Comment by devjab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devjab | Hacker News Reader

A lot of you are taking the laws too literal. I guess it’s down to the cultural differences between the EU and the US. We have a lot of privacy laws in place regarding photography and other things in Europe (I guess it should be the full length since the Brits are in on it), but it’s to protect people from abuse more than it’s to limit your rights.

I take pictures of my children casually in public, and I always try to not include strangers. Technically it’s illegal for me to take the pictures if a stranger is on the photo, but I’m trying to avoid it because I don’t want strangers in my picture. I never think about the law while I’m doing it. Similarly if you’re taking a photo of some cultural/historical place you’re not going to want to focus on strangers in it, unless you’re the kind of weirdo the laws are there to target.

The only non-creep people these laws really impact are the photographers who actually do want to take pictures of unaware strangers for artsy reasons. I’m not entirely sure how they handle it, my guess would be that they break the law and then ask for permission afterwards and delete the photos if denied, but it’s just a guess.

Anyway, I don’t think it really enters the mind of any regular person taking pictures. But it’s nice to know that if someone is breaking these laws then you can call the cops on them instead of having to make them stop taking unwanted photographs. Which is really what happened before these laws, you’d have some creep taking pictures of high school girls at their last-exam-party (day where they all go drinking in various parks - very Scandinavian), and the creeps would get beaten up by a bunch of high schoolers. Now the cops can simply arrest people taking photos, and I know some of you may think this means they arrest a lot of high schoolers, but our police officers aren’t… well… assholes.

>The only non-creep people these laws really impact are the photographers who actually do want to take pictures of unaware strangers for artsy reasons.

That just isn't true. Imagine any kind of event where you want to take photos and publish them. Now you have to get an agreement from people on who is allowed to be photographed and who's photos you are allowed to publish, assuming that not all people agreed you now have to go through every single photo figuring out which one you are allowed to use and which one you aren't. This isn't a hypothetical, I have agreed with many, many such waivers for many different kind of events.

To say that this law only affects creeps is plainly false. Even if you are just planning a wedding this will affect you.

> I have agreed with many, many such waivers for many different kind of events.

Note that no one you want to invite to your wedding is going to disagree with such a waiver.

Most likely yes, but People get drunk at weddings. And if you are organizing any kind of corporate event it might very well be the case that someone disagrees, not asking simply isn't an option.

My point is that even a normal person with completely benign motives has to consider this. Contrary to what the other poster claimed it isn't a law which only "creeps" have to care about.

I can confirm from experience.

In a few German events, the organisers asked for my permission to take/share photos, and I refused. Not a single picture of me was shared. I never had to justify why, and it never felt abnormal.

That is correct. A good example is if you are hosting a meetup, and want to share pictures of the people who presented on stage.

Ah yes, the civilized legal system where everyone is breaking the law all the time, so the law gets selectively enforced and used as a weapon on people the police don’t like. But the police are never ever assholes so there’s no problems?

Pretty much. Same in for example the Netherlands. Weed is technically illegal. But nobody cares. Police won’t stop you, unless you’re being a dick. That’s precisely the point.

But your cops can already do this as well, they’ll just name it disorderly conduct instead.

You could of course always choose to not break the law to begin with.

It's largely selectively enforced because the executive doesn't enforce it unprompted.

I.e. in practice it gives everyone the right to have their right to their own likeness enforced. Which most of the time isn't taken too serious, but is an important feature at times.

It has its own share of issues, but I’d argue that we have a lot fewer issues than most places. It’s part of our legal system though, that our police officers have a lot of discretion. I’d argue that strictly enforcing the photography laws would be a huuuuuge waste of police resources though. I mean, how would you really police it? They do in London due to anti-terrorist reasons, but only if you’re taking photos of thing some people might want to blow up.

Of course it has issues though. Not so much in the way you seem suggest here though.

They do occasionally do coordinated operations on usually enforced laws. Like set up control points at universities and check if all bikes passing by are legal. But they won’t regularly pull you over if you’re missing a reflex or similar, unless your bike is extremely unsafe.

I'm sorry that you have issues with the police or other groups where you're from. Where I live in the EU I personally never had any issues with these groups and the people I know that had issues were able to sort them out without any major consequences to their lives.

Not saying that it's a perfect system, there will always be problems because there's not such thing as a perfect law, just a less imperfect one.

The difference between the EU and the US is the people. The mindset is different, that's why things can be so lax and still work.

FYI all continents and societies around the world are simultaneously burning and blooming with success. What changes is the bubble you're on. If you go on YouTube you can find an equal amount of videos and people saying that the US/EU is horrible/amazing. It all depends on the person and the person's values. I'm happy here and I completely understand those that are not, same for the the people in the US.

You mock it, but implementations that allow people to do things if they're not a problem isn't awful if the police are fair, reasonable people who want the best for their community.

I'd sooner have that than people being a pain in the arse because they're explicitly allowed to exercise rights at the cost of society.

Both concepts cut both ways.

> You mock it, but implementations that allow people to do things if they're not a problem isn't awful if the police are fair, reasonable people

Seems like the smarter thing to do would be to outlaw "the problem" and not leave every single person's safety/freedom entirely up to the whims and benevolence of police.

that doesn't work because you can't define "the problem". creating a long list of cases where photography should be allowed and where it shouldn't would require the photographed person to prove that their photo falls into the cases that are a problem. that puts to much burden on them, and makes it more difficult to protect themselves.

each person has a different feeling in how they are comfortable with having their pictures published. therefore the only sane thing to do is to give each individual the right to control that.

it's like copyright. by default all rights are reserved, but i can give permission to copy if i wish.

I like the solution with the beatin' up more.

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