Is It Time to Stop Filming Strangers in Public? | Hacker News Reader

Is It Time to Stop Filming Strangers in Public?

petapixel.com

50 pointsbookofjoe95 comments

Just for reference, what they're describing is already illegal in Germany, and by the first two articles of the constitution no less. (DE: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch... - no english version of this wikipedia article sadly)

(You are not allowed to publish¹ photos or film specific/individual people without their consent. This is only abated when individual people are not the focus of photographing/recording, i.e. crowds or random stragglers in photos of other things.)

¹ edit/correction: this originally said "take" rather than "publish". The legal limits relevant here are on publishing, not taking photos/filming.

Same in Austria. You aren't allowed to film people in public without their consent.

This is overall a positive but it comes with many downsides as well like if you want to get evidence on someone doing something wrong or screwing you over.

And how many photos of clearly-identifiable people in those countries do you suppose get published to the internet every hour?

"clearly-identifiable" is not the criteria, it's a question of focus and respect.

The articles of constitution this is based on in Germany read (roughly): "(1.) Human dignity is inviolable. (2.) Everyone has the right to free expression of their personality, so long they do not infringe on others."

You can publish photos with identifiable people as much as you want, as long as the intent of the photo is not to capture one (or more) person specifically.

People take photos of other (unconnected) people who are the primary focus of photographs all the time--and publish them. Maybe they're not supposed to in some countries even in public but they do with great frequency.

I'm not sure what your argument is… yeah, sure, it happens, in a lot of cases as the person in the photo you might not even know. And even if you do find out, a lot of people don't care — as long as they're not ridiculed.

The petapixel post talks about exploiting people for views on social media, and you will get sued for that in D/A/CH.

It's a bit like speeding. A lot of people, if not a majority, drives at 5% to 10% above the speed limit. Sometimes they get a (low-end) ticket. If you speed significantly, you likely still get away with it, but only for some limited time, and then (in most countries) you start racking up serious issues. None of this means that we should remove speed limits, stop enforcing them, or that they're somehow not helpful.

It just means we're humans making rules for ourselves so we can live with each other, and things are usually not black and white.

It has also lot of consequences, which are not obvious to people from other countries.

For example, no dashcams in D-A-CH.

Isn't it that you can't publish your dash cam recordings?

It's a grey area that AFAIK hasn't been conclusively determined; last I checked in Germany you're allowed to have a dash cam as long as it only records/saves on demand (and you're only allowed to exercise that function if you have a reason to, e.g. some accident happened.)

Publishing is yet another question and even more tightly restricted. AFAIK (again), in Germany you need to censor all people and car number plates, but then it's OK.

The ADAC (German car club/lobby) has a summary of the current rules and cases [0]. Even giving it to the police can be illegal (though we also don’t have a general fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which might make it illegal but could still mean the court can use it). It’s all kinda complicated.

[0] https://www.adac.de/verkehr/recht/verkehrsvorschriften-deuts...

Technically, yes, but that won't stop random cop stopping you and haggling you, when he sees one. The Austrian ones can be pretty arrogant and you don't want to ruin your day for that.

That's no longer true.

Dashcams are allowed but they are only allowed to record a certain time period and must overwrite previous recordings so that you only have footage of an accident and not 24 hour surveillance material

>You aren't allowed to film people in public without their consent.

This is incorrect. You are allowed to film anything you can see and hear in public - you are not allowed to publish those pictures, or use them for any commercial purpose, without consent.

Not true. For example I can't just pick someone on the street, point my phone at them and start following them around filming them specifically.

Yes, you absolutely can do that. This is how security cameras work. I absolutely have the right to film you in public, common areas.

What I can't do is use that footage commercially, use it to degrade the person, or publish it in any way without the persons permission.

It must be understood that its not illegal in Germany to take someones picture in a public place, but to _publish_ it or make it available to the public, or use it for commercial purposes, without their permission.

That is a very distinct line that is often confused. If you are in public in Germany, I can take your picture - I cannot publish it, however, without your involvement. I can take your picture if you are in the middle of committing a crime, for the purposes of providing evidence to the police.

The fact is, it is a fundamental human right to be able to record ones environment, and this right is just as important as the right to be free from ridicule through a publication of ones image.

Thanks for the correction, I do keep fuzzying up taking vs. publishing. I've edited a note into the parent post.

(for completeness: taking photos is only restricted by §201a StGB, which makes illegal taking photos in someone's home or areas specifically secluded from public view, or if a person's helplessness is exposed)

You're welcome. But to be sure, your edit doesn't really bring clarity to your statement. Perhaps you'd consider just removing the 'taking' part and supplanting it with 'publishing', since those are vastly different things which should not be conflated.

re-edited :)

Are there exceptions for police, fire fighters, elected officials, or other governmental employees? Are you allowed to do so for these people if they are acting in their official capacity?

Yes, you are allowed to film the police. This is a fundamental human right, which Germany has a long history (so far) of respecting. You may not use the pictures you take for commercial purposes, or for the purposes of ridicule or to interfere with their official duties.

>> This is a fundamental human right, which Germany has a long history (so far) of respecting.

I can think of at least 20 million people who would strongly disagree with that, if they weren't dead.

Okay, so for 70 years, Germans have cared about human rights a tad bit more emotionally than most other nations in the Western sphere.

Originally that was the case, but the current situation is better summarized as "it's complicated". Or in the words of the federal court of justice "Whether and to what extent the production of such images is illegal and impermissible or must be accepted by the person concerned can only be determined by taking into account all the circumstances of the individual case and by carrying out a balancing of interests and interests that takes into account all the legal, and in particular constitutionally protected, positions of the parties involved."

Though as a private person you are generally right if you assume that in "normal" situations (so not filming a public bathroom or trying to take upskirt pictures or something like that) you are allowed to take pictures you don't want to publish, as long as you are willing to delete the pictures if the subject specifically asks for it.

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch...

You do not have to delete the pictures you have taken in a common, public space, even if asked. You have the basic right to record your environment in public - this is to ensure that people are able to collect evidence in the case of crimes being committed in the public sphere, and its how - for example - bank cameras work.

There is a short section in the English Wikipedia [1]. It however lacks all the nuance and interesting interactions listed in the German article. Not only are you allowed to photograph people if they are not the focus of the image, the expectation of privacy is also loosened for famous or exceptional people (though still stricter than in US law). In the case of artistic pieces there can also be a weighing of interests where the interest of art can take precedence over the interests of the person. Also you are for example allowed to photograph or film police in the execution of their duties, but you aren't allowed to write their name next to it.

The principle is easy to sum up, but applying it in practice on a nationwide scale opens up a lot of cases that have to be dealt with (and have been dealt with in German law)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#Germany

Illegal is one thing, but more importantly: many people will not at all appreciate you filming them, though it's probably very much depending on where you are (it's probably more accepted in tourist areas). Germany is actually relaxed regarding this compared to France, where you might really get into trouble for filming people without their consent.

France, too. I attended a clowning course over there last year and they reminded us constantly that we couldn’t photograph or film other students without their express permission - even out of class. It’s illegal under French law and they also consider it a gross violation of the person’s right to privacy.

>I attended a clowning course

A WHAT now?

Would you say you are now fit to run a tech company?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_school

It was clowning rather than general circus stuff. Honestly, clowning was way more traumatic and hard core than acrobatics.

Here's a BBC piece on the school I went to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD4YFuJT0_E

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringling_Bros._and_Barnum_%26_...

I've always admired the German Constitution for that.

The US Constitution was an extraordinary achievement in its time, but that time was two and a half centuries ago. A lot has changed, and the various patches applied to fix the obvious failings can't change the fundamental failings locked in at the beginning. Including the fact that it is practically impossible to fix, and has not been meaningfully amended in a half-century.

It's an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine how it might be written if excluded voices had some real say -- not just the rich, not just men, not just white people, not just the healthy, etc. The first article of the German constitution is an interesting take on benefitting from the world's increasing belief in the necessity of human dignity -- something noticeably missing from the US Constitution.

I agree with your overall point that the concept of innate "human dignity" is missing from the US Constitution. But, I'm not sure it's simply because of something missing from the time period, like the exclusion of various minorities from the process. The idea of human dignity is not a recent invention, and white male landowners are/were capable of valuing or not valuing it. One could argue that if the US's Founding Fathers valued human dignity, they would have enshrined it in the constitution along side of the things they did value, like Freedom Of This and Freedom Of That. Its omission could very well have been deliberate.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

That sounds an awful lot like "human dignity" to me. Not to mention pretty much the entirety of the Bill of Rights.

Exactly what definition of "human dignity" are you using here?

The preamble says practically nothing about individual people. It's all about group behavior.

The Bill of Rights does say more, but it has large gaps. For comparison, have a look at the German Basic Law:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Rep...

Some choice bits:

* Men and women have equal rights.

* Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code.

* The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority.

These are vague, but no vaguer than the US First Amendment, which is rife with all kinds of unspoken limitations.

One interesting one:

* With regard to open-air meetings [the right to assemble] may be restricted by or pursuant to a law.

The US Supreme Court decided that our right to assemble means that the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to be really horrific shitweeds, at funerals. Being abominable is their purpose. They want to make people feel shitty. The German constitution considered those possibilities and decided that the freedom of association could be limited.

These are the kinds of things that we didn't consider in the Constitution. We've patched around it -- like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment.

The German one goes on and on with details. They were written based on their experiences in the 20th century. We find it very hard to fix that.

> like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment.

Libel and slander are civil torts. The First Amendment only applies to the government.

You cannot, in general, be sued for libel or slander if the quasi-victim is the government, or a government official. You're free to call politicians every nasty name in the book and they can't do much about it. That's what the First Amendment is about.

There is a hint of it in "promote the general Welfare" but they could have elaborated further. Also, choosing to use the word "promote" rather than "ensure" or "guarantee" is telling. They valued human dignity and wellness, but not enough to guarantee a right to it.

For example, they could have guaranteed humans have the right to (physical and economic) access to adequate food. I think we can all agree that food security is a human dignity issue. But they didn't include such a right, and indeed even as recently as 2017, the USA was one of only two countries in the world that voted[1] against a Right To Food at the UN Human Rights Council.

Same goes for any right to access to clean water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, and so on. None of these are actually guaranteed by the USA, although some states have taken steps in this area.

1: https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-v...

> the USA was one of only two countries in the world that voted[1] against a Right To Food at the UN Human Rights Council

So, excluding medical conditions, such as anorexia, approximately how many U.S. citizens would you estimate die of starvation in any given year?

Hint: it's pretty damned close to zero.

In my medium-sized city, there are at least 4 places I can think of off the top of my head where you can walk in and get a free meal at any time, no questions asked. I think there are probably more than four, actually.

> In my medium-sized city, there are at least 4 places I can think of off the top of my head where you can walk in and get a free meal at any time, no questions asked.

And how many of these are provided by the government to ensure human dignity and/or other constitutional guarantees?

> Including the fact that it is practically impossible to fix, and has not been meaningfully amended in a half-century.

Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed".

I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving.

> It's an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine how it might be written if excluded voices had some real say

What exactly do you think the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments were about?

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_...

> Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed".

There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws, but of course whether they need to be fixed in the constitution (or even an amendment) is a different question.

(Off the top of my head: Gerrymandering needs to be illegal, the Supreme Court needs oversight, elector based voting needs to go away, corporations need to be "not people" in terms of politics.)

> I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving.

Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good — it was written in 1949 in the Western part as a specific reaction to Nazis in order to ensure it never happens again. That's why it starts with "human dignity is sacrosanct" as article 1, and "everyone has the right to freely develop their personality as long as they don't infringe others" as article 2.

> There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws

That is why there is a Constitutional Amendment process, which has been carried out successfully 27 times.

> elector based voting needs to go away

Essentially no major country practices direct election of the chief executive. It's not just the United States.

For instance, in Canada individual voters did NOT vote for Justin Trudeau. He wasn't even on their ballot. They vote only for their local MP, and a bunch of party hacks from the party (or group of parties) with the most MPs pick the Prime Minister. The same is true for most countries with a parliamentary form of government.

At least here Trump and Biden were actually on the ballot. Canadians don't have that luxury. What's worse, only the party's registered members get a vote on their party's selection, and most of the parties actually charge money to belong to them (to its credit, Trudeau's party is not one of these -- you can join the party without having to pay any money, though even with that party it wasn't the case until quite recently).

> Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good

The Weimar Republic Constitution was widely believed to be good as well, but it sure didn't turn out that way in the long run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_(Weimar_Constitutio...

Note that Hitler wasn't the first to exploit this flaw.

> That is why there is a Constitutional Amendment process, which has been carried out successfully 27 times.

Hence my note: "whether they need to be fixed in the constitution (or even an amendment) is a different question."

> Essentially no major country practices direct election of the chief executive.

That's not the problem with the U.S. electoral system. The problem is that it's FPTP on a per-state level, which distorts the vote. A page like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... shouldn't even exist. Other democracies do have similar issues, but to a much smaller degree (the German election system has in fact been declared unconstitutional due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_vote_weight — but note that the constitution in fact requires the vote to be "fair"! The U.S. just plain doesn't. (Same issue with gerrymandering.)

> The Weimar Republic Constitution was widely believed to be good as well,

???

The Weimar Republic Constitution is widely believed to be flawed, and has been called that as early as 1925. Where are you getting this?

> The problem is that it's FPTP on a per-state level

This is the United States (plural). It was designed as a coalition of largely independent states, and that is never going to change other than at gunpoint.

I don't believe that Germany allows (say) Russians to vote, does it? Heck, not even Italians get to vote in German elections, and they're at least in theory in the same European Union.

> This is the United States (plural). It was designed as a coalition of largely independent states,

What does that have to do with anything? The U.S. president is the president of all people of the U.S. — applying per-state FPTP plainly distorts the vote. It doesn't have anything to do with state sovereignty or independence, it's simply a very poor voting system. Or are you saying the states should elect the president? I'm quite sure the U.S. general public won't agree with you on that.

> and that is never going to change other than at gunpoint.

The addition of this half-sentence reads as incredibly odd. Are you expecting someone to show up and hold the U.S. at gunpoint?

> Heck, not even Italians get to vote in German elections,

Italians do in fact get to vote in German municipal and EU elections if they have a permanent residence there. Same for any other EU citizen residing in any other EU country. Only for country level elections you vote in your country of citizenship rather than residence.

> > and that is never going to change other than at gunpoint.

> The addition of this half-sentence reads as incredibly odd.

There are millions of Americans who have taken oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States (Not "the government". Not whoever currently happens to be President. Not some "monarch". The Constitution) against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Virtually all of people these have military experience (it's part of the standard military oath, also in the oaths of office for many government officials).

Attempting to forcibly change the Constitution outside the normal amendment process would almost certainly result in large-scale bloodshed, and changing it through the normal amendment process is never going to work, because the smaller states are never going to sign off on it.

Those are the facts on the ground.

As a dad that does a lot of outdoor adventures with my young son... apparently there is something cute or interesting looking about us, and strangers literally crowd around us snapping photos almost everytime we go out. Maybe half ask first, but when I say no they often try to argue "it's just a picture!" I am a very private person and don't put photos of myself or my family online at all, in any capacity, but there are tons of photos of us posted online by strangers against our will- I confirmed this via an AI facial recognition search engine.

My son is also often the only non-white kid in schools, summer camps, etc. so they want to use his photo on all of the advertising, billboards, newsletters, etc. usually without permission, and they act indignant when I stop them from doing so. Apparently it's all the rage to brag that your overpriced summercamp once had a non-white person enroll, and prominently use photos of them on everything forever.

Leave us alone!

I've found that people who are serious about photography tend to behave in a way that is exactly legal but still extremely annoying. They're relatively harmless (after all "it's just a picture!") but the behavior is still a public nuisance

A few years ago I read a similar anecdote of a woman being accosted by a photographer on transit, taking photos of the baby she was carrying and persisting even after asked to stop. She wound up having to physically shield herself and the baby from being photographed and the guy kept taking other shots every chance he got, like when she was leaving the train and such. Super rude, but technically legal. This was in Alberta, for those who care

It really made me think we need different laws about consent in photography. Surely we can carve out exceptions for photographing notable events, documenting crimes, crowd shots and other such valid reasons for photographing someone without consent, without allowing a rando with a camera to pester (and arguably intimidate) people just going about their day

Edit: There was also a case a few years ago of a guy going around taking creepshots of women, their butts and cleavage and such and publishing them. That was clearly illegal so we already do have some rules about public photography that is allowed and some that isn't.

> A few years ago I read a similar anecdote of a woman being accosted by a photographer on transit, taking photos of the baby she was carrying and persisting even after asked to stop. She wound up having to physically shield herself and the baby from being photographed and the guy kept taking other shots every chance he got, like when she was leaving the train and such. Super rude, but technically legal.

I think there's a line somewhere between "being annoying/rude/obnoxious" and "politely refusing to stop recording."

You can see this when you look at a few different "First Amendment Auditor" content creators. Some of them are obviously obnoxious, belligerent, and clearly looking for conflict. Others just quietly keep recording, politely but firmly ignoring the subject's (often themselves annoying) demands for them to stop. I don't have any problem whatsoever with the latter behavior. The former is kind of cheap and trashy, even if it's still legal.

Both are unacceptable behaviors in my opinion

Quietly continuing to record is ignoring that the person even has protested. It's still asserting that your right to record them trumps any objection they might raise.

It is in effect reducing them from a person to simply the subject of your recording

Yes, one of these behaviors you describe is much more visibly obnoxious, but the quieter version is still obnoxious. It shows absolutely no respect for the people you are recording

You really don't have a problem with someone quietly ignoring your request to stop photographing you or your family minding your own business, and just continuing? It feels like a massive invasion- I am pretty shocked that it isn't illegal already.

I have had people do this to me, and I used body language rather than words to show that I was going to physically take the camera from them if they didn't stop- and I would do so, but it never got to that point.

At one point I did demand a stranger delete the photos, and I watched until they were done, under the implication that I would be doing it for them if they didn't.

I'm not saying I'd welcome it, but I can't really have a problem with it since it's a constitutionally-protected activity, and the filmer is not intentionally antagonizing anyone. We have the right to ask, but we can't force them to stop. Surely doing anything physically to stop them is crossing the line into robbery or battery.

We have no expectation of privacy in a public place or in any place that can be reasonably considered public. Photographers do not have to obtain consent from anyone who is either incidentally in a recording or the subject in focus. It's surprising how many people don't know this. Someone, sometime in their past, must have taught them otherwise.

You absolutely can have a problem with invasive and inappropriate behavior like this, even if it’s technically not illegal. You have every right to also do anything legal to stop them. You can’t rely on the law to set or enforce personal boundaries, that is your responsibility.

I personally would not actually harm or rob anyone, but I certainly will make them strongly suspect that I am willing to by appearing to be extremely pissed off- after exhausting any possibility of reasoning with them. As I described above, this happens to me and my son a lot by virtue of hop how we look and what we are doing, and I won’t tolerate it. I’m actually a very calm person, but I am also a large scary looking man, and very very occasionally I will pretend to be about to lose control, for the sake of the kind of person that understands nothing else. They are lucky to be having this conflict with me, someone that won’t actually hurt them… as a lot of people would.

Why is taking photos with butts and cleavage in the picture illegal but not taking photos of someone?

"Clearly illegal"? How? What's the difference?

>I confirmed this via an AI facial recognition search engine.

Lol! You just put the more information of yourselves online by that one action than 1,000 happy snaps on Facebook would have.

There is some irony in knowing enough not to put your photos online but not knowing enough as to feed it the most key information for your identity possible.

"But they won't use this information!", nope. They will. "But it can't be tied back to me.", yep. It can.

No, it's not time to stop taking photos of strangers because capturing a public moment is called documentary, reportage, and also is an art practiced for a century or more by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Martin Parr. And it's a journalist's ethical duty, or even a citizen's, important in case of abuse of power, such as murdering by law enforcement forces in certain countries. However, it's important to dismantle platforms that reward engagement based on voyeurism and cruelty towards strangers for the purpose of advertising, such as the cases described in the article. So no, unless stop taking film and photos of strangers means disabling all the security cameras that constantly intrude in our lives in public spaces to analyze data unilaterally. Which is what would remain.

I think the line should be drawn when there is a commercial interest - If the footage is monetized, the subject should have a veto. Other than that, it should not be prohibited for members of the public to make a recording of anyone's conduct in a public space, because to prohibit that would enable bad actors to harm others without possibility of being held responsible.

For example, imagine if it were illegal to make recordings of the Proud Boys in places where law enforcement actively encouraged them to commit criminal acts...

I think a reasonable outcome would be to make a distinction between incidental recording (I have a camera recording Times Square and happen to pass you) as opposed to direct recording (as in you are the subject of what I’m recording). It’s definitely a grey area still, but would help if we want to apply limits on this type of content.

It would be really hard to prove in court that someone's picture of you was direct vs incidental, especially with how good cameras are. In a few years time, if I wanted to illegally take a "direct" picture of someone I was creeping on or stalking, or just film something that would embarrass someone, I'll be able to whip out my 100 gigapixel camera and take a benign picture/video of the overall area and simply crop the subject later.

The article headline is about filming people in public but most of the video examples are not in public, but private spaces like gyms, pubs or work places. These are not the same thing.

Depends on the country/legal system, but most would consider at least pubs a public place. Gyms possibly as well, sometimes even more so than workplaces (because it's much harder to become an employee somewhere than it is to sign up for a gym.)

Gyms feel more problematic--even outside of locker rooms. And companies tendnot to be too big on photographs of workplaces generally.

Pubs, music festivals, neighborhood BBQs, etc. seem a lot more natural as long as you aren't being obnoxious or someone asks you to stop.

There are at least two different issues here, and it is a shame that they often seem conflated:

1. Filming without consent in public.

2. Uploading the media without consent of the subjects to social media or other public platform, or private channels with multiple participants.

I have no problem with the former - as others have pointed out, there is a long history of doing this in the name of art, documentation etc. Asking for consent just isn't often feasible in advance.

The latter though seems to me to be deeply unethical in principle, though there may be exceptions. It is the exposure to the view of others (often with intent to ridicule or shame) that seems to be the invasion of privacy and the aspect with significant potential to hurt.

This is pretty much covered by civil law. You can sue for commercial use of your image. After all, influencer is now a desired job and you can make money doing it. There may be some scenarios we're the person doesn't make money from sponsors and seeing could be more difficult, but technically goodwill is listed on balance sheets, so if theyre generating public goodwill towards their brand, there's still a basis. If you're a focus of the content, you can sue.

You CAN sue, but you won't, because no lawyer will take the case and the potential gains in most cases don't pay for the filing fees let alone discourage the behavior. So with a few exceptions, videos like this go largely unchecked because the current system we have is too inefficient at these low financial levels.

You can always find a lawyer willing to take the case, as long as you're paying money and not on contingency.

Even if you make the recording or publishing illegal the cops aren't really going to do anything for such a low level offense, especially with such high volumes.

In either scenario, it's mostly a function of selective enforcement and intimidation.

I bicycle with a camera to protect myself. I'd prefer the rules to be around publishing (which they already are where I live).

That's a good compromise, until you consider stalkers and/or Scientologists.

But that would go under other laws already.

Okay but include "storing on someone else's computer" in the definition of "publishing" in this case.

I don't want to be recorded and uploaded to Google or Dropbox without my consent.

Although it's not totally satisfying: a record can leak. No record is the only guarantee for no leak.

"Publishing" means making something available to the public.

It does not mean making my own copy of something.

I know.

Let me rephrase my comment: I think the publishing restriction of the law is not quite enough, also make "storing your private copy on Google Drive or Dropbox" illegal.

If you store your private copy on Google and Dropbox, you are not publishing it but you are sharing it with them. And I don't trust them. They could for instance decide to train models on my image or fulfill requests from law enforcement and my data gets somehow involved and I don't want them to.

I believe the law could have been written at a time when the cloud was not common, and just restricting publication was enough. It isn't anymore IMHO.

My seemingly controversial take on this:

No one cares that you appear in a video on tiktok. No one. Content saturation is so intense than anyone who witnesses your generic human self for 6 seconds in a video short is going to have completely forgotten about it in the next 6 seconds.

Yes, for you the main character, it might feel like an egregious transgression. A victim of the ruthless paparazzi. But you are not that important, and are indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of other public wanderers who crop up in these videos.

Besides, they are supposed to have you sign a release form anyway.

Would this not also include filming people committing violence and crime? Police? Politicians? It's kind of impossible to draw the line between "illegal photography" and legitimate citizen journalism.

Like with every other film/photo professional they need signed releases from all people on their images, to be used later. Or they will be taken to court by someone sooner or later. Nothing to worry about too much.

Same as using Beatles songs in videos. Which will cost you about $20.000 - $80.000

Biggest problem is that "influencers" have no formal education in publishing and copyright law. This is what we learned in film class in the very first week. But staying a free, not-regulated occupation is more important imho.

Do you have any context what legal framework the "release" mechanism is coming from? Is it copyright? Trademark (to your own likeness)? General right to photos showing you?

In the US, "commercial use" specifically--as in marketing, advertising, etc.--typically requires a model release from of a person (and stock agencies tend to err on the side of caution in this regard). As I understand it, it's basically a right not to have your image commercially exploited.

As I also understand it though, it doesn't keep me from making money as a fine art poster or selling it to a newspaper for editorial use. Obviously there are gray areas. But it's not copyright. As the photographer I hold the copyright in any case.

> These videos often rack up millions of views which is proof that there is “clearly an appetite to watch as strangers are shamed, ridiculed, gawked, or generally caught off-guard, even when we know it isn’t exactly morally sound.”

This is has been a pretty hot topic since Allen Funt kicked off his little gig in 1948.

As much as I personally like to people-watch, I don't think it's cool to share but I also don't think you can rein it in.

I suppose I tell myself that the more people do it, the less embarrassing it becomes.

Yeah, yeah, people of Walmart, ha, ha ... okay moving on....

"Candid Camera" required people to sign a release for the scene to be aired, no?

Yes, but only because the footage was being used commercially for broadcast. Depending on who was doing the filming they may also have been required to pay the subject; For example, a person who accidentally entered an active shoot of a Hollywood movie encountered the actors and had a short conversation with them. The footage turned out to work well with the scene, and the director wanted to keep it. In order to do so, not only did they have to pay this person and give them credit for a speaking role, they had to be given membership in the Screen Actors' Guild.

"but only because the footage was being used commercially for broadcast."

Influencer is now a job. They make money off of sponsorship. Even if they aren't currently making money or taking sponsors they are generating goodwill towards their brand, which does have monetary value as denoted on balance sheets and can be used to future commercial value.

And of course, at the time, publishing was pretty much synonymous with commercial publishing. (Though newspapers, magazines, news broadcasts, etc. have had broad exemptions for editorial publication in the US.)

> For example, a person who accidentally entered an active shoot of a Hollywood movie encountered the actors and had a short conversation with them. The footage turned out to work well with the scene, and the director wanted to keep it. In order to do so, not only did they have to pay this person and give them credit for a speaking role, they had to be given membership in the Screen Actors' Guild.

Did this actually happen or are you speaking hypothetically?

It happened but I don't remember which movie. It's not the often-quoted Star Trek instance - In that case, the woman was a first-time extra who was not aware that extras are not supposed to speak, even when directed to "act natural". In the case I am thinking of, they forgot to rope off a park entrance or something like that, and someone who regularly went there just did their usual thing and blundered into an active shoot.

My recollection (and I'm old but not that old) is there was nonetheless a lot of uneasiness by the viewing public as to whether watching, regardless of whether the person later signed a release, was in itself a bit of guilty voyeurism. That the whole concept of the show was in poor taste— catching people off guard and vulnerable.

EDIT: and because I can't not share, this funny clip of Woody Allen on the show: https://youtu.be/LGb_jzaUWOg

Oh, it was a big issue since the invention of still photography that was sufficiently fast to capture moving people in public.

In practice, controls on photography or filming in public would be used to suppress recording of those in power, such as police. It's quite proper that the right to take such images be protected.

Attempting to exempt commercial efforts from these protections would be like exempting commercial news organizations from protection under the 1st amendment.

Aren’t self driving cars necessarily filming everything in front of them all the time ?

The brain dead single cell mulluscs of Airstrip One love it.

CCTV everywhere, the most CCTV surveilled country in the world.

If its not on their phones its on their doorbells

I dont do it and I dont tolerate it.

I love Germany.

No CCTV allowed in public places or by the general public.

This is how privacy should be enacted

yes, absolutely.

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