Comment by wongarsu
5 months ago
Europe provides plenty of examples of how this can work. The implementation varies from country to country, but the common thread is that you need a lot of subtlety. Rules like "it's fine to photograph a street full of people, but if you focus on a single person you need their consent" and "you can photograph a busy street for artistic reasons, but the same photograph is illegal if the intent is collecting data about the people or vehicles in the shot, unless it's for research or education"
Those strike me as problematic. It strikes me as a big problem if I've got to navigate some fuzzy line about how much I am perceived to focus on someone every time I take a photo in public. Who decides too much focus is too much? How do they decide? How do I defend my artistic intent for every photo in public?
I understand how if you wave away all concepts of fallibility or enforceability, you can say to people, "It's cool that all this data exists, just don't be creepy," but you can't wave those concepts away.
Ultimately it gets decided the same way all matters of law are ultimately decided: a judge decides. How this is strange to you is strange to me.
When you make bad law that involves trying to apply a fuzzy rule to a fuzzy situation, judges make bad calls. And you also make it possible for people to be very harassed by bringing cases to court where it's not possible to easily dismiss them (because the rule is fuzzy and there isn't a clear standard to dismiss) so even if the judge makes a good call, you've punished good behavior.
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