> > From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Situations like this don't get dealt with very well by the people > concerned. > Generally, it ends up in a fist fight. Often some kind of confrontation but I think rarely in physical violence. <snip> > Photographers pull out that old mantra, but they hypocritically > ignore that the person in the viewfinder also has the right to do > what is legal, without interference. Is taking a photograph of them, per se, interference? The answer, I suspect is: if they notice and object, then it is. But how do you differentiate between the person taking pictures for their personal, er, satisfaction and those being taken for genuine public interest? In the present example, what if you had noticed that a certain Saudi bogeyman was on the beach with his topless, obviously non-Muslim girlfriend? Would a picture of that situation not be in the public interest? How do you legislate for one and not the other? <snip> > The irony is that the photographers themselves are, for the most > part, the ones responsible for the very laws that they are now > whining about. Only some of them and they are pandering to public taste. It's the backhanded part of the cult of celebrity that is infesting "Western" culture at present. The celebs might want us to see them perfectly toned and coiffed but I honestly don't think they can complain if someone catches them looking less than perfect. That's the price you pay for making appearance the premise of your existence. The really sad part is the "ordinary" people who will abuse themselves in all sorts of ways to gain some slice of this nebulous world and, as Bill says, the ones who are carrying out their lives and become caught up in it. Overall, though, we need to keep our freedom to record the activities of public behaviour. Not for the "freedom" aspect (I don't want this to sound like a transposed gun lobby argument) but for the perfectly good reasons that it will both provide us with a superb historical archive and it just may cause some people to re-evaluate their public behaviour if they know someone will be recording it. I know the second part of that can work the other way but that brings us back to the last sentecne of my second paragraph. mike ----------------------------------------- Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/
