Street Photography
From The BBC:-
A man who took a photograph of an ill woman outside an Edinburgh bar has been fined £100 after being branded “unchivalrous” by a sheriff.
Unchivalrous? We’re going to bring chivalry into the law, are we? Can we also start rounding up cads and bounders, too?
But Sheriff Kenneth Hogg said the matter “could be best described as exceptionally unchivalrous”.
“The lady concerned was entitled to her privacy and not to have a passing stranger take a photograph,” said the sheriff. “I’m going to impose a fine to remind him chivalry is not dead and when somebody is in distress you leave them to it.”
This is a terrible decision, and an abuse of the purpose of the law of breach of the peace. The law has always been that taking photographs in a public space is legal, that in public, you don’t have any right to privacy. That includes whether someone is distressed or otherwise.
The law should be about protecting people’s rights, but this decision is more about what someone considers to be decent conduct. If someone runs past someone on crutches to get the last taxi at a rank, is that a kind, decent, thing to do? No. Should it be illegal? Again… No.
RSS
I keep a copy of this site (http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php) in my photography bag and this only goes to worry me about what you can and can’t take photos of more and more!
“…when somebody is in distress you leave them to it.”
Really? Doesn’t sound very chilvalrous to me. The dragons in days of yore would have had a field day with all those damsels if that was what chivalry was about.