It’s never a good thing when you’re forced to come out in support of creeps, but such is the way of things at the moment.
It is, obviously, creepy and perverted (or cynical and mercenary) to point a high-magnification lens through a gap in a fence and take blurry pictures of women with their tops off. It is, obviously, unethical to sell topless photos of unconsenting women in a society where breasts are sexualised. And it is, obviously, pretty shady to buy those pictures and sell them on in your magazine.
But if, as the BBC reports, the Royal Family are pursuing criminal charges against the photographer, then side with him I must, because I’m not at all comfortable making the publication of any photograph taken in a public space a criminal offence. Maybe you’d like the right to mow the lawn naked, safe in the knowledge that it is illegal for anyone to take a picture, but before we start limiting ‘free’ expression to just the bits we approve of, ask yourself this:
Are your tits more important than my right to photograph landmarks without fear of harassment? Are your tits more important than protecting teenagers from being prosecuted as child pornographers for taking pictures of themselves? Are your tits more important than the reporting of Parliamentary proceedings about illegal toxic waste dumping? Are your tits more important than protecting frustrated travellers from being branded as criminals for venting on Twitter? Are your tits more important than protecting legitimate pornographers from moralistic prosecution? Are your tits more important than protecting drunk idiots from prosecution for making homophobic remarks about a horse? Are your tits more important than allowing people to hand in evidence of child rape? Are your tits more important than the right to express any hatred of the police you may have without them arresting you for it? Are your tits more important than fighting the promotion of dangerous and expensive bullshit to, and the disgusting but profitable emotional manipulation of, vulnerable people? Are your tits more important than protecting insensitive pacifists from being convicted for swearily suggesting that the death of six soldiers in an IED explosion is less important than the many people soldiers on the same side have pointlessly killed? Are your tits more important than my right to safely criticise barbarous religious practices? Are your tits more important than the right to non-violent protest? Are your tits more important than exposing the horrors, and precipitating the end, of a war?
Yes?
Then put a fucking shirt on.
I’m struggling to see your point. Privacy laws do not make “the publication of any photograph taken in a public space a criminal offence.” Your argument seems to rest on a non sequitur.
They make at least one photo taken in a public space illegal. I don’t think any such photo should be illegal.
You already know I’m going to disagree with you on this.
You’re portraying this as a black and white, all or nothing issue when it’s really not. Surely a person’s right not to be exploited and embarrassed in that way is just as important as all the other things you’ve listed. I’m guessing your point is that other similar well-intentioned laws have been twisted to lead to ridiculous prosecutions, but isn’t that a problem with the idiots who let those cases be heard, not the laws themselves?
What about a law that prohibits publishing indecent or naked photos of someone without their permission? Whose freedoms is that going to infringe? How is that going to be abused?
You can argue all you like that this should be a matter for regulation by the appropriate industries, not a law, but its clear from the endless parades of topless photos and sex tapes that this just isn’t working. It’s completely unfair that this sort of thing can happen to someone through no fault of their own and they should have no effective recourse against it. As if the humiliation wasn’t enough, they should have to feel powerless too?
Also, that last line has a strong whiff of victim blaming to it.
I agree it’s unfair that this can happen, but there are options between criminal law and voluntary self-regulation. I don’t think I’d have had a problem with the Royals suing the magazines in a civil court, for example. But criminal charges scare me a lot more than pervy photographers, not least because criminal law is black and white: an act is an offence or it’s not. The CPS has discretion, and that’s good, but the Paul Chambers case implies that’s even worse a safeguard than the PCC: if they push for a legal but unjustifiable prosecution, the defendant has no recourse. I don’t think we should trust all future administrations with that power. Some things just shouldn’t be criminal offences in the first place, and I think this is one of them.
One of the problems with making a statement this absolute is that you’re saying it should be legal to publish photographs of the sexual abuse of children as long as they were taken from a public place.
Are you sure that’s your opinion?
I’m not at all sure that it isn’t. I found these articles extremely convincing on the subject.
The publication of photos of sexual humiliation of adults in Abu Ghraib was very important, and I would have thought that if anything it would have been more important had the victims been children. Instead, the journalists would have been imprisoned for having copies of the photos, much less publishing them. No government should have that much power to cover up its own atrocities.
Those articles don’t look all that convincing to me. For a start, they seem to present a false dichotomy – for example, the author points out that it’s a strict liability offence as if nobody could imagine a world where it wasn’t, but was still an offence. They show that the law is bad as it stands, and assert that their solution is the only solution. They’re also about outlawing possession, not publication.
All this strikes me as a wilful running away from nuance. It might have been helpful if you’d given an argument instead of a list of news stories. I’m left with no idea of the extent to which you think expression should be protected. What about bomb hoaxes? What about waiting outside someone’s house to scream threats at them every time they set foot outside? What about ordering your underlings to beat Petey to death and throw him in the river?
This stuff is complicated, and if you’re serious about it, you can’t pretend it’s simple.
Well now I think you’re conflating speech with its effects: it’s perfectly possible to criminalise causing panic, harassment and conspiracy to murder without limiting freedom of expression. Also those are all cases of specific speech to specific people, which is not really the same issue.
One way you might cause harassment is by pursuing someone with a camera so that they can’t go near a window unclothed without semi-nude pictures of them being for sale in the newsstands the next week. But you seem very certain that that’s not a concern in this case.
Separately, I’m really interested to hear the law you’ve formulated that criminalizes those things without limiting freedom of expression. I’m extremely suspicious when people say ‘it’s perfectly possible’ to do something but make no attempt to explain how you do it. And I don’t think that freedom of expression is well served by the belief that it’s simple to outlaw things without restricting it.
I just don’t think “deliberately and knowingly causing unnecessary panic” is the same thing as “saying there is a bomb”. Any crime can be committed using ones vocal chords given the right voice-activated robot; it doesn’t make them all free speech issues.
My thesis examiner said he thinks the word ‘any’ should be banned from all mathematical writing because of exactly this kind of confusion
this was meant to be in reply to 1 of course. Think it got uncoupled when I failed the captcha (there was a ligature!)