Sure, it’s legal to film people in public in the US without their consent. But it’s also shitty. Those two things can both be true.
Maybe we might all be better off practicing DBAD: Don’t Be A Dick.
Of all our American flaws, "It's not illegal for me to be a dick and therefore I am going to be on" is perhaps the one we're proudest of. (Followed, perhaps, by "It's illegal for me to be a dick but you can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and that's as good as legal" and "It's illegal for me to be a dick but nobody is going to bother prosecuting therefore it's as good as legal.")
It would be great if we all practiced Don't Be A Dick. But for those who are most harmed by people being dicks, we need to figure out ways to protect them legally, because otherwise people will be a dick to them as hard as they possibly can. And every time you try, people will say "Nobody is being a dick to me therefore nobody needs to be protected."
As a Canadian in the US I'm often asked the difference, and I've mostly held my tongue from saying "You're all pretty damn rude, and have fragile egos" but I think I might steal your description because it makes sense.
I don’t think that it’s always shitty to film people in public without their consent. This is not a black and white issue.
Do you feel that consent should be obtained from everyone who is visible in any video taken outdoors, regardless of whether those people are the intended subject of the video? Do you have a consent problem with surveillance videos? How about videos captured on car dash cameras?
Let’s say you are at a tourist attraction, capturing a video of the attraction. Another visitor asks that you stop filming, because they don’t want to be in your video. Dickish to continue? I’m not so sure.
It’s easy to say “don’t be a dick,” but that statement sidesteps the reality that reasonable people can (and do) disagree about what that means.
It's a spectrum.
When someone is the subject of your video, like the AC/DC person in the article, then YES, you are a shitty person if you post that for the world to see without their permission.
Photo-journalism, particularly of politicians, would be greatly harmed by a permission requirement: is a journalist a shitty person for reporting the truth, even truths that a politician might not like? (And let's say it's something public, like capturing a politician giving a public speech that would appear to be whipping a crowd into a mob, not tabloid/paparazzi type stuff.) Someone photographing or videotaping police brutality?
Intent, I think, is what matters in determining if any one photo/capture is "shitty"; there are instances where you can be a good person while creating photos or videos that might be very detrimental to the subject. Some of the examples from TFA are good examples: creators looking to find people on the street to make a fool of.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candid_photography#As_an_art_f...
[2]: (I'd perhaps also add the last time I surreptitiously recorded someone was because the person was issuing death threats to those around him. AITA? But there are other, more artistic or journalistic cases that I think also have merit, which is why this is a footnote.)
I think if the picture/video is to be posted online or in a gallery, the person in the picture has a right to say how their likeness is being used, regardless of context. If someone's in the background of a video a I would say it's not as relevant, unless the background person becomes the subject unintentionally (as often seen in fail videos).
Surveillance is a different matter. You are notified you're entering a building with cameras, and those also aren't streamed online or displayed publicly.
As for public figures: there's usually separate laws for such things for public figures, AFAIK
Fan: How about... "Ballbreaker" ?
<crunch>
(Disclaimer: this story is fiction – and I'm sure that AC/DC do not actually advocate violence against most TikTokers.)
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-have-to-sign-a-waiver-or-other-...
There's a reason that appearance releases are a thing.
Ubiquitous CCTV cameras certainly bring issues of privacy, as well as what they should be used for.
One example is Smart Streetlights, which were initially promoted as energy saving lights that would help to measure and manage traffic and pollution, but quickly turned into dragnet police surveillance systems, initially for solving violent crimes but ultimately including property crimes such as vandalism, illegal dumping, and destruction of city property[1], and for protest surveillance [2].
[1] https://voiceofsandiego.org/2020/02/03/the-mission-creep-of-...
[2] https://mashable.com/article/police-surveil-black-lives-matt...
License plate cameras tend to have similar mission creep - they start out for parking enforcement or for red light tickets and turn into a system for tracking citizens whenever and wherever they drive.
I am totally fine with the distinction that is enshrined in law in many places around the world: you can record everything in public, but you cannot publish what you recorded without consent.
The issue is that we have two extremes (as it often happens) that either react to the camera as if it's the devil eating their souls and freak out, or we have the tiktokers basically ignoring the second part (no publication without consent).
The problem is, if they politely ask someone to stop filming them, it won't have any effect.
I can think of reasons why one might record a stranger in public, or a stranger might end up in a recording, but I thought it was pretty clear from the article that we're not talking about that—we're talking about content creators (any person making content) filming strangers without consent so they can create content using those strangers. These other things you're talking about are irrelevant to that conversation.
That is, you can film a crowd I'm part of; just keep it off google drive, whatsapp, tiktok, facebook, and youtube.
The reason so many conflate the two is because for most people they are not distinct activities.
When some jerk goes up to a girl with the intent to humiliate her for TikTok lulz by asking her to name 3 ACDC songs, that video no only should never be "shared with 3rd parties", but should never even be made in the first place.
On the other hand, I wouldn't even think about asking your consent to post a crowd pan shot of a music festival with hundreds (or thousands) of people in shot. And unless you happened to be one of the people right behind me and obviously recognisable in the clip, I'd consider you insane if you objected or asked me to take it down.
I've not fully thought this through, but there's a big difference between "active engagement" with a specific person like the TikTok jerk, and passive engagement like "look at the crowd here at SXSW!" And there's a hard line in the sand about the TikTok jerk's intentions of hoping to humiliate people publicly.
If that TikTok jerk had caught me on a bad day as I was coming back to my partner while he was pulling that shit, he'd probably be buying a new microphone and camera after I'd stomped them...
And yet here we are. You’re not in charge, and telling other people what they are and aren’t allowed to do just to meet some arbitrary desire of yours is being a dick. Do you really expect everyone not to take pictures and videos of games you’re at? Museums you’re in? Concerts you attend? Come on.
It's my right to demand that.
(This does not mean that everybody conforms to the law. But people that don't would be at least liable for damages.)
Edit, to clarify: Of course you can film in public. But you're required to cut out people who didn't give explicit consent before showing the material in public or handing it over to third parties.
All of this delightful nuance goes to my previous point; there’s plenty to debate and discuss here and the whole idea of an absolute right to privacy in public is comical.
But distributing or handing over such material is limited and requires usually consent.
Please pay special attention to the second sentence of the cited paragraph.
We're talking here about rights that are derived directly form the first sentence of the German constitution!
Such right is very strong. Only in exceptional cases it can be overruled by other constitutional rights.
Details can be found for example here: https://www.prigge-recht.de/wann-darf-ich-bilder-von-anderen...
Sometimes however pushing the boundary causes positive change.
I am a photography enthusiast and a lot of very impactful if not world-changing photography in the past has been called unethical in their times.
Some examples are Robert Frank's "The Americans" (https://www.lensculture.com/articles/robert-frank-the-americ... https://www.nga.gov/features/robert-frank/the-americans-1955...), Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_Mother)" and Steve McCurry's "Afghan girl" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl) photos. All received harsh criticism, but also raised awareness of issues in transformative ways.