Yet you're confident that there is such a law, even though you've not produced any evidence of such?
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Upskirt Photography, (or a voyeur and his art)
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Yet you're confident that there is such a law, even though you've not produced any evidence of such?
Jimmy Higgins
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Curious, would this logic apply for underage children as well?
Jokodo
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I am not confident that there is such a law in Australia. I am confident that making such a law is within the limits of what Western democracies have been known to doö
If a person poses for a photograph in a public place, there is no presumption the photograph is for private viewing only. I can't cite any case law, but will happily stand corrected if someone finds a contrary ruling. It is another matter when a person whose income is made from selling their image is photographed without permission, and someone else sells the images. It's no longer a violation of privacy rights, but an violation of property rights.
Whenever a person sues another person for damages, some evidence of damage must be shown. Public embarrassment is difficult to quantify, and this is the usual injury in this kind of case.
From the creepy neighbor case file:
A man lived next door to another couple for many years. At one time, the man was given a key to the house while the couple went on vacation. The man entered the house everyday and turned different lights on, to create the appearance the couple were still home. This is is a common agreement between neighbors. The key was never retrieved. Several years after this, the woman became wary of her neighbor, because he made a remark about her blue nightgown. Her suspicions grew after he made more suggestive remarks. She checked her curtains and determined the neighbor could not have spied through the windows. She noticed a strange object in the ceiling air conditioning vent. It was a lipstick camera. She called the police. The police found more cameras in air vents and a transmitter in the attic. A search warrant was obtained for the neighbor's house and computer. Videos of the woman in her bedroom and bathroom were found.
The surprise ending:
None of what the neighbor did was illegal. He had legally obtained the key and had been permitted in the house while the occupants were absent, so trespassing was not an issue. At this time, there was no actual statute which made it illegal to film a person without their knowledge. The Louisiana Legislature has since corrected this omission.
arkirk
Veteran Member
This thread is not without some humorous overtones. You think this guy got in trouble for doing this pic? Was a perv? or just had a wry sense of humor?
But it shouldn't be illegal to film someone without their knowledge, when those people are in public places. (A non-public place, like your own home, is completely different).
Imagine you see your best friend's boyfriend in a bar chatting up and kissing a girl who was not his girlfriend. I don't see a moral problem with taking a photo of this to show your friend that he's cheating, even though if he knew he certainly wouldn't have agreed to it.
If you're going to wear a kilt and sit down on a low wall in a public place, legs spread and your junk front and centre, frankly I don't think you've got anything to complain about, even if someone takes your photo and says 'I am going to jerk off to this later'.
arkirk
Veteran Member
I agree with you completely. What I have been trying to flesh out here is that this whole bullshit about nudity in the first place is just a social convention without much of a purpose...excepting the use of shame. Here this asshole is shaming the woman for something that is NOT HAPPENING and oblivious to what actually IS HAPPENING. It is common...perhaps not this situation but others equally as clear cut.
There is a big difference between filming someone in their bedroom and filming someone in a bar. Would you think it right to film a cheater in their bedroom, without their knowledge?
Sabine Grant
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But...but...but...how many people would actually want to jerk off at the sight of this dangling penis?
TV and credit cards
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With varying degrees of convention regarding dress, I think it's fair to defer to the prudish. It's not likely anyone would be made to feel uncomfortable around fully clothed people. I'm a freedom loving individual and I have no problem with this.
I agree there's a huge difference and I thought I'd made that quite explicit.
It depends on what you mean by 'defer' and how you way the benefits and drawbacks.
For example, it is generally unacceptable in most societies for women to expose their nipples in public, even in places where men are free to do the same thing. And I think that attitude restricts women and makes everyone worse off.
Remember the hysteria when Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction and her partly-covered nipple was show for less than a second on air? Justin Timberlake could have been shirtless the entire time and no-one would have batted an eyelid and CBS would not have been fined half a million dollars.
I don't want to make hasty generalisations, but prudes are generally wrong and crazy.
But...but...but...how many people would actually want to jerk off at the sight of this dangling penis?
If you're someone who goes around taking photos up men's kilts, you're probably very interested in doing exactly that.
And I use 'jerk off' deliberately. Nearly all the people who take these kinds of photos are men (I've never read a case where a woman was accused of the same thing).
Bomb#20
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So you should be allowed to create and possess a work of art, but you should not be allowed to share it? That is a nuanced view.
A nuanced view is a recognition that the world is a complicated place full of subtleties; that there is a continuum of behavior running from proper, to ungentlemanly, to actionable, to criminal; and that somewhere on that continuum we have to draw a line. It's clear that recording what you hear is morally different from purposely eavesdropping; exactly how morally different two things need to be in order to consider them "morally different enough" is always a question reasonable people can disagree about. Legislatures by and large draw the line slightly differently from where you draw it, and in this they appear to be conforming to public opinion. Legislatures also have nuanced views.
My point isn't that their line is any better than yours; my point is that your "You do not have the right to prevent X. By extension, you also don't have the right to stop Y." formulation isn't any kind of argument; it's just a declaration that the place you draw the line isn't between X and Y. The California legislature draws the line between writing down what you hear and taping it. Do you have an actual argument for why the line should be drawn between taping it and playing the tapes for others?
(Funny story about that. The California statute explicitly says "electronic". This means if you somehow manage to record a private conversation mechanically onto an old Edison wax cylinder without giving yourself away, it's legal!
)Indeed not. Just as whether it's a public place makes a difference, and whether you're hearing or recording makes a difference, and whether you distribute the recording makes a difference, and whether you sell it or give it away for free makes a difference, likewise, it makes a difference whether the person photographed without his consent is the main focus of the photo. Further, it makes a difference whether it's a face shot or a back shot or a crotch shot, whether the photo is embarrassing, whether you got the embarrassing shot by accident or by hunting for an opportunity, and whether the photo serves some wider social purpose such as exposing official corruption or two-timing boyfriends. All of these things make a difference and the legislature weighs the differences when it decides where to draw the line.
Arguments of the form "This is okay; therefore that is also okay." aren't valid arguments until you explain why none of the differences between this and that should carry any weight.
Note that what he's taking pictures of is *NOT* on display, that is *NOT* what we are talking about. I agree that such photography should be illegal.
Not quite; I said that even if you allowed surreptitious recording, that did not automatically mean you had to allow sharing of it.
Legislatures appear to sometimes have nuanced views, and sometimes they appear to have sledgehammer views. But even a nuanced view does not mean intellectually honest or sophisticated. Australia recently had a kerfuffle over an artist who took nude portraits of children and displaying said art. Nude photos are (or were, at any rate) allowed, as long as their for 'artistic purposes'. To be crude, exactly why 'artistic purposes' gets a free pass but 'jerking off purposes' doesn't, I'm not sure. It might seem obvious to the legislature why one of them should be banned and the other not, but it's not obvious to me, nor is it obvious to me how they're going to tell the difference.
Well for one thing, the first category is about making a record of something, and the second category is about showing that record to somebody.
Most of us think it's morally permissible to videorecord someone surreptitiously, even if we're looking for evidence against them, e.g. a woman who hires a private detective to follow her husband, or an insurance company looking for evidence of insurance fraud. So if it's morally permissible to record something surreptitiously to look for evidence against someone, it seems to me that it should also be morally permissible to record something when you have motives that are far less likely to harm the person being recorded.
(Funny story about that. The California statute explicitly says "electronic". This means if you somehow manage to record a private conversation mechanically onto an old Edison wax cylinder without giving yourself away, it's legal!
That could be an important distinction. Writing down a conversation is also 'recording' it (it's on the record, so to speak).
It does not seem to be that nuanced. Apart from perhaps exposing corruption, I don't think legislatures differentiate different motives and circumstances. They make something forbidden and perhaps outline exceptions.
It seems to me it's the legislatures who need to be doing the defending: in some places it is okay to videotape someone but not audiotape them. This seems to me the exact opposite of what would be legislated if you were concerned about protecting privacy.
I believe I'm often quite witty in what I say, but sometimes my trousers drop and I'm exposing more than I want to and more than the world needs to see. Yet audiotaping me is forbidden but forever capturing an unflattering image is kosher.
It's "on display" from the angles these men are taking the photos - same as the DC creep or the Texas perv
As I recall...there was a similar issue up in Boston, of some creep taking pictures up a woman's skirt as she was sitting on the bus. Same ruling, except the legislature quickly corrected the problem.
In fact, here's a story on it.
arkirk
Veteran Member
It actually isn't necessarily "fair" to defer to people afraid of nudity, but it is prudent. I generally feel uncomfortable around people fully clothed in storm trooper attire. I doubt I would could be comfortable in a land where all the women wore burkas. This really is the matter of the camel poking his nose in the tent...where does the demand for conformity end? I would rather be around naked people. Your "freedom" is simply the response of somebody who has grown accustomed to prohibition of nudity and has adapted by conforming without really considering...is this necessary?
I think people should wear the clothing they need and don't demand they get naked for me, but in all fairness I do object to prudishness. Not all cultures are like ours. In our culture we have laws to make us dress up for authority...nothing else. If you're cold or in a threatening environment, you put clothes on. Our public environment is threatening, with bodily harm or possibly incarceration, so I wear clothes in public...not always what is most comfortable, but definitely necessary to avoid conflict.