush rules - you need quite a nuanced system, and a strong right of appeal if it goes wrong.

This is why it shouldn't be classified as a right. The right is too broad and there would be too many necessary exceptions.

Look at the exceptions people have suggested already:

• Public event exception
• Public interest exception
• Public person exception
• Exception where the face is not shown
• Exception when the distribution is to a limited number of people (Metatron said four people would be okay, but what about fourteen? Forty? Four hundred specific people?)
• Exception for non-commercial use
• "Soft" internet exception
• A "cause" exception

The necessity of all those exceptions should indicate that a general rule would be unworkable.

See above: You are free to apply common sense and qualify as you see fit.

One man's common sense is another man's insanity. If this were to be an enforceable right, there would need to be some sort of extrinsic standard for when it would and would not be acceptable to take a photograph of someone else.

Common sense does, however, dictate that any right should be enforceable against other people. Because there would be so many exceptions to this right it would be difficult to enforce.

None of this so far entails a justification for photographing (and publishing) Borachio without cause when he leaves the house in the morning.

That Kristin Bell is upset that someone is taking photos of her children's isn't a justification for not being allowed to take photos of Borachio.

 

[metatron]

Yeah, you're, like, counting everything twice.

 

[Formaldehyde]

First off, what Borachio said.

If you are a celebrity by willful act, the last thing you should complain about is lack of privacy for you and your family. That is the price you are supposed to willingly pay for your massive excess of 15 minutes of fame.

 

[Flying Pig]

This is why it shouldn't be classified as a right. The right is too broad and there would be too many necessary exceptions.

Look at the exceptions people have suggested already:

• Public event exception
• Public interest exception
• Public person exception
• Exception where the face is not shown
• Exception when the distribution is to a limited number of people (Metatron said four people would be okay, but what about fourteen? Forty? Four hundred specific people?)
• Exception for non-commercial use
• "Soft" internet exception
• A "cause" exception

I'm not convinced, I think a rule to the effect of 'any publication of another person's recognisable image in a public context without their consent can be challenged in court and, if a jury rules against it, punitive fines can be imposed' would be fine. Case law or perhaps guidelines would cover the exceptions. Whether it's phrased as a 'right to control your image' or not is rather immaterial to be honest. We already admit several exceptions to our rights, free speech being a good example of this. You can speak freely unless it risks causing damage, or incites hatred, or incites crime, or there's a war on, or you're a soldier or a policeman, or you're in a library, or it defames somebody, or it's obscene, or it's too loud, and so on and so forth.

 

[metatron]

First off, what Borachio said.

If you are a celebrity by willful act, the last thing you should complain about is lack of privacy for you and your family. That is the price you are supposed to willingly pay for your massive excess of 15 minutes of fame.

Used derivatives of "will" twice.
I can see your case for a spouse. They can debate with their partner, protest, or ultimately leave if they don't want to lead a public life.
But where did the children's will enter into it?

 

[Zelig]

Erm... I don't know. Just as a wild guess:
If you've made the photo available to a wide circle of people it's published.
If you have completely and absolutely lost track of whom you've made it available to, that's a pretty strong indicator, i suppose.

I can completely and accurately keep track of millions of people.

Not a problem.
Show it to your friends and family in a slide show at your silver anniversary. Not a problem either.

If you sell it to a newspaper and they want to print it that's a different matter.
If you make it publicly available on say your web page (about you, your house and your car or whatever) there can be all sorts of leniency. No harm, no foul. But if Borachio calls and is all like "What the heck!", i suppose you'd have to go through the immense trouble of a) editing him out of the photo or b) photographing your car again.

I'll just point to BvBPL's post explaining why this is completely unworkable.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Used derivatives of "will" twice.
I can see your case for a spouse. They can debate with their partner, protest, or ultimately leave if they don't want to lead a public life.
But where did the children's will enter into it?

I'll use it again.

Then you should blame the parent for willfully exposing the children to that lifestyle. It is really no different than pushy parents who turn their children into celebrities.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think a decent benchmark for a fair society would be that you only have to suffer the consequences of your own decisions, would that not be the case?

 

[El_Machinae]

My rule of thumb, the way I'd like to see the future go, is that 'if you can see it, you can photograph it'. Photography is just the great equalizer when it comes to remembering what you've seen. I'm constantly photographing everything with my mind, already. And, depending on my verbal talent or my drawing talent, I can tell you what I've seen. Photography just makes me better at both sides of the equation.

 

[BvBPL]

This is about whether you can embrace the fundamental principle.

The fundamental principle isn't particularly offensive.

However, the application of that principle is fraught with sticking points. Agreeing in principle is meaningless if you can't agree on the application of the rule. Consequently, whether or not one adopts the fundamental principle is not the sole question.

 

[Flying Pig]

My rule of thumb, the way I'd like to see the future go, is that 'if you can see it, you can photograph it'. Photography is just the great equalizer when it comes to remembering what you've seen. I'm constantly photographing everything with my mind, already. And, depending on my verbal talent or my drawing talent, I can tell you what I've seen. Photography just makes me better at both sides of the equation.

Well, it wouldn't be legally acceptable for you to publish in a newspaper that I'd attended a protest unless there was some public interest in that knowledge, and I don't think - though I'm not sure of the legal element here - that it would be legal for you to stand on the street corner telling everybody about it.

 

[BvBPL]

Well, it wouldn't be legally acceptable for you to publish in a newspaper that I'd attended a protest unless there was some public interest in that knowledge, and I don't think - though I'm not sure of the legal element here - that it would be legal for you to stand on the street corner telling everybody about it.

How is that not legally acceptable? Presuming you did attend then it is a true story. Nothing wrong with reporting the truth.

 

[Flying Pig]

There is if there's no public interest, because people have a right to privacy. Otherwise, a newspaper could perfectly legally publish a child's name, where they go to school, what time they walk home, where they live, and the fact that they go home alone on Wednesdays. Hence the need for public interest - it's one thing to publish that David Beckham lives in a particular place, and quite another to say that Flying Pig does. Most people have things that they want to hide simply because they are private. It may be true that I once did something embarrassing, for example, or that I do something private in a particular way, but that doesn't mean that I want it published. Many people would be horrified to find the local paper listing the title of every bit of printed matter in their house, for example - they might not want the world to know that they read Playboy or Atlas Shrugged.

 

[El_Machinae]

The way I figure, if you want to hide something, then the onus is on you to hide it. Why diminish my freedom? The exception with children is a good one, because they cannot be reasonably expected to be able to guard their own privacy.

 

[Flying Pig]

That's certainly not how it works in law, because we recognise that investigative journalists are rather good at finding out what they want to. We already know that the newspapers would be able to publish the contents of our telephone conversations, for example. If a man doesn't want his conversations with his wife to be published, is the onus on him never to use a telephone, never to talk near a window, and to check his room for bugs? Or is there something wrong with tapping his wires, listening at his window, and bugging his house?

 

[Zelig]

My rule of thumb, the way I'd like to see the future go, is that 'if you can see it, you can photograph it'. Photography is just the great equalizer when it comes to remembering what you've seen. I'm constantly photographing everything with my mind, already. And, depending on my verbal talent or my drawing talent, I can tell you what I've seen. Photography just makes me better at both sides of the equation.

Yeah, it's not much of a stretch anyway that in the near future someone's eye could actually be a camera that's beaming everything to the cloud in realtime.

 

[BvBPL]

There is if there's no public interest, because people have a right to privacy.

Relative to the newspaper publishing your name after you attended a protest, there are several public interests that oppose privacy. The first, cited above, is an interest in the dissemination of truthful knowledge. Another is the free speech / press rights of the journalist to provide his story as he sees fits. You may well say that the privacy interest is superior to others, but to say there's no countervailing public interest is inaccurate.

Furthermore, weighing the ethical public interests says little about the legal acceptability of the action. Legal rules may fall on one side or the other of the public interest regardless of how those interests are weighed.

Otherwise, a newspaper could perfectly legally publish a child's name, where they go to school, what time they walk home, where they live, and the fact that they go home alone on Wednesdays. Hence the need for public interest - it's one thing to publish that David Beckham lives in a particular place, and quite another to say that Flying Pig does. Most people have things that they want to hide simply because they are private. It may be true that I once did something embarrassing, for example, or that I do something private in a particular way, but that doesn't mean that I want it published. Many people would be horrified to find the local paper listing the title of every bit of printed matter in their house, for example - they might not want the world to know that they read Playboy or Atlas Shrugged.

I don't think there's an equivalency between a private adult taking place in a public protest and the activities of a child or the activities of an adult in one's house. It is invalid to say that because if we allow the name of a person at a protest to be printed that we must necessarily permit intrusive examination of the commuting patterns of schoolchildren. In the case of schoolchildren, there is less of a valid public interest in the newsworthiness of their commuting patterns than there is in the newsworthiness of an adult at a public protest.

 

[Flying Pig]

If we were talking about a notable adult at a public protest I would agree with you - it's in people's interests to know if the local MP was at a violent demonstration, for example. But I don't think that holds for ordinary people. The idea that there is a 'public interest in the dissemination of truthful information' only holds in contrast with 'untruthful information' - the fact that something is true does not make it in the public interest.