Posted: 3/17/2005 1:12:38 PM EDT
I posted this link (liberal - I know) www.krages.com/phoright.htm on my photography forum and someone posted this:
I don't know how to answer this. I thought if there were no laws, then it was a right? Any ideas? |
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I read the lawyer's PDF file and it appears to be consistent with my own understanding of the laws involving photography! Trust me, though, IF you photograph someone's child even in a public place, prepare to get your nose punched and your camera likely destroyed. Additionally, IF you photograph law enforcement officers, you will likely be told no, and your camera confiscated. In other words, you may have the right to do many things with your camera, it just may be that you won't be able to get away with a lot of things with your camera. Eric The(FreeAsABird..InACage)Hun 
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That is the way I understood it except for the confiscating the camera. IMO the police are the same as the congress men who are being photographed on live TV now on the hearing that shouldn't be even happening. BTW, if someone is taking my kids pic in the park, they will hear about it. |
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You are right, this is a tricky one. The basic tenet of Constitutional rights is that you have rights until the process of you exercising your rights infringes on someone else’s ability to exercise their rights. I think that we can all agree on this point. You have the right to take all the photographs you want and present them in any manner that you choose as this is exercising free speech and expression. However, this does not apply to illegal acts such as child porn for example. Again, I think we can all agree here. The question here, is not one of freedom of speech or expression, but one of a right to privacy. Does your right to take a photograph of me unduly violate my right to privacy? This is the real question, and that is difficult to answer. If I am inside my house, and you shoot pictures of me changing clothes, that is a clear violation, right? Not always so! Some state laws are writing in a way that inadvertently allows landlords to place “surveillance cameras” without your knowledge. If I am in a public place and you take my picture, does that violate my right to privacy? At the park? Probably not. At a nude beach? Probably. Going into a strip club? Probably. The courts have also ruled that celebrities and public figures have a diminished expectation of privacy, so taking a picture of the president or a movie star is hardly ever a violation of privacy. Just some food for thought. |