Privacy vs Public Recording: Where Should the Law Draw the Line?

We have the right to privacy and also have the right/ freedom to record in public spaces. These are two significant rights. It's quite difficult to balance both, because the law doesn't prohibit public videos, it only becomes an issue when the intention is to ridicule, embarrass or mock a person.

It's quite funny that people expect to be private in public places. This can be compared to attending a seminar or program and intending to sue them for making a video of your face in their program. I believe if you really want to stay private, then you can avoid visiting certain places. Asking for privacy in a public space is almost impossible.

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There's a very low expectation of privacy in a place full of people, especially in this time and age when everyone wants to take a picture or keep documentaries of their life for content.

If finding yourself in a strangers video should be treated as a criminal offense, then it should be based on the person's intentions, not because you appeared in their pictures or videos accidentally.

I understand no one loves or wants their face to appear in a strangers pictures or video online without their consent. I also don't like it, but if it wasn't captured to mock, defame my reputation or even embarrass me, I can't treat it as a criminal offense.

We can all agree that these public videos capture authentic moments most times, help with different documentation, like events, accidents, crimes and many others.

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Noone steps into a public place and expects to be private, there's visibility in the public, people get to see you, observe you, and when seen overtime they have a memory of what you look like in their head.

In this time, if you choose to be private, then you just have to make up your mind to stay indoors, because there's also CCTV cameras capturing. The fear isn't just for content creators, we also have tourists around to capture memorable moments, film makers looking for originality in every video and pictures they capture and the journalists reporting events.

It's almost impossible to stay private. The only way to stay private might be to stay indoors for the longest, and you have the right to do that too.

I also understand how people feel about their videos being on the Internet with millions of views and most times the public might see a reason to just make you a topic of discussion, bring up false assumptions, create a trend with your look or even use your facial expressions as stickers. It's something I wouldn't like to happen to me and I understand how others feel about this too. I see these a lot, but I can't totally blame the creator either, because they were just doing their things and you came around unknowingly to them. Unwanted exposure on the Internet really hurts, considering how people drop different opinions about others to ridicule them.

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The law should be against those who do it deliberately, with the intention of mocking, harassing and damaging a person, because I can understand appearing accidentally, but when it's deliberately done to mock a person, they should face the law.

To me, that's a harmful use of people's image and defamation. Nobody will be happy with that, and they have the right to seek for justice and sue the offender. This gives room to cyberbullying, defaming their character, an invasion of their privacy and a content created to humiliate them.

To protect our rights to privacy and freedom, a fair point would be that people should be allowed to make their videos in public places, but should face consequences if they record others with the intention of harming them, damaging their reputation , exposing them to Cyberbullying and other mischievous experience that would affect them emotionally and mentally.
While exercising your creative freedom, it's necessary to also respect other people's privacy and make your videos responsibly.