If you approach the same woman twice on the street and ask her sexually explicit questions, you could be arrested for harassment by the Metropolitan Police. But some London content creators have discovered that if you approach a different woman every day, film yourself doing it and post the results to TikTok or Instagram, then you can rack up millions of views – and the police can’t do anything.
If someone is filming you without permission, asking you sexual and personal questions, and you rip their glasses from their face/snatch their mobile, and throw it down on the ground hard…that should be legal.
If you are not famous and are the predominant focus of a video or become the predominant focus, and offer no consent to filming, then you should have the right to have that video removed from public and private viewing. Where not possible, any financial rewards the video has made (including sponsorship) will go to the person(s) in the video and the video deplatormed as soon as possible.
I see it being extremely problematic to police and there are a myriad of issues with what I propose but the general theme should he adhered to. If you don’t want to be on a video, you shouldn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be you who actively has to change what they are doing to prevent that.
Lastly, i apologise for the long winded rant.
What about if I film someone kicking a kitten? Do they get the right to destroy my camera too?
The kitten does
As I said, there are a myriad of issues with what I propose, for a start, creating such a law that affects this specific problem alone.
It think it should follow rules like journalists that something like that is in the public interest. It’s a difficult thing to negotiate or otherwise we end up in the same situation as with the SLAPP laws where they get abused by the rich.
I do believe it should be everyone’s right that, if they don’t want to appear or be heard on Camera, they should not.
I find it extremely problematic that everyone is carrying a recording device in their pocket, and the first thing that happens as soon as something is uploaded, is that it’s processed by a private companies AI, and it seems the we are powerless to do anything about it at all.
Until you make an actionable law that punishes the creators and the host services, your rights to a private life will just continue to be eaten away for someone else’s profit.
It’s currently a shitty situation for those being filmed by fucknuggets like this, but the law in this country is that you have no expectation of privacy in a public place. That would need to change to accommodate anything like you’re suggesting. Lots of companies and corporations would be very happy to see that change but I’m not convinced it would be a change for the good. It could, for example, prevent you from legally taking a photo of your kids at the beach if there’s anyone else on the beach. Likewise, photos at tourist attractions. No more photos at gigs or festivals.
As for ‘the public interest’, that’s subjective. What Stephen Yaxley-Lennon would consider in the public interest is likely very different to what you or I would consider to be in the public interest.
All exactly the reasons why I said it would be extremely difficult and that’s putting it mildly.
For all the good intentions, it would absolutely be misused and abused.
It took me a while to realise you were talking about perv glasses that record people, not just maliciously smashing someone’s corrective eyewear.
I do apologise. In my blind fury I should have been clearer.
Nah. If you’re in public you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Being able to film anyone in public for any reason must be protected, it’s the only way to film bad people doing bad things. Imagine if the cops controlled the only cameras allowed to record cops? Ditto for politicians.
Very true.
How about making it so you cannot profit of a persons appearance without express consent. If you release a monetised video without consent of the person in it, then you will not receive that money until the matter is close and you have written consent.
Edit: I see that might affect journalism too.
If someone still pointed a phone at me for no reason, or even worse a pair of Pervert Specs, I’ll still quite willingly break them apart and I’ll feel in my right to do that (quite wrongly).
If you hate the idea of public places not being private so much you probably better just stay in your own home and never leave. That’d probably be best for all involved. You don’t ever wind up in the background of someone’s video, and there’s one less crackpot yelling at the general public for doing totally normal things.
Are “family vlogs” illegal yet?
I feel like I’ve successfully navigated the Internet well enough that I haven’t seen any of these.
And those sound awful.
I’ve never been served one up, but I have seen a couple of videos talking about them. I recently saw one by Marina McBain, and the stuff in there is outright child abuse. Yet YouTube and tiktok etc allow and monetise this. I hope they as well as the parents get sued to oblivion by these kids.
Hopefully someone will walk up to Sami G and rip that wig off his head
carry a really bright headlamp around and put it on whenever someone with pervert glasses tries to film you. it wouldn’t work against a regular camera, but since the pervert glasses are stuck directly to the face they just wouldn’t be able to look at you.
