Something Disintegrates at a Burger King
tweetagewasteland.com
tweetagewasteland.com
The two most prevalent are:
"The fight was in public, the world has changed, I have no sympathy"
"I would never live-tweet such a subject, that's an evil invasion of privacy"
We're connected to everyone else in a different way today than we were 5 years ago (and 5 years ago I would have said 10 years ago). I could see myself over-sharing this sort of thing because it's unusual and because I have a twitter account and a device that sits in my hand and I don't know that my brain would have thought of much more than "this is unusual" (it helps that I have no twitter followers). I've also been in relationships where something like this could happen and wouldn't want someone to broadcast it.
I think the future is going to be a hard lesson in "give everyone the benefit of the doubt".
It'd be like a crowd-sourced Jerry Springer show!
Arguing in public is voluntary sharing.
> with a decreasing respect for boundaries, has changed the equation. You no longer get to decide when to share.
The couple decided to share, in fact the people they subjected to their "sharing" are the ones who lost ability to decide. The public arguing couple was the one without respect for boundaries. Don't project your personal life onto others in a restaurant. It's fucking rude and selfish.
> a nude picture was stolen
Not even semi-related. Author's dishonest attempt at trying to compare/equate a violation of privacy with couples public outbursts is highly disingenuous. It is clearly not worth my time to read any more of author's spurious drivel.
1. You can move away from a small town to escape the embarrassment.
2. The people of the town know you, and therefore have some sort of prior connection with you. Here we are getting the raw details of people who we've never met, thereby forming first opinions of these people before we ever meet them (should that ever happen).
You're right that it's not exactly the same scenario, but I'd argue that this new thing is still not as bad as before. Being embarrassed to people who know you is much worse than being embarrassed to people who don't.
"He was really hearing the crumbling of his own ethics and self-restraint." - Really?
Boyle traversed to needless gossip when he probably would have been better served to mind his own business, which is particularly annoying from him because he works with journalists as a "newsroom web developer" and presumably could be considered a journalist himself. He works at the Globe, and removed this fact from his twitter profile as people started questioning the ethics of the ordeal. I assume he was distancing his personal twitter from his professional life, but journalists don't normally get that kind of work/life balance from their employers.
I think the point of the Bourdain reference is that Bourdain's in the public eye as a celebrity, while this couple was not. One type of gossip is almost acceptable while the other type is decidedly not acceptable.
And the more rural the area, the more likely it would have been for someone to walk up and tell them they needed to take their BS elsewhere.
I read the word "disintegrates" too literally, thinking it was some kind of explosion.
In Boston or New York or D.C., where the density is so much greater, to the point where you're literally touching several strangers on the subway, it takes much more to illicit a response. I'm not arguing for one of the other. It's just what I've observed.
I think it comes down to density. Imagine riding an elevator with 2 or 3 strangers. Sometimes they'll chat. Imagine riding an elevator with 15 strangers. Most likely it'll be a quiet ride. Now imagine riding those elevators every day for years, almost always with strangers. You get desensitized to strangers in the latter more than the former.
The other point with the Midwest is that gossip is actively frowned upon in many subcultures there. It's something you may do with your friends at your house while playing cards, but you'd never, ever, gossip with them in public. The lines are more clearly drawn. It's funny. I've family members who will gossip about their colleagues, miles away in their own homes, but will do so in hushed tones. It's all very Lake Wobegon.
It's not privacy that we are ultimately losing, it's obscurity.
In theory the information you gather is the same, but the ability to do it at scale allows you to collect data on people that you otherwise never would have, thus reducing privacy.
Anthony Bourdain's photo, referenced in the article, was presumably taken by a friend or family member only to be leaked a decade later.
And these days, using readily available tools such as telephoto lenses or unidirectional microphones, strangers can take part in your life from a distance of hundreds of feet. So, do you "define" privacy by making sure there never is a hill in line of sight?
When people start live-tweeting events recorded by their private satellite at some point in the future, do you make sure you can't see the sky so that the sky can't see you?
That's not the kind of privacy I'm looking forward to, and it's certainly not a boon.
EDIT: You are certainly correct that this will force us to define what privacy is -- or, more likely, to dismiss the concept altogether. Either way, it looks like we'll have to embrace this fundamental change, I can see little point in trying to fight against it.
The part I remember most vividly about 1984 was the one scene where the main character had this one, tiny area in his apartment where he could stand where the cameras couldn't see him, and he treasured it.
To think that we're living in such a world now where our own privacy is exactly like this, something that is fleeting and to be treasured, is frightening.
It would be totally different if dude had overheard this coming from open window of home and taken pictures through window. I would expect (no idea if so) that to be a criminal and/or civil invasion of privacy.
Privacy is not inherent/automatic. You have to take steps to establish privacy (move to private space being most common) before your privacy can be violated.
So if all your actions are recorded as soon as you go out of the house, it's annoying and invasive; but if everyone gets the same treatment, it suddenly is not a problem any more, because people will not be interested in you being mean to someone, or is looking sad, or whatever that it is you don't feel like sharing, because it's too common.
Heck, maybe even a lot of illegal things will become legalized or de-facto legalized, like light drugs, prostitution and the like. Systematic generalization like racism, ageism, sexism will be reduced, as people can know you personally quite quickly, instead of relying on our instinctive judgement. Basically, we will have a new understanding on things we previously consider bad/immoral, but somehow a lot of people do it. We as a society will either change our moral judgement, or catch and crucify those we still consider bad (like corruption).
Now, the tricky thing is, it's a slow process like any culture shift. We are all marching toward less privacy, but if you march too fast and got unlucky, you could end up on the news like that couple.
That this fella thought it a good idea to give a blow by blow account merely suggests he is too unscrupulous even for a red top. I don't find it offensive, just immensely disrespectful.
Either that or incredibly sheltered if the witnessing of a relationship on the rocks was so exciting to him.
Now I'm just wondering when people will stop looking at this as some sort of societal commentary and realize it was just one guy having fun on Twitter while bored in a Burger King.
It is very annoying.
Of course you do. In fact, you're doing it in that very sentence. It's called free speech.
You don't get to force them to actually abide by it, though.
But something was off-putting about how faithfully the guy was trying to document this event. It seemed like he was really trying to put these two people's identity on blast, and foiled only by the circumstances (the quality of his phone's camera, the distance between himself and the couple) rather than, you know, any sense of propriety or mercy.
I guess what I'm saying is, the element of identity changes the stakes. Like I said, the notion of two people ending their marriage in a Burger King is so ridiculous that it's funny. But when it becomes John Smith of 123 Main Street, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, having a fight with his wife Jane, it starts to feel weirdly mercenary. Like it's not being done for a laugh anymore, but expressly to humiliate two people.
But, I agree that this is the way things are going whether we all like it or not. Whatever is in public is fair game for social media. But Mr. Boyle should consider exercising his powers of restraint a little better.
My guess is that the tweeting guy, and the rest of the patrons, would have preferred if none of this had happened. They didn't choose to be witness to the conflict. It was the choice of that couple to thrust the situation on the rest of the diners. In that context, I can't see that the twitter guy is guilty of anything other than, maybe, poor taste.
Just because it's possible in a world with ubiquitous technology and social media doesn't make it right.
Whether a new technology causes society to suddenly lose part of their moral compass really depends on how many people passively "agree that this is the way things are going whether we all like it or not" and how many of us can actually still muster the effort to take some control and responsibility to steer towards what we believe is right, because ultimately society and "the way things are going" is made out of people, like you and me.
Also, I don't really believe this is a problem of new technology, it's just worsened by it. If this guy instead of tweeting, would have texted or called his friends to give a live report of some couple's marriage breakup, he'd be the same type of gossiping vulture. It's "just" that Twitter magnified the audience by some orders of magnitude, which makes him a really big and irresponsible gossiping vulture asshole.
Exactly. The logic here is pretty much exactly the logic applied by American law enforcement when using warrantless GPS tracking devices on people's cars. "Well you are in public anyway, we could just send a patrol car after you". Yes, taken to its logical conclusion it makes sense. However, I think most people would disagree. It doesn't feel right, and it is probably a matter of degree.
> If this guy instead of tweeting, would have texted or called his friends to give a live report of some couple's marriage breakup, he'd be the same type of gossiping vulture
What technology here has done is multiplied the power of a single individual. Some individuals, as we found out, are irresponsible and can be quite malicious. It so happens then that their malice is also multiplied.
They have no expectation of privacy. They should have an expectation of global shaming, it's all they deserve.
Does the general sentiment that 'no one likes a gossiper' only apply to private information?
Example:
1. I'm with a friend in public
2. I pick my nose
3. No one notices but my friend
4. My friend then shouts at the top of his
lungs, "Hey everybody! This guy just picked
his nose."
Some people are trying to publicly crucify Boyle (the irony is delicious, by the way) for exposing to ridicule those who deserve nothing else.
You don't need to construe his actions as particularly meritorious in order to not find him ethically deficient.
Ethics, by the way, are what the blog post linked to brought up. Ethics are also not the determinate factor in the conduct of a friendship, so you're doubly off in the woods.
but chose not to
They have no expectation of privacy
Being capable of self-restraint (a trait the author laughably tries to attack Boyle with rather than the childish twits fighting in a restaurant), the answer is emphatically no.
> Which doesn't mean we shouldn't grant it to them. If we would only ever give people what they were legally entitled to, the world would be an awful place.
"Expectation of privacy" isn't just a legal term with specific bounds, it is an exploration of the bounds of privacy that society is prepared to accept. Idiots fighting in public have clearly surrendered their privacy, not just legally, but morally and ethically.
I certainly don't agree with your assessment of 'the bounds of privacy society is prepared to accept'. That's shifting the responsibility for your personal response onto 'society'. You are responsible for your actions, independent of what 'society' feels about it. That something is possible does not give you, you personally, the moral prerogative to act upon it. That's a naturalistic fallacy: taking the state of affairs as it is in the world and labelling it 'right', because it is the case.
This guy should not have tweeted and photographed the fighting couple, even if five other people were doing it simultaneously and even if they enabled it and even if they should have realized it could (would?) happen.
Wow. You have already decided that these people are twits and idiots without even being there. Why? Because someone twitted about them having an argument in public, at some Burger Kind restaurant somewhere.
I disagree with author on one point:
In that Burger King, Andy Boyle thought he was listening to the disintegration of a couple’s marriage. He was really hearing the crumbling of his own ethics and self-restraint.
No, he wasn't. As you have so kindly helped demonstrate, we live in an increasingly hedonistic society, where our ethics is defined by our surplus of entitlement and our lack of self-restraint.
I understand if they were arguing whether to get #1 combo or #2 combo, then probably 10 minutes of your quiet eating comfort is a lot more important. If a marriage is on the verge of collapse, your 10 minutes of quiet comfort @ Burger Kind don't mean much.
You are trying to apply hard rules "yelling in public is always wrong and internet-wide shame and publicity seems to be a decent punishment" to social situations.
What if they just found out their friend was killed in an accident, or the women was pregnant and her water started breaking.
There could be crying, yelling and a lot ruckus probably. It would most definitely prevent you from quietly enjoying your whopper. So the obvious response is to twit _everything_ in hopes of teaching them a lesson?
But would you start twitting everything to 'teach them a lesson'? How about puncturing tires on their car?
So it was inconsiderate for them to shout in public, OK, it doesn't make it right for others to be assholes to try to 'teach them a lesson' or to somehow pimp out the incident for publicity.
Also, if one was to apply some kind of absolute morality to this, shouldn't the disintegration of a marriage be a bigger issue to worry about than having to hear public arguments?
> These two idiots.
Are you sure they are idiots? Have you personally tested their level of intelligence.
Remember you are also in public, if public display of emotions, loud noises, yelling, kids bother you _that_ much, you should stay more and more inside, as you have no choice but to be constantly irritated.
He might also have been hearing the crumbling of his own finances. His surveillance and subsequent reporting may be legally actionable and if I were that couple, I'd be lawyering up about now.
Can a conversation that is forced upon other people (in a different setting I could imagine that guests in that BK complain about the couple shouting) still be considered private?
"One who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. " (emphasis added)
There are very clear laws and precedents that have hit the court room many times that make this situation very clearcut.
Boyle has done nothing illegal - recording anyone in a location where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy (a dining room at a Burger King definitely qualifies) is perfectly legal.
The use of this imagery is slightly more complex, but in this case there isn't really a case to be made. Non-commercial usage of someone's likeness in a broadcast is very well protected - and it can't be said that Boyle was using this couple's argument for commercial profit.
The only place where Boyle could run into trouble is recording on private (aka Burger King's) property. But even then, the laws around that are clear - unless there was clear signage prohibiting recording, or an employee of Burger King instructed him not to record, he's in the clear.
Morally? That's a minefield. But legally speaking I just don't see any case.
I see a world of difference between a fight in a Burger King and a fight broadcast live over the Internet to thousands of people. The 'expectation of privacy' here doesn't seem as clear-cut as you make it out to be. I don't think you have to be in your own living room to have an expectation of privacy.
Society needs to start thinking about what we need to move forward and stop shackling ourselves with ideas that are hopelessly outdated.
I don't disagree. Privacy case law has mostly evolved in the context of large corporate or government entities violating the privacy of individuals, because those entities were the ones with access to surveillance and broadcasting or publishing technologies. Now everyone is a broadcaster, and their editorial discretion (and morals) will vary.
We could argue about whether or not the couple should have had an expectation to privacy till the cows come home. It doesn't change the fact that Boyle is still, legally, in the clear. So "lawyer up" indeed.
Just to clarify, is that a legal opinion? I fully understand it's a legal question. But a civil suit for intentionally disseminating embarrassing information is very different from a Fourth Amendment case. This is a case where someone intentionally broadcast to the Internet a couple's marital issues (otherwise known only to a handful of people in a restaurant) with the apparent intent to ridicule them. You still haven't convinced me Boyle is 'in the clear'.
So no, this is not a professional legal opinion, but it's one based on solid information about the laws of the United States.
If Boyle is to be sued, it won't be over anything related to use of likeness. More likely it will come from a defamation or libel angle - but that's entirely separate to the issue of privacy in public spaces.
I'd I agree with you there: it's not the likeness that's the problem. It's the wide dissemination of embarrassing private information without any apparent legitimate informative purpose. Like an upskirt photo, the fact that many people in the restaurant might have the same view doesn't mean it's OK to tweet the image to the world at large.
Not sure why we need to get involved, legally. This seems like one of those things where we really can just let it regulate itself. I am fairly certain Mr. Boyle is receiving his lesson in respecting boundaries as we speak.
That couple should have the right to sue. I understand that under the current framework they do not, but they should.
If everyone has the right to all recordings of them, even in public, the media would cease to exist overnight, and we'd all be considerably worse off for it.
As a contemporary example, take the famous Big Picture blog: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
This is a rich source of powerful images that tell us about the world and the important things that are happening in it. How many of these people do you think have signed model releases? How many of these people do you think could have realistically signed one? Clearly the mother clutching her daughter in the floodwaters of Thailand has a retained lawyer nearby advising of her rights!
So what would our media become? Well, even more talking heads than today - since you won't be able to realistically record/broadcast any images of what's actually going on. The only people you can realistically, explicitly get permission from are armchair analysts.
We didn't just magically decide "oh yeah, you don't have full rights to your likeness in public" because we hate freedom. This whole issue has been heavily debated (and continues to be). It's foolish to say that we should just toss this whole thing without understanding all the angles.
The real issue here is that with the proliferation of recording and broadcast technology, there is now a lot of recording happening in public done by people without training or education in where to draw the line. Not only that, there are of course no professional associations or industry forces keeping people in check and censuring those who behave unethically. In fact, there isn't a code of conduct, written or unwritten, among the mass population about what is and isn't ok to record/broadcast. In other words, we've given everyone the power of reportage, but none of the sensibilities, responsibilities and obligations that have traditionally accompanied it.
IMO there really isn't a need for legal reform for this. What we as a society need to do is start setting new expectations for social behavior that account for these new technologies and their pervasiveness.
To use your Thai flood example, journalists would be allowed to use that picture of the woman and her child without a model release, but only within the context of a story about the floods in Thailand, or maybe next year in a story about the creation of a disaster relief fund for developing countries. But it doesn't become a stock photo, and he can't then turn around and sell that photo to Geico who uses it to sell flood insurance.
All I'm advocating is that the default position, after fair-use exemptions, be favoring privacy. I think you are taking a much more naïve view of my position.
I simply do not see anything to fix about this. The right to editorial usage is preserved, but if people go around causing material harm, they can, and probably will, get sued.
All without getting draconian about anything...
> "But it doesn't become a stock photo, and he can't then turn around and sell that photo to Geico who uses it to sell flood insurance."
This is already the state of the law. The use rights granted to editorial use are just that - editorial use. In legal precedent this has included not only traditional journalistic sources, but also artistic and benign, non-commercial use.
One thing that has been explicitly determined by previous cases is that commercial usage (stock photography included) is not considered fair editorial usage, and you'd better damn well have a model release if you want to use an image in that context.
tl;dr: Everything works as you yourself seem to expect. So where exactly is the outrage and call to reform coming from?
My expectation is that if someone takes a photo of me, I maintain some level of control over that photo. That is NOT the current situation.
IMO what you're suggesting is a complete overreaching of privacy rights, and would make this society even more litigious and difficult to navigate than it is already.
For example, if you were any of the individuals in the background here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fangfangzhang/3844004957/
under your system, you're allowed to ask me to take down my vacation photos. Because you happened to be in them. Worse, if you want the law to reach far enough to ban what Mr. Boyle has done, you'd be able to sue me for taking a vacation photo and daring to post it for people to see.
And forget creating memories of events:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_cioni/2899941922/
This would be wildly illegal also! Not only do we have strangers identifiably in our pictures, but they are the main subject to boot! The shock! The dismay!
How many people's rights to privacy were violated by this heinous example of blatant disregard for people's rights?!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/away_we_go/5925301750/
I could go on and be even more hyperbolic - but what you're suggesting is that any use of anybody's likeness be banned by default, and edge cases for "legitimate" use be created to skirt around the fact that this would, well, cripple just about any sense of fair use we already have. Of course, "legitimacy" would be incredibly narrowly defined. So we're going to ban all use of people's likenesses... unless it's by tourists. Or journalists. Or for the protection of private property (e.g., CCTV), or...?
IMO this would simply result in a net loss of freedom for everyone involved. To main some semblance of normality, we'd force people working in tourist-heavy areas to sign over blanket photographic rights so the tourists can continue taking snapshots without fear of legal repercussion. As opposed to right now where people still hang onto their own inalienable rights. This would probably become de rigeur for anyone with any significant facing to the public - aid workers, people marching in a parade, etc etc. So in the end instead of simply having rights, we by default just sign everything away in a tome of a contract that's hardly comprehensible to anyone so that life can, well, continue.
It's hard to imagine a worse case of regulatory over-reach.
In actuality, courts will continue to exercise their right to interpret the vagaries of the law on a case-by-case basis and to set precedents for fair use.
> IMO what you're suggesting is a complete overreaching of privacy rights, and would make this society even more litigious and difficult to navigate than it is already.
And I feel we would be better off for it. Maybe we'll just have to leave it at that.
IIRC, in France, you have to be careful of taking photos of buildings, as their images are copyrighted by the architect. That seems, in one way, more justifiable as it is the work of the architect. But in other ways, less justifiable because a building is a longstanding fixture in the landscape that people have to live with being there. Either way, I think America's law works well enough.