8 ms·

It's frustrating to see how tech is consistently unable to implement systematic yet fair solutions that are possible in law. Not that people aren't genuinely tr

It's frustrating to see how tech is consistently unable to implement systematic yet fair solutions that are possible in law. Not that people aren't genuinely trying - but the nature of automation and the design of platforms just seem at odds with working privacy. German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). But it implements fine-grained exceptions for people of national importance - either globally (i.e. politicians who remain so) or temporarily (i.e. you may take photographs of such people for a time but no longer when they have ceased to be famous).

jfk13 5y ago
> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear definition of "a photo of people"? Taking a close-up portrait of a random stranger in public would be one extreme (and I guess most people would agree it should require permission). Presumably a photo of my kids and their friends having fun at the park is still clearly "a photo of people", and therefore also requires permission. But if I take a photo of a street scene in Berlin, do I have to get permission from every passer-by who happens to appear? How about a landscape photo where I only realise later, on reviewing the picture, that there were a couple of hikers on a distant hill? To my mind, that's not "a photo of people", yet there are people in the photo. Somewhere between the extremes, it seems to me there's an awfully wide grey area.
- okasaki 5y ago
  Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    Just because there might be a grey area doesn't mean it's arbitrary. 99% of cases are going to be pretty clear.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Most of the time, the prohibition is on distribution. And it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. A street scene in Berlin where you barely see people's faces or two hikers on a distant hill wouldn't be problematic.
  - CodesInChaos 5y ago
    > it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. I think the law needs to be updated, since face recognition software is now available.
- morsch 5y ago
  Edited to preface: I'm not a lawyer, I'm mostly paraphrasing and translating the source below. There are three cases where you can publish[1] a photo without consent: - Person of special public interest (literally: person of contemporary history, this is an idiomatic term and sounds less strange in German), which means you can take a picture of a politician holding a speech or an artist doing a public performance or a CEO addressing employees. Important exception for professionals, but there are various rules one needs to be aware of, for instance you probably cannot take a photo of the same CEO buying new shoes or eating dinner at a restaurant. - The photograph does not primarily depict the person. Your landscape photo would be fine, for example, and your street scene may or may not be. Apparently the test criterion is: is the picture materially changed if the person is removed? So a photo of a beach landscape is permissible, but not so much if there's people bathing in the foreground. - The photo is of a public gathering: a public concert, a political rally, though this only applies if it's a photo of the gathering as a whole, and not specifically an individual in it. So, yes, in the end it is a bit of a case of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". In practice, you just err on the side of caution, and it works out fine. E.g. I don't really worry about if when I take a photo of a friend outside and there's a few people in the background (due to rule #2). Source (German): https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/158-recht-am-eigenen-bild-personenfoto.html https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/... [1] I'm not sure how the law handles the case of merely taking a photo and never publishing it, nor what exactly constitutes publishing, e.g. presumably showing holiday snaps at a family gathering does not constitute publishing
  - interactivecode 5y ago
    publishing usualy mean "making public" so showing photos in a private context is obviously not public.
    - morsch 5y ago
      That obviously makes sense to me, but IANAL, so I'll refrain from making any definitive judgement. A huge percentage of pictures are immediately shared with a third party (by being uploaded to the cloud). Beyond that, while the rules outlined above deal with publishing, there are also rules for merely taking pictures. The exact rules for that aren't 100% clear to me[1], but if it's permissible to publish them, it must also be permissible to take the photo in the first place. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutschland)#(Blo%C3%9Fes)_Erstellen_von_Bildern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch... it seems complicated
noduerme 5y ago
What do you think about the French law that didn't pass, which would have made it illegal to upload photos of the police? Arguably, the actions of police officers are more of a public concern than those of national politicians, but they also fall into the category of non-famous people.
vadfa 5y ago
Yeah, Germany has the best laws regarding speech: https://www.courthousenews.com/german-nationalist-wins-injunction-against-facebook/ https://www.courthousenews.com/german-nationalist-wins-injun...
- noduerme 5y ago
  I say this as a Jew... I never thought it was a good idea to criminalize nazi or antisemitic speech in Germany. Ultimately any speech ban will be turned against the people who think they're doing good by enforcing it. Having said that, her speech is banned and her accuser's speech is banned, and this may be better overall than the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time.
  - vadfa 5y ago
    So impeding the speech of two people is a better outcome than impeding the speech of none? I don't get it. >the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time So don't read them, as easy as that.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g
    - noduerme 5y ago
      > So impeding the speech of two people is a better outcome than impeding the speech of none? I don't get it. I mean, it's not a better strategy and it's not right - what I'm trying to say is that impeding one person's speech leads to impeding another person's speech, and that's how you end up with totalitarianism, regardless of who's in control. The trouble is that whoever speaks loudest never respects the mechanism that allowed them to speak in the first place, or extends that right to anyone else. So as to what leads to a better outcome, I'd say the results aren't in yet.
    - gherkinnn 5y ago
kortilla 5y ago
> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public This is clearly not true though. People end up in other peoples’ photos all of the time without permission. So it sounds like a bullshit law that can be used to arbitrarily string people up rather than anything actually enforceable or reasonable.
- disgu 5y ago
  You cannot take a picture of a person where the person is the subject of the photo. This is not the case when you take a picture of a statue and there's people in the background, for example.
  - soco 5y ago
    You can, as long you're not using it for publications. The usage on your own blog or Facebook account is allowed but the line is drawn at billboards, on TV or such (larger) channels. For those you must have an agreement.
    - disgu 5y ago
      This is not true and hasn't been for a while. It used to basically be a grey area but courts have repeatedly stated that just taking the picture was not allowed even if there wasn't ever any intention of publishing it anywhere. You would have to justify it anyway and personal rights in Germany always trump the rights of others to create art, for example. You'll find many cases that are about surveillance cameras as well and even there's it's often in favor of the person not wanting to be on camera. https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Text=VI+ZR+272%2F94 https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Text=VI... http://lrbw.juris.de/cgi-bin/laender_rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bw&nr=10275 http://lrbw.juris.de/cgi-bin/laender_rechtsprechung/document...
    - throwaway525142 5y ago
      I think Facebook isn't covered because the uploader needs to give Facebook all rights over the image which they can't.
uniqueuid 5y ago
As many people have pointed out, the primary protection in this law is on publishing. However, there are also penal codes preventing the mere taking of pictures where intimate privacy is affected, i.e. in intimate situations, in your own home, or when you are helpless (i.e. when injured in public).
- soco 5y ago
  Exactly. If I take a picture of you standing naked in front of your first floor window, it's totally acceptable, you should have expected to be noticed. However if I use a teleobjective to photograph you getting naked out of the shower on the twelfth floor, that's an invasion of your privacy - because your expectations were different.
csee 5y ago
Unable or unwilling? If their network effects endow them with an impenetrable moat, why would they voluntarily spend lots of money to address a problem that harms only a minority of customers and isn't substantial enough to drive people off the platform?
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
it's impossible to make a fair censorship rule. >German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). So everything from the videos showing Kyle Rittenhouse doing nothing illegal, to Chauvin videos providing evidence that he killed George Floyd wouldn't be allowed in Germany. Got it.

jfk13 5y ago

> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Is there a clear definition of "a photo of people"? Taking a close-up portrait of a random stranger in public would be one extreme (and I guess most people would agree it should require permission). Presumably a photo of my kids and their friends having fun at the park is still clearly "a photo of people", and therefore also requires permission. But if I take a photo of a street scene in Berlin, do I have to get permission from every passer-by who happens to appear? How about a landscape photo where I only realise later, on reviewing the picture, that there were a couple of hikers on a distant hill? To my mind, that's not "a photo of people", yet there are people in the photo. Somewhere between the extremes, it seems to me there's an awfully wide grey area.

okasaki 5y ago
Yeah, who knows. It's arbitrary and probably depends mostly on how long it's been since the judge has had a meal* when they are making their decision. For some bizarre reason things like this are thought of as very enlightened when done in Europe, but would be seen as authoritarian and dystopian if done anywhere else. * https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Just because there might be a grey area doesn't mean it's arbitrary. 99% of cases are going to be pretty clear.
gjulianm 5y ago
> I'm curious how this is expected to work in practice. Most of the time, the prohibition is on distribution. And it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. A street scene in Berlin where you barely see people's faces or two hikers on a distant hill wouldn't be problematic.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  > it's only applicable when the people in the picture can be reasonably identified. I think the law needs to be updated, since face recognition software is now available.
morsch 5y ago
Edited to preface: I'm not a lawyer, I'm mostly paraphrasing and translating the source below. There are three cases where you can publish[1] a photo without consent: - Person of special public interest (literally: person of contemporary history, this is an idiomatic term and sounds less strange in German), which means you can take a picture of a politician holding a speech or an artist doing a public performance or a CEO addressing employees. Important exception for professionals, but there are various rules one needs to be aware of, for instance you probably cannot take a photo of the same CEO buying new shoes or eating dinner at a restaurant. - The photograph does not primarily depict the person. Your landscape photo would be fine, for example, and your street scene may or may not be. Apparently the test criterion is: is the picture materially changed if the person is removed? So a photo of a beach landscape is permissible, but not so much if there's people bathing in the foreground. - The photo is of a public gathering: a public concert, a political rally, though this only applies if it's a photo of the gathering as a whole, and not specifically an individual in it. So, yes, in the end it is a bit of a case of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". In practice, you just err on the side of caution, and it works out fine. E.g. I don't really worry about if when I take a photo of a friend outside and there's a few people in the background (due to rule #2). Source (German): https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/158-recht-am-eigenen-bild-personenfoto.html https://www.medienrecht-urheberrecht.de/fotorecht-bildrecht/... [1] I'm not sure how the law handles the case of merely taking a photo and never publishing it, nor what exactly constitutes publishing, e.g. presumably showing holiday snaps at a family gathering does not constitute publishing
- interactivecode 5y ago
  publishing usualy mean "making public" so showing photos in a private context is obviously not public.
  - morsch 5y ago
    That obviously makes sense to me, but IANAL, so I'll refrain from making any definitive judgement. A huge percentage of pictures are immediately shared with a third party (by being uploaded to the cloud). Beyond that, while the rules outlined above deal with publishing, there are also rules for merely taking pictures. The exact rules for that aren't 100% clear to me[1], but if it's permissible to publish them, it must also be permissible to take the photo in the first place. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutschland)#(Blo%C3%9Fes)_Erstellen_von_Bildern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild_(Deutsch... it seems complicated

noduerme 5y ago

What do you think about the French law that didn't pass, which would have made it illegal to upload photos of the police? Arguably, the actions of police officers are more of a public concern than those of national politicians, but they also fall into the category of non-famous people.

vadfa 5y ago

Yeah, Germany has the best laws regarding speech: https://www.courthousenews.com/german-nationalist-wins-injunction-against-facebook/ https://www.courthousenews.com/german-nationalist-wins-injun...

noduerme 5y ago
I say this as a Jew... I never thought it was a good idea to criminalize nazi or antisemitic speech in Germany. Ultimately any speech ban will be turned against the people who think they're doing good by enforcing it. Having said that, her speech is banned and her accuser's speech is banned, and this may be better overall than the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time.
- vadfa 5y ago
  So impeding the speech of two people is a better outcome than impeding the speech of none? I don't get it. >the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time So don't read them, as easy as that.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g
  - noduerme 5y ago
    > So impeding the speech of two people is a better outcome than impeding the speech of none? I don't get it. I mean, it's not a better strategy and it's not right - what I'm trying to say is that impeding one person's speech leads to impeding another person's speech, and that's how you end up with totalitarianism, regardless of who's in control. The trouble is that whoever speaks loudest never respects the mechanism that allowed them to speak in the first place, or extends that right to anyone else. So as to what leads to a better outcome, I'd say the results aren't in yet.
  - gherkinnn 5y ago

kortilla 5y ago

> you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public This is clearly not true though. People end up in other peoples’ photos all of the time without permission. So it sounds like a bullshit law that can be used to arbitrarily string people up rather than anything actually enforceable or reasonable.

disgu 5y ago
You cannot take a picture of a person where the person is the subject of the photo. This is not the case when you take a picture of a statue and there's people in the background, for example.
- soco 5y ago
  You can, as long you're not using it for publications. The usage on your own blog or Facebook account is allowed but the line is drawn at billboards, on TV or such (larger) channels. For those you must have an agreement.
  - disgu 5y ago
    This is not true and hasn't been for a while. It used to basically be a grey area but courts have repeatedly stated that just taking the picture was not allowed even if there wasn't ever any intention of publishing it anywhere. You would have to justify it anyway and personal rights in Germany always trump the rights of others to create art, for example. You'll find many cases that are about surveillance cameras as well and even there's it's often in favor of the person not wanting to be on camera. https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Text=VI+ZR+272%2F94 https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Text=VI... http://lrbw.juris.de/cgi-bin/laender_rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bw&nr=10275 http://lrbw.juris.de/cgi-bin/laender_rechtsprechung/document...
  - throwaway525142 5y ago
    I think Facebook isn't covered because the uploader needs to give Facebook all rights over the image which they can't.

uniqueuid 5y ago

As many people have pointed out, the primary protection in this law is on publishing. However, there are also penal codes preventing the mere taking of pictures where intimate privacy is affected, i.e. in intimate situations, in your own home, or when you are helpless (i.e. when injured in public).

soco 5y ago
Exactly. If I take a picture of you standing naked in front of your first floor window, it's totally acceptable, you should have expected to be noticed. However if I use a teleobjective to photograph you getting naked out of the shower on the twelfth floor, that's an invasion of your privacy - because your expectations were different.

csee 5y ago

Unable or unwilling? If their network effects endow them with an impenetrable moat, why would they voluntarily spend lots of money to address a problem that harms only a minority of customers and isn't substantial enough to drive people off the platform?

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

it's impossible to make a fair censorship rule. >German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). So everything from the videos showing Kyle Rittenhouse doing nothing illegal, to Chauvin videos providing evidence that he killed George Floyd wouldn't be allowed in Germany. Got it.