7 ms·
This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing
by brownbat 13y ago
This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing my strange hobbies or sexual practices or other private practices so long as, and this is huge, there's no public interest).
I know Idaho was a late adopter to the tort, while many other states committed the tort to statute. They may just be coming around.
The best argument for harmonizing it with first amendment law is in a Yale Law Journal note from 1973:
> [F]ree speech is protected not for some intrinsic value of speech but because it is a necessary condition for the making of informed decisions about matters of government, decisions which all citizens in a democracy are called on to make....He who performs his listening and deciding functions in a glass house is coerced by public opinion, whether anyone is actually looking in or not. If every magazine he reads, every rally he attends, every person he speaks to might somehow become a matter of public knowledge, he would feel inhibiting pressure.
David B. Roe, "Privacy in the First Amendment," 82 Yale L.J. 1462.
That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituents or abusing their family, the public has a right to know.
Farmers abusing animals is at least slightly harder, because whether or not that's a matter of public concern hinges on the conclusions we've made about animal rights. If we live in a world where animals are robotic automatons deserving of no relevant moral consideration, then these are probably private, embarassing facts that don't bear any exposure. If we live in a world where the pain and suffering of animals is valued very near as to the pain and suffering of humans, ie, heeding Peter Singer's allegations of "speciesism," then these are absolutely 100% public facts.
We don't live in either of those worlds though. We live in this messy, complicated, in between world where we are still trying to figure out where animal rights rank between those two extremes.
Probably the best argument that these are public facts would note that outlining the actual practices under consideration (ie, literal animal rape and torture) help us determine which part of that spectrum we're in, because it helps animal rights activists note that their depictions are not absurd hypotheticals.
Probably the best argument on the other side is a claim that footage is cherry picked out of a much larger sample, that this activity happens exceedingly rarely, and the footage is closer to malicious slander or misrepresentation. (Not sure if that's true, but if it is, it would be a relevant consideration.)
- classicsnoot 13y agoDISCLAIMER/DISCLOSURE: i am not a lawyer. i am a near radical animal rights couchtavist. Aren't there Federal statutes that lay out what animal abuse is? I know the Law views animals as property, but in regards to dogs,cats, etc. there are rules about how you treat them. Do bovine, equine, and poultry animals not fall under these protections? Obviously i could be completely off base...
- matthewsimon 13y agoThe federal Animal Welfare Act specifically does not apply to farm animals, and many state statutes also make specific exceptions for agricultural operations. Cf. http://awic.nal.usda.gov/farm-animals http://awic.nal.usda.gov/farm-animals
- classicsnoot 13y agoThank you for teh link.
- ama729 13y agoThanks for providing your input! > That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituents or abusing their family, the public has a right to know. Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat?
- brownbat 13y ago> Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat? Oh, big warning. I'm using a general common law tort to interpret a new criminal statute, but only to talk about social fairness involved in policies in a really generic, high level way. Much of my analysis won't apply at all to violations of this statute. You've hit on exactly one such area. I don't know the extent of any "public right to know" exception to this law... I was really just laying out the social considerations at play on both sides when considering a law like this. That was probably really confusing. If you're talking about the tort, the strength of that bar is probably highly dependent upon your jurisdiction or even your judge. No idea. EDIT: The lack of a provision to allow publicly relevant facts, however the legislature defines those, may hurt the law's chances under first amendment analysis, as Zak points out. May bump any review up to something called "strict scrutiny" (which in practice almost always means the law fails). Criminalizing the "collection" of information instead of its release may inoculate the law from some challenges, but I'd still like to read more privacy case law before making a call on that (that's probably the single biggest question here, I'd love pointers here from anyone who has done more privacy research.)