I wonder if it's a generational or cultural difference present in the comments here.
I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded all the time.
I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger than me.
There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship.
I find photos and videos to both be invasive and unwanted.
I’ve been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on social media or in marketing material. I’m not ok with it and I get incredible uncomfortable when I’m in some weird position to do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so many of today’s youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+, and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing picture of video that might surface later.
I’ve seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.
I am assuming you have no good alternatives regarding your gym? Because if you feel uncomfortable with the behaviour of the owners, you should really vote with your wallet.
Classes are a different story, but at least for the legion of would-be gymfluencers that show up in gyms frequented by us zoomers, there's an easy solution: tell them to please not film you. If they don't comply, mess up their video. Deliberately walk across the camera. Deliberately get in the way. Take the machine against which they're resting a cell phone and start using it. Make funny faces. Whatever.
More people should understand you are no more morally obligated to behave sociably toward those exhibiting antisocial behavior than you are to stay your hand from a man who hits you.
Then there are those who film in the locker rooms which arguably should be reason to ban them from said gyms.
Imo these types should stick to "influencer gyms". They exist. Alphaland in Texas is a great example; a friend of mine frequented it as she started her bodybuilding page. Worked great for her. Just stay the hell out of the "normal people" gyms.
My kids are in elementary and middle school and there was an occasion where they were at a birthday party where an older sibling was live streaming the event.
Both my kids (and me) found it very off-putting, so there's some anecdata that at least some young kids still feel it's an invasion of privacy.
There are lots of young people who have some conception and respect of privacy and there are people who haven't. That's not a generational thing.. It's just that those without awareness of boundaries have now all the tech that screams in their face to stream everything to the world without consent. I can assure you that still lots of young folks are annoyed by those people.
My own anecdotal experience is that the generational gap is actually the inverse of what was described above. Younger people seem to be very much moree acutely aware of the dangers of publicity and much more guarded about what they do in public if it could potentially end up online.
I’m currently wedding planning and regularly visit a wedding planning forum. I was left flabbergasted the other day when someone posted if it would be ok to ask guests to not post pictures of the couple on social media. They’re ok with guests posting pictures of themselves or of the venue and decor, they just don’t really want pictures of the bride and groom.
The response ranged from “you can ask but you can’t prevent people from posting” to “it’d be rude and inconsiderate to even ask”. One person even argued that it would be rude and other people would judge them if they went to a wedding and didn’t have a picture of the bride and groom.
I don’t think I ever felt the generational divide as acutely as in reading those responses, and I’m not even that old, I had social media when I was in high school.
This gets asked at basically every wedding I've been to in the UK i.e. there is a professional photographer, please don't take photos of the bride and groom in the church and it still gets ignored. At my own wedding, one of the guests (not even someone invited to the whole day, just a neighbour of my wife's parents who knew her growing up) is leaning out of the aisle with their phone taking photos ruining a load of photos.
It's incredibly frustrating. I also think it's really strange that when something happens in public, the default isn't to look to see if the person isn't OK anymore, it's to pull out a camera phone and start filming.
It could be more that those hanging around on wedding planning forums aren't really representative of the younger generation. If it's a wish of the couple, they should clearly communicate this on the invitation.
I went to a middle eastern wedding recently and they gave everyone these phone pouches to keep their phones in that were locked for the event's duration.
I attended my first GenZ wedding a couple of months ago and they (someone on behalf of the couple) announced this request. It applied specifically to the wedding itself, not the post-wedding party (at the same venue).
Certainly the first time it had ever come up, but it made sense to me. If you're invited to someone's wedding, it's only natural to respect their wishes.
Anyone finding it rude would find themselves not only on the "formerly invited and definitely not welcome" list. But also on the "good riddance, it was nice having known you once" list.
People with such little respect for boundaries are just not welcome in my life.
I'm from Gen Z and the idea of being filmed and published online without my consent sounds like a nightmare.
It is my belief that it's an invasion of privacy (even in a public space) and questionable from a (cyber)security perspective.
In France we got the Droit à l'image (Right to the image) which makes it illegal to post images or videos of people online without their consent, so that may be why that feels very strange to me.
And yet it happens thousands (or more) times a day. Even in the US there is the idea of publicity rights--I can't use an easily identifiable photo of you in an ad or other marketing materials. But posting on Flickr or wherever where someone hasn't shoved a camera in your face but you're easily identifiable?
France - where the 'Society of the Spectacle' was written by Guy Debord in the 1960s, where he predicted late stage capitalism as being mediated by images, so rather than reality, human existence and relationships between people are 'mediated by images'.
This is at the heart of what is going on. Society of the Spectacle is not an easy read, but it most definitely is pertinent to what is going on. Instagram is the final boss!
> I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I’d argue photos can be more invasive. If someone makes a 10 minute video and you’re somewhere in the background for 5 seconds, no one may ever notice. Furthermore, with compression artefacts for motion you may become difficult to recognise.
But if you’re in a photo, people will be looking at it for longer and are thus most likely to notice you and possibly zoom in on you with all the quality the static sensor provides.
Furthermore, photographs have greater potential to create false narratives. A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
> A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
Taking a screenshot from a video for exactly this reason is incredibly common. Look at any photograph accompanying a political story about a figure from "the other party".
See for example this Reddit post about the "triggered" meme origin:
> Ironically, if you ever get a chance to see the video of this incident, this woman and the man she's speaking with are actually having a polite discussion. But... She has very animated facial expressions and the photographer just happened to catch this frame at an inopportune moment.
So it seems to me that since a video is simply thousands of photographs with a soundtrack, video is strictly more invasive than photography.
you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.
> To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a implied requirement.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other people who have similar interests on whichever terms they like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form of commonly understood communication is present.
Likewise the people who do want to establish certain requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part of either culture or community unless a specific club within those forms around publication.
I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera / security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
Or look at newsreels, or news reports from ... any time up to the 2010s. Obviously people's faces weren't blurred before we had the tech to do it. It's some entirely new, modern prissiness. It screws up the documenting of social history when you can't see any faces. There's been an internet fad for restored film of street scenes from 1915 or so: imagine if all the faces were blurred to protect the privacy of people who no longer care, that would suck.
I mean, I feel like the mindset of privacy and no one can have photos of me is a fairly recent phenomenon. Parents or grandparents definitely had books photos of everyone important to them and probably would have found it weird for someone to ask not to be photographed.
I’m Gen Z and I get how someone could be annoyed by this, but it’s also just part of life. I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night. But you have to accept that being around other people means some people do things you aren’t a fan of.
Smoking in restaurants and bars used to be a part of life, until it wasn’t. It took about 5 years for that shift to roll out pretty much everywhere. And it’s so much nicer without it.
There’s nothing stopping us from saying this sucks, it’s socially toxic, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.
That's a completely ridiculous comparison. Pointlessly honking or smoking does not create a public record of your activities shared globally without your consent.
Yeah? Who said that? Any selfish person can say the same about anything. "Yeah my dog shat your lawn but that's just part of life. Deal with it". What's part of life is different for everyone.
>I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night.
Yeah that's annoying, but neither the smoke or the honk are records of your private life published without consent on the internet, forever. So apples and oranges.
your way of thinking shows clearly your lack of comprehension on the subject... you didn't experience the world before the internet, so you think that the internet is "part of life". Let me tell you as someone that helped build it, that it isn't part of life. It's something that we made up, like our ancestors build the railways. Those were neither part of life. Unike the addiction to social media that was carefully engineered by top class psychologists, without anyone realizing. That shouldn't be part of life, but here we are :(
That's the solution. You don't want to be recorded? Attend "no-recording" event. If there are no such events, tough luck. Market is not obligated to serve your particular needs. If you thing enough people care, organize it yourself.
These kids have been on camera since they were in the womb. The delivery had a pro videographer. Parents had baby monitors with a video feed, later a nanny cam. Schools had cameras in the classrooms and busses from before first grade. Higher grades onwards all their peers had smartphones and social media accounts.
Some middle aged dude who doesn't want to be on video makes no sense to them, like that weird uncle of yours who in 2010 had no phone or email address.
It is very much cultural. In the 2000's I moved from Japan where they're very strict about public filming/taking pictures (it's something you don't do, period) to the US where people were uploading photos to Flickr and tagging people there. Completely different worlds, and we're not even talking about Gen Z because none of them were old enough to be even teenagers.
That seems weird to me. I remember in the pre-smartphone days when Japanese were the nationality whose tourists were snapping pictures everywhere and group photos in business settings was the norm when Americans at least were sort of thinking weird but whatever.
It is primarily a cultural one. You won't find many countries with the "well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces" opinion outside the anglo-saxon world.
The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the anglo-saxon sphere but legally it inherited the strict EU personality rights.
I'm a youtuber to support my programming project, and I see many people in my situation being a lot more shy about doing that. It's a lot of work to do it properly and takes dedicated attention to not have your parasocial community turn sour or vicious on you: it's no joke.
I wonder how much of this is people expecting that ANY media presence will throw them into the troubles people experience when they have all the media presence. I know if I blow up big enough (not much of a threat right now) that someone will come to hurt me, no matter how I am. That's not about me, it's about statistics. If I blew up that big I could probably afford security…
I think some people assume you'll be confronted with that sort of problem right away just by appearing on youtube etc. Sure you will… eventually. Or if you're staggeringly unlucky.
From a professional perspective, I never worried much and I'm pretty sure it helped me. But I totally understand if there were/are people who are very concerned about putting themselves "out there" when there is at least a remote possibility of some offhand remark or paragraph costing them their job.
I don't even understand how photos are less invasive of privacy. I try not to be too weird about it, but overall I dislike getting photos taken of me. Why should I put up with that if I want to participate in a hobby?
I think the generational fracture may cut the other way. My impression, consistent with the polls, is that the younger generations are much more willing to embrace authoritarianism when it advances their personal values and interests. They think that the threat of violence from the state to prevent others from forming an opinion of them based on information they don't control is perfectly acceptable. Laissez-faire is passé.
Sadly the problem is only going to become bigger with upcoming smart glasses once masses adopt it, everyone will be recording each other without consent.
In the event of litigation (in court or in the public sphere), one would be at a disadvantage if they don’t have video of their side.
Like how you should have a dash cam for your side in a vehicle collision. Although, maybe sufficiently convincing fake videos will make it a moot point in the future.
I think it'll just desensitize people. Long time ago a kiss on a movie theatre screen was enough to make people protest and leave in indignation. Now everybody is few taps away from hardcore porn all the time and not many people care.
Yeah, I feel like the new generation are recorded and published to the world literally on their first breath, right up until their funeral.
We had this idea that privacy violation is like pollution. But now it's like how our generation is used to plastic in the ocean and never seeing all the stars. It's just life.
I think there is an age range where all this "posting" has been normalized, but outside of that generation it's not appreciated. I'm old enough that this kind of shit is still taboo to me, and I know my young kid and her friends are all deeply aware of who's being photographed, and what to share online and what not to. All the kids seem to deliberately distinguish between photo/video of objects and of people around them, when they go to post things. They're definitely aware and careful. It's this middle age range of maybe 25-45 year olds (?) where a sizable number of people are just careless or even accept casual posting of other people's photos and video.
> There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
And there's such a focus on the law and expectation of privacy in public places in these comments. There's a huge difference between someone complaining about being recorded in a small hobby community and complaining about being filmed on a public street.
My theory is that those "you just have to accept it" people are unwilling or unable to confront their own wrongdoing. Out of principle, and also triggered by the recent "AI uses all data available" situation I've tried to voice my disagreement when someone was talking a foto of me. The reactions were all around the same: Nobody was willing to just say "Sorry, of course thats your choice". everyone had some lame excuse or was trying to pressure me socially. "But my brother is deaf and just wanted to show it to his friends". As if I care if someone has a disability or not, especially since I am blind myself.
To sum it up, in my experience, people are just not willing to respect your boundaries if you make them aware they overstepped yours. They will always go for some excuse, instead of just accepting they erred.
I don't think its so much an age thing. Plenty in the younger generations are more careful what they put online than older people, because they have grown up/are growing up in an environment where it's a thing actually happening and they see the problems, and "I (believe I) can legally do this, so I will do it and don't care what you think" is a common attitude in older generations too, combined with lack of belief in the harms.
I'm not sure about generational. We take our baby to swimming classes where it is forbidden to take photos or record video — except on the family day. It's always the millennial or boomer parents/grandparents recording stuff and breaking that simple rule.
I think it's a matter of rudeness or carelessness about other people's rights and wellbeing. I want to record this so screw the rules and other babies' privacy.
The classes are pretty mixed, it's Belgium after all. If anything perhaps the next generation is so exposed to TikTok that they might find things less compelling to record? I can't say.
I wish respect and treasuring things without video evidence were on the rise.
I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
Just as the author says: “Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.”
It doesn’t fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100% legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around them deserve social consequences.
Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it would be hunky dory if societies considered what “privacy in public” looks like in the modern age, and came to the conclusions like “no dragnets pls”.
You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have this any longer.
While I think we all agree that this is crucially important, for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons in perpetuity.
I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I happen to be in the area.
I have no problem with that, but there are a lot of commenters here arguing that it should be enforced at a legal level, rather than a social rules level.
For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government to police the photos people take and share of people in public spaces.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just part of the deal.
I don’t think some people have thought about the second-order effects of things like requiring model release forms for everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power over others, not simply people who simply want to protect themselves.
When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what they want you to see.
I don't think the author was arguing at all that these things should be illegal, more just that there should be more consideration of other people's preferences where possible.
It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that as improper socially.
>I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
> I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic.
My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining accountability.
Part of the issue is, big portion of the footage being recorded, is not worth recording, let alone publishing. (Except for personal value of the person recording, but that doesn't require public sharing)
With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video. Without other participants, there would be little 'content'. Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone else, and publishing just that.
Not to mention "auditors", whose goal is to use the ambiguous nature of feels-like-a-privacy-invasion-but-legally-isnt when you stick a camera in someone's face in a public place to try and get a rise out of people and prance around as victim.
I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for personal/professional purposes
You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation not to film without consent.
We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not flip that?
I think the context of the original article is important: at an airsoft range, you’re on private property. You’ve signed a waiver to be there, there’s already rules to follow. Having formal rules for filming would be a totally reasonable and practical thing to do.
Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming TikTok’s and some aren’t, an airsoft range could have camera or no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
It's always a possibility that the owners of the range have already considered this and found there is virtually no market for no-camera days. Excluding your most enthusiastic members to include a miniscule number of camera-shy weirdos is unlikely to pay off.
The venues for these things are private and so they can set their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the published film.
This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.
My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.
The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues allow people to record like this they should offer, at the very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where you can either blur or cut as appropriate.
The author suggests this was not a public space. Legal or not, it's more about not being a jerk. I think this is especially important in the context of a hobby, and the local community around that hobby. There are easy ways for everyone to get what they want in these situations.
So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there? These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out, and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing. Then people can come to an informed decision...
If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure thing, but when you are making money on it then you should absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released individuals.
I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least) haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time from the location and individuals.
My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for a full-budget production group.
> If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info?
The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use where some endorsement is implied.
That’s why your company must secure a model release when filming in your office: The material is being used in a manner related to the company and as an employee in the video you are implicitly part of that.
If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that footage in an ad, they would probably require model release forms.
There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for some AirSoft product and included other people in it without model release forms in a way that implied they were part of the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they’re just making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there’s an argument that you could make requiring a model release, even if the channel was monetized.
This is also why news channels don't need to secure model release forms when reporting on public events. If we required everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video of them, you would never see any negative videos of politicians or criminals agin.
The alternative is for the venue to have "recording time" and "non recording time." If you go during non recording time, you're not allowed to bring cameras into the space. And if you don't want to be recorded, you go then. And if you want to record, go during recording time.
Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into, but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim time.
Blur the people who didn’t give consent. The problem is cultural, not technical. Even YouTube has the native ability to blur out faces at the click of a button.
Stop taking video in public, or at least of the public. You just assume you should be able to do that and the whole world should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.
Here in Spain if you don't get explicit consent you can get sued for publishing the video (it's fine if you only showed it to the shop owner and didn't publish it), but if someone tells you explicitly they don't want to be recorded you have to stop and delete the video (I assume if you refuse they can just call the police, but I've never seen it happen).
Well, the first step is not being sued and taken to court, but receiving a cease-and-desist letter. But for that to happen, the person that has been videoed needs to be aware of that his face is on YouTube, which in most cases you won't even notice unless it's a video with a very high click count.
OP offers a reasonable idea of wearing a lanyard or badge to indicate you'd like to be censored out of the final video. that's practical and provides community enforcement -- for example if someone publishes a video with a subject like that, the community can shame them for it.
You can use AI to blur anyone that doesn't give permission. You can't use the excuse of "it's too much work!" It should be the law that you can't indiscriminately video everyone for your own financial gain.
Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There’s a big difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed on purpose for the activity you’re engaged in. Being accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is another. Even though public photography is also legal where I live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their cars, I’d expect most people would object and find it uncomfortable.
Shooting video for yourself is one thing, sharing it to a third party like Google, MS, or Apple is another. Unfortunately many people have been brainwashed to not consider or even understand the difference.
I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private. Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive etc, let alone YT.
This is drawing a very different line from the majority of conversations in this thread, I imagine.
"Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to social media, like most are actually discussing here.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where no one can record or photograph you in public than the world where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to. There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the videos don't want to be online like that.
If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just evaporates.
If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
In Germany it's generally illegal to film people apart from certain exceptions (mostly public events and public spaces). Even when filming something in public, you must be filming the event/space and not a person or group who happens to be occupying it, which is a fine distinction. Even surveillance cameras have strict requirements to be legal. You don't want to be the guy who goes to jail for having a surveillance camera, right?
Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras and that is a great idea.
I think there is at least something of a middle ground for almost-but-not-quite-public spaces and events. In this case the author is talking about airsoft games; it seems totally reasonable for the venue or organizer to enact policies, whether "no cameras allowed" or "purple helmet means don't show / blur this person".
In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck, though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should be legal.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Only if you publish the video, if there is indentifiable information or when the person is the center piece of your video.
If you are professional company, you have profesional that do this for you.
If you are not professional, you can make the time, because you are not doing it often.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they see are generated.
If I see someone filming me while driving I usually give them the finger. I suppose that's my consent for them to do whatever with it. I don't foolishly believe they can't do it, but I do suggest maybe they shouldn't.
The alternative is not uploading video of people doing a hobby.
I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing on some youtube channel without their consent every single week unless they opt out of participating at all.
Well the majority of the facilities are private land, right, not public, right? Organize formal sessions during which photography is prohibited. If you don't get any takers, the sport might have left you behind.
> Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
> We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong? No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit police? Nope.
The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I can be way more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type camera I'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
The the author of the article wasn't in a public area, but in a private area at a private event, perhaps model release forms are a really good idea for participants.
What if there was some sort of middle layer escrow holdings platform for users to sign up to that has your identity, facial biometrics, and crypto wallet. The user can also specify how they want their likeness used, or if they do not want to appear, etc.
Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video through this integration user-facial detection layer at some point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Not every thing has to be recorded.
It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain attention seeking.
Good to know you reside on the other side of the planet. I wouldnt want to meet you in public under any circumstances. So much entitlement and disregard for other people is sickening.
Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest an equivalent in Airsoft.
Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
Back in my day shakes first there were places where someone could do things that would normally be mildly embarrassing because they were in a supportive community. In this example, it could be playing pretend and possibly saying goofy things or falling over and tripping or getting your butt handed to you by someone half your age or something.
When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't have that supportive community.
In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube, then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument again.
So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.
It may be an exaggeration but it feels like half the problem with the internet has been this sort of “dunk culture” that’s proliferated in the past 10-15 years. How heinous is it that anybody can gain significant notoriety by just providing a steady supply of innocent people to lambast?
It is funny how insular and US centric many of the comments here are. In fact many countries do have legislation requiring consent in many scenarios for photographing or publishing photos. And it turns out that it is not actually very problematic.
2. Recording people without their consent still happens in lot of other countries other than the US. I bet I'm in tons of YouTube videos showing skiing in the Alps.
Because the US has other laws that make the kind of laws you're talking about very difficult. You have to look at the laws together as a part of a system and not a one off set of actions.
In addition laws in the US tend to protect the rich very well and get wholesale ignored for the poor. That is Jeffrey Bezos will punish you with the full extent of the law for taking a video of him beating a baby fur seal to death with a bat, while star-wars kid will be begging for venmo donations in order to get thousands of copies of video taken down while law enforcement ignores the situation.
I don't think the law is the issue here. Stuff like #metoo shows how devasating effects can be even if you eventually sue and win. And the audience sentiment never really changes because they never come back to the story.
Mix that with the lack of general shame for this stuff and you have this weird state of affairs where you don't want to do anything slightly risky. Nothing silly, nothing that can cause you to be looked over on job apps, nothing that you enjoy by yourself but others find "weird".
Not really, other European countries also have the "don't participate if you don't want to be filmed" mentality.
E.g. author says:
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conference
I've been to many such conferences, and they all make it very clear that all the photos can be taken and used in advertising by anyone, both in agreements as well as entrance banners. Same as in US.
Some conferences I've attended provide stickers to put on your badge and if you don't want to be photographed/published the conference organizers may pay attention with respect to their publicity photos. Of course, others snapping pics with their cell phones may not. (And, in Germany as well as other countries, I've never seen explicit warnings about not publishing photos of people at a conference without permission.).
Most people are pretty reasonable and aren't aggressive with their picture taking. But there are almost certainly photos of you online whatever the local country laws may say.
I mean there is a "photo release" or "Model Release" contract used often when taking pictures in any private place that grants the right for the photographer to use those photos.
I would also push back against the whole "this is just being perceived in public" thing, because you're not consenting to being perceived by the entire planet, you were consenting to being perceived by the people present and in the community. Like if there's a bully in the community, the community can do something about it or you can at least avoid them. Like you are consenting to interacting with a culture of like-minded people, and you know they're like-minded because they all showed up to the same event to do the same thing. That is not true of the open internet.
I feel this has some parallels to concerns over house/porch cameras which are proliferating these days.
I have no problem with the idea that everyone on the street is recording from their porch... as long as it's for their own siloed use, and it takes a conscious act for them to share it. If someone wants to stalk you, they'd need conscious assistance from your neighbors. If the police are tracking a hit-and-run, they need to ask people for footage during a time period, etc.
But the moment someone says "hey let's network all those with object/face recognition so that you can easily trace every person walking down the street", then we've got a problem.
I agree that we need a renewed social agreement on "no perception of privacy in public" concept now that cameras are everywhere, are smaller than a pinhead, and cost pennies .
Laws aren't sacred, they are just the rule over the living by the dead. All of our privacy laws were made when the technology , culture and demographics were completely different.
The thing that I find more frustrating than anything is photos of children. I'm not so bothered about myself.
I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's quite different to the professional photographer taking photos for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing your kids to an event like that.
A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!
It does yes but more like in a bad mood. A teenager who is rolling their eyes and making a comment because they’ve been asked not to do something could be described as having a strop.
I agree a lot with the sentiments here and I think people who want to avoid being filmed should have that right. But, as someone who doesn't mind (and is younger) I suppose I could share my rationalizion for it (as flawed as it may be)
One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up. That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.
On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.
It's interesting that you mentioned being younger. One thing I've noticed is that as people accumulate different experiences and social groups (not necessarily just because of age), they often develop different "personas" depending on the environment. In one setting, you might be an enthusiast sharing a video about a hobby, while in another you might be a CEO interacting with your team, shareholders, partners, or customers where you naturally behave differently. The challenge is managing these "many worlds" without them colliding. One solution that's becoming more feasible now is the ability to modify your appearance and voice depending on the context.
If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of them, and also there are some other people in the background or also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel deterred by the presence of others.
But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.
I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got no answers for this, just questions.
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I am sympathetic to the author, and I also find video a bit invasive of privacy in a way that photos aren't.
I therefore find the (obviously common) attitude that videos are just "something you need to accept" quite alien, but I wonder how much of that attitude is just comments coming from a younger generation that have grown up with the idea that they're recorded all the time.
I'm old enough thankfully to have grown up without video being present, that's probably not true for someone 10 years younger than me.
There's also a big difference in my mind between, "You might be filmed on occassion" and, "A recording of this goes up on youtube every single week".
With the former you can still reasonably anonymous, with the latter you risk becoming a side character in someone elses' parasocial relationship.
I’ve been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on social media or in marketing material. I’m not ok with it and I get incredible uncomfortable when I’m in some weird position to do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so many of today’s youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+, and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing picture of video that might surface later.
I’ve seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.
More people should understand you are no more morally obligated to behave sociably toward those exhibiting antisocial behavior than you are to stay your hand from a man who hits you.
Then there are those who film in the locker rooms which arguably should be reason to ban them from said gyms.
Imo these types should stick to "influencer gyms". They exist. Alphaland in Texas is a great example; a friend of mine frequented it as she started her bodybuilding page. Worked great for her. Just stay the hell out of the "normal people" gyms.
Dead Comment
Both my kids (and me) found it very off-putting, so there's some anecdata that at least some young kids still feel it's an invasion of privacy.
Maybe not all is lost.
The response ranged from “you can ask but you can’t prevent people from posting” to “it’d be rude and inconsiderate to even ask”. One person even argued that it would be rude and other people would judge them if they went to a wedding and didn’t have a picture of the bride and groom.
I don’t think I ever felt the generational divide as acutely as in reading those responses, and I’m not even that old, I had social media when I was in high school.
It's incredibly frustrating. I also think it's really strange that when something happens in public, the default isn't to look to see if the person isn't OK anymore, it's to pull out a camera phone and start filming.
Honestly made the whole event better
Certainly the first time it had ever come up, but it made sense to me. If you're invited to someone's wedding, it's only natural to respect their wishes.
Not everything needs to be documented online!
People with such little respect for boundaries are just not welcome in my life.
In many ways an unenforced right is worse than no right at all.
Happens all the time.
This is at the heart of what is going on. Society of the Spectacle is not an easy read, but it most definitely is pertinent to what is going on. Instagram is the final boss!
I’d argue photos can be more invasive. If someone makes a 10 minute video and you’re somewhere in the background for 5 seconds, no one may ever notice. Furthermore, with compression artefacts for motion you may become difficult to recognise.
But if you’re in a photo, people will be looking at it for longer and are thus most likely to notice you and possibly zoom in on you with all the quality the static sensor provides.
Furthermore, photographs have greater potential to create false narratives. A snapshot taken at the wrong millisecond can easily make you look like a creep or weirdo when a video would’ve made it clear you were just turning your head or starting a yawn.
Taking a screenshot from a video for exactly this reason is incredibly common. Look at any photograph accompanying a political story about a figure from "the other party".
See for example this Reddit post about the "triggered" meme origin: > Ironically, if you ever get a chance to see the video of this incident, this woman and the man she's speaking with are actually having a polite discussion. But... She has very animated facial expressions and the photographer just happened to catch this frame at an inopportune moment.
So it seems to me that since a video is simply thousands of photographs with a soundtrack, video is strictly more invasive than photography.
https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/adyt1d/comment/hvp04...
Your perception of this as a risk probably suggests cultural and/or generational differences.
But for the actual circumstances of the fine article’s author, video is a norm of the community the author seeks to join. Within the community, video is an established practice and making a video rig signifies a higher degree of commitment to the community.
Not accepting the use of video, is at least a partial rejection of the community values. Accepting video is a tradeoff for participating in community practices. The practical alternative is usually to find or build an alternative community. [0]
To put it another way, joining the bird watching community means keeping lists. Yes, of course you can just watch birds for your personal pleasure, but documentation is a core community activity.
[0] sure logically it is possible to change a community, but marginal members (e.g. new, casual, low status) are rarely in position to overturn established practice and run the risk of being set up for the agendas of established members.
How do you define community? Seems like a bit rigid of a implied requirement.
The whole idea of conflating community and publicity or some documentation requirement seems a bit silly to me, and it's definitely not rare, but an individual is perfectly within their right to go about engagement in their hobby with other people who have similar interests on whichever terms they like, which seems like community to me, as long as some form of commonly understood communication is present.
Likewise the people who do want to establish certain requirements, gates if you will, have the right to do so, but not as a whole. Country clubs don't and shouldn't have exclusive domain over golf, and I don't give the slightest fuck about recording myself at the bouldering gym or skateboarding, but that shouldn't prevent me from being part of either culture or community unless a specific club within those forms around publication.
I'd concede that it's possible that a community could exist in such a way that the act of documenting is the exclusive basis for which people are able to communicate at all, in which case perhaps that defines the boundary, but again it seems like it would be rare for that to be so pervasive as to encapsulate the entirety of a hobby.
There were plenty of TV shows centred around candid camera / security camera / home video footage back in the 1980s/1990s well before digital cameras or the internet was ubiquitous.
There's just always been people uncomfortable with it.
It’s not, and your two examples are perfect proof of it.
Indoor smoking bans have been implemented in several countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans
https://health.ec.europa.eu/tobacco/smoke-free-environments_...
Countries applying the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic only allow honking in two specific situations. In addition, it’s culturally dependent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_horn#Regulation
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/readers-views/the-...
Don’t assume something is an immutable part of life just because it was in place when you were already born. Change can and does happen.
There’s nothing stopping us from saying this sucks, it’s socially toxic, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.
Yeah? Who said that? Any selfish person can say the same about anything. "Yeah my dog shat your lawn but that's just part of life. Deal with it". What's part of life is different for everyone.
>I get annoyed when people smoke in public or pointlessly honk horns at night.
Yeah that's annoying, but neither the smoke or the honk are records of your private life published without consent on the internet, forever. So apples and oranges.
Solution here is to use a private airsoft field then make no filming a condition of entry. If they violate the rule, trespass.
These kids have been on camera since they were in the womb. The delivery had a pro videographer. Parents had baby monitors with a video feed, later a nanny cam. Schools had cameras in the classrooms and busses from before first grade. Higher grades onwards all their peers had smartphones and social media accounts.
Some middle aged dude who doesn't want to be on video makes no sense to them, like that weird uncle of yours who in 2010 had no phone or email address.
The UK is a special place because culturally it belongs to the anglo-saxon sphere but legally it inherited the strict EU personality rights.
I hear US culture is fairly dominant in the USA, too?
I wonder how much of this is people expecting that ANY media presence will throw them into the troubles people experience when they have all the media presence. I know if I blow up big enough (not much of a threat right now) that someone will come to hurt me, no matter how I am. That's not about me, it's about statistics. If I blew up that big I could probably afford security…
I think some people assume you'll be confronted with that sort of problem right away just by appearing on youtube etc. Sure you will… eventually. Or if you're staggeringly unlucky.
Like how you should have a dash cam for your side in a vehicle collision. Although, maybe sufficiently convincing fake videos will make it a moot point in the future.
Dead Comment
We had this idea that privacy violation is like pollution. But now it's like how our generation is used to plastic in the ocean and never seeing all the stars. It's just life.
Deleted Comment
And there's such a focus on the law and expectation of privacy in public places in these comments. There's a huge difference between someone complaining about being recorded in a small hobby community and complaining about being filmed on a public street.
To sum it up, in my experience, people are just not willing to respect your boundaries if you make them aware they overstepped yours. They will always go for some excuse, instead of just accepting they erred.
I think it's a matter of rudeness or carelessness about other people's rights and wellbeing. I want to record this so screw the rules and other babies' privacy.
The classes are pretty mixed, it's Belgium after all. If anything perhaps the next generation is so exposed to TikTok that they might find things less compelling to record? I can't say.
I wish respect and treasuring things without video evidence were on the rise.
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
Just as the author says: “Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.”
It doesn’t fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100% legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around them deserve social consequences.
Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it would be hunky dory if societies considered what “privacy in public” looks like in the modern age, and came to the conclusions like “no dragnets pls”.
You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have this any longer.
While I think we all agree that this is crucially important, for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons in perpetuity.
I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I happen to be in the area.
If this existed we'd have a lot less problems in this world.
For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government to police the photos people take and share of people in public spaces.
I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just part of the deal.
I don’t think some people have thought about the second-order effects of things like requiring model release forms for everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power over others, not simply people who simply want to protect themselves.
When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what they want you to see.
It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that as improper socially.
1. Taking pictures/videos for personal use.
2. Taking pictures/videos for internet fame/money.
3. Taking pictures/videos as a check on abuse of power.
Most opposition now is due to #2, sometimes under the guise of #3; #3 also has divisions between "is it {illegal,unethical,immoral,weird}?"
I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
=> https://web.archive.org/web/20040611150802/http://villagevoi...
My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining accountability.
With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video. Without other participants, there would be little 'content'. Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone else, and publishing just that.
I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for personal/professional purposes
You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation not to film without consent.
We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not flip that?
Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming TikTok’s and some aren’t, an airsoft range could have camera or no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.
My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.
I guess they can weigh that against their customers desire for privacy.
So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there? These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out, and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing. Then people can come to an informed decision...
If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure thing, but when you are making money on it then you should absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released individuals.
I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least) haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time from the location and individuals.
My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for a full-budget production group.
The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use where some endorsement is implied.
That’s why your company must secure a model release when filming in your office: The material is being used in a manner related to the company and as an employee in the video you are implicitly part of that.
If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that footage in an ad, they would probably require model release forms.
There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for some AirSoft product and included other people in it without model release forms in a way that implied they were part of the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they’re just making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there’s an argument that you could make requiring a model release, even if the channel was monetized.
This is also why news channels don't need to secure model release forms when reporting on public events. If we required everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video of them, you would never see any negative videos of politicians or criminals agin.
Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into, but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim time.
Stop taking video in public, or at least of the public. You just assume you should be able to do that and the whole world should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There’s a big difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed on purpose for the activity you’re engaged in. Being accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is another. Even though public photography is also legal where I live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their cars, I’d expect most people would object and find it uncomfortable.
I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private. Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive etc, let alone YT.
"Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to social media, like most are actually discussing here.
i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where no one can record or photograph you in public than the world where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
I would have thought they would be very useful for adjudicating high cost events such as automobile collisions, or even police interactions.
Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to. There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the videos don't want to be online like that.
If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just evaporates.
If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
Either that or, if you can’t get a model release, make sure to blur their face in editing. This used to be standard practice.
Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras and that is a great idea.
In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck, though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should be legal.
Only if you publish the video, if there is indentifiable information or when the person is the center piece of your video.
If you are professional company, you have profesional that do this for you. If you are not professional, you can make the time, because you are not doing it often.
This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they see are generated.
I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing on some youtube channel without their consent every single week unless they opt out of participating at all.
or expressly allowed, so that this dude knows not to go there
> We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong? No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit police? Nope.
The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I can be way more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type camera I'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
E.g. you can film public spaces as much as you want, but be careful of what you post to YouTube.
Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video through this integration user-facial detection layer at some point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
Just brainstorming.
Not every thing has to be recorded.
It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain attention seeking.
https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
Honestly, the older I get the more I cherish that I grew up in a time before the compulsion to post literally everything.
Why are you shaming people for seeking what they obviously lack and need for their psychological well being?
Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest an equivalent in Airsoft.
Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
When I was young, it would have been playing open mics as a teenager. I wasn't amazing but it's really important to play publicly in order to grow as a musician, and that means kinda sucking in public. I would not have become a musician if I didn't have that supportive community.
In this day and age, if I were to do that, someone would probably live stream it or film it on their phone and put it on YouTube, then It would get found by the kind of awful kids that like to make other people feel awful for no reason, then they would have found my like Facebook or social media or something, I'd catch shit at school, and I never would have touched an instrument again.
So yeah, save your highlight reels for someone else, thanks.
Wikimedia has some examples, but I'm sure it is not comprehensive: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
2. Recording people without their consent still happens in lot of other countries other than the US. I bet I'm in tons of YouTube videos showing skiing in the Alps.
In addition laws in the US tend to protect the rich very well and get wholesale ignored for the poor. That is Jeffrey Bezos will punish you with the full extent of the law for taking a video of him beating a baby fur seal to death with a bat, while star-wars kid will be begging for venmo donations in order to get thousands of copies of video taken down while law enforcement ignores the situation.
Mix that with the lack of general shame for this stuff and you have this weird state of affairs where you don't want to do anything slightly risky. Nothing silly, nothing that can cause you to be looked over on job apps, nothing that you enjoy by yourself but others find "weird".
E.g. author says:
> But then I’ve seen the same at (private) conference
I've been to many such conferences, and they all make it very clear that all the photos can be taken and used in advertising by anyone, both in agreements as well as entrance banners. Same as in US.
Most people are pretty reasonable and aren't aggressive with their picture taking. But there are almost certainly photos of you online whatever the local country laws may say.
An individual can record you on the street without problems.
A crew can't record you on the street for anything that will be aired on tv/cinema without your signing that you give your permision.
A Youtuber can record you on the street without problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release
I have no problem with the idea that everyone on the street is recording from their porch... as long as it's for their own siloed use, and it takes a conscious act for them to share it. If someone wants to stalk you, they'd need conscious assistance from your neighbors. If the police are tracking a hit-and-run, they need to ask people for footage during a time period, etc.
But the moment someone says "hey let's network all those with object/face recognition so that you can easily trace every person walking down the street", then we've got a problem.
Laws aren't sacred, they are just the rule over the living by the dead. All of our privacy laws were made when the technology , culture and demographics were completely different.
I have a young child - he's two and a half. Most people are considerate and ask if it's OK to take a photo - and I generally say yes if it's friends - but we were at a wedding recently and a staff member, total stranger, at the venue was laughing at him running around and asked if they could take a picture, and then got stroppy when I said no. I just think it's quite strange behaviour to want to take photos of a child you don't know. It's quite different to the professional photographer taking photos for the hosts in my mind, which you basically accept by bringing your kids to an event like that.
A mum at a playgroup just took out phone and started filming my son playing with her child. My wife asked her to stop and she again got quite stroppy, even though the group explicitly said that photos should only be taken with consent in that space!
It does yes but more like in a bad mood. A teenager who is rolling their eyes and making a comment because they’ve been asked not to do something could be described as having a strop.
One often mentioned reason is the fear that in some way your likeness will end up in something significant, or viral. That makes sense, it's the most invasive and significant violation. We "risk becoming the side character in someone else's parasocial relationship" as another commentator mentioned. I myself wouldn't want that either, but I derive some comfort from one main observation: virality doesn't scale. A lot of the worries come from the fact that "everyone is filming now", "everything is shared now". That's true, but the likelihood of any of this ever becoming popular or even seen goes down as the volume goes up. That alone is enough for me to not be that worried, at least not by the increased prevalence of public filming/photography.
On the other hand, this does nothing to limit the effect of data harvesting and government espionage, a real worry I might have.
If my kid is on some fun Disney ride, and I take a short video of them, and also there are some other people in the background or also on the ride, I would still fee comfortable sharing the video. Well, I wouldn't, because I don't put videos of my kids online, but if I was comfortable doing that, I wouldn't feel deterred by the presence of others.
But also, if someone else takes a photo of my kids in public (or at Disney), I would feel somewhat uncomfortable about it, and I'd feel even more uncomfortable about finding that photo online.
I don't know how to square that, ethically. Sometimes I see posts on Reddit that go "hey, I was out at the beach, and I saw this couple proposing, and I got this amazing photo of it, does anyone know them so I can send them a copy," and I think "you just took one of the most important, intimate, private moments of this couple's life and posted it online without their permission," but it doesn't seem to upset anyone because the couple will look really great in the photo. Does that make a difference? I've got no answers for this, just questions.