And your want to make that the law, so you get fined or go to jail if you don't blur everyone's face on every photo you post if you haven't gotten a signed consent from them?
That's not a world I would want to live in, and I guess I'm thankful most other people don't either.
The ability to photograph is important for accountability and truth in a democracy, it's important to families wanting to document and share their trips easily, and it's important for art, among many other things. Fundamentally, it feels like a kind of freedom to me.
But it's interesting to see there are people who disagree.
I think you should be fined for posting pictures of people publicly without their consent.
None of those things require you to invade their privacy and enjoyment of public space — you’re just negatively impacting them because you’re lazy and antisocial.
Fines are how we handle such nuisances in other cases.
Nothing requires you to get upset about showing up in the background of someone's photo either. As far as I can tell, you're the one being antisocial because you're trying to make demands on what people do with their photos just because you happened to be in the frame. And it's not like they're trying to sell the photos or anything.
And fines aren't some kind of innocent thing. If you don't pay the fines, the police come to seize your property. If you resist, you go to jail. That's what you want?
Again, that's just not the world I want to live in.
You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
Nothing about their desire not to be photographed requires that you not take photographs — just that if you do, without their permission and with identifiable features showing, you’ll have to take a few seconds to blur that before you upload it publicly.
Yes — that’s absolutely an antisocial imposition on their enjoyment.
> You’re the one trying to include people in your photos without their consent.
You don't think people just happen to be in the background?
> Everyone should be allowed to enjoy public spaces without you imposing on them for your activities — and that includes you taking photos.
No, they shouldn't. It's a balance. When people play frisbee, that's "imposing" on me too, because it's not easy for me to put a blanket down in the middle of their game. Should they be fined too? I don't think so. I think I can just live with the inconvenience of walking 30 more seconds.
And I don't even know what you're talking about with blurring people's faces being so easy. My camera app doesn't do that. And even if it did, manually clicking on every single face in all 40 photos from the park that don't belong to my friends and family? No thanks. People can live with their faces in the background online, just like I can live with people playing frisbee where I'd rather be sitting.
I mean, what's next -- I'm not allowed to quote things people say in public and attribute it to them? I'm not allowed to say so-and-so was in this public park in a blog post? You don't have privacy in public places, because they're public.
Sorry. I just don't think parents at the park who take photos of their kids and share them on a public site with friends should be legally required to blur any passerby's face or go to jail.
If they want to do it voluntarily then great. But making it criminal if you don't -- I don't understand that.
Why shouldn’t they be fined for invading someone else’s privacy because they’re too lazy to touch up the photos on their phone? — why should their laziness negatively impact others use of public space?
You’re just making an argument for inconveniencing others out of laziness — but trying to dress it up in principles.
Because it's a right to be lazy. And thank goodness it is.
You can inconvenience other people in a thousand different ways every day. And should be allowed to.
The idea that laziness or inconvenience ought to be outlawed... do you realize what you're saying? The kind of police state you're envisioning?
This is a principled thing. What's next, I get fined for walking slowly on the sidewalk? For holding up the line at the supermarket for a price check? For paying in dimes instead of dollar bills? Think about the legal principle you seem to be suggesting.
We have numerous laws that ban those things in shared public spaces:
- littering
- jaywalking
- excessive noise
Etc.
And we impose fines for all of those — under the consistent logic that you can’t infringe on others use of public space with your own.
I’m glad that you can admit this is not about your usage of public spaces though — it’s just about you wanting to be a nuisance to others without consequence.
No, it's not about wanting to be a nuisance. Please don't claim I said things I didn't.
It's about not wanting to outlaw every possible nuisance. And you're right -- we do outlaw plenty of things. But we also have to draw the line somewhere.
Jaywalking is a great example. It was finally repealed in NYC. Since it's fundamentally a pedestrian-first city.
And public photography is one of those things where it's such a tiny nuisance, and the cost of regulating it would be so onerous, that we wisely choose not to.
