[SpecialK]

"...a visual image of another at a location that is not a bathroom or private dressing room without their consent and with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person."

So it's OK to shoot someone on the toilet without their permission? Texas is funny.

[NicoleC]

Does this qualify?

Yes, IMO. You deliberately took a picture under someone's clothing with the intention to humiliate the person and share with others. Certainly it's a bit fuzzy since the man was (probably) unaware he was displaying more than he expected. But as monochrome so succinctly pointed out: it's damn hard to legislate things people know they shouldn't do.


No, it doesn't matter if the person is young or old, male or female, or is perceived by the photographer to be attractive or not. Attractiveness and gender are not criteria for being the victim of any crime. They are in the minority, but there are people that think 300# and hairy is totally hot.


Intentions do matter, both in society and enshrined in law. Not all crimes require intent, but many do. Do something stupid and someone gets killed? Manslaughter. Decide you are going to kill someone, plan how and then succeed: First Degree Murder. Possession of photos of toddler grandkids naked? Legal. Possession of photos of naked kids for sexual gratification: Child Pornography. Trip and fall and brush someone's private bits on the way down? Accident. Deliberately touch someone's private bits without consent? Assault.


I think, barring some shocking new information, this man's intentions were pretty obvious, since his camera was full of pictures and video of female thighs and buttocks.

[Winder]

Yes, IMO. You deliberately took a picture under someone's clothing with the intention to humiliate the person and share with others. Certainly it's a bit fuzzy since the man was (probably) unaware he was displaying more than he expected. But as monochrome so succinctly pointed out: it's damn hard to legislate things people know they shouldn't do.

Its Key West. People walk around naked. I'm pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing. There is a clothing optional bar on the roof of the building he was in.

The individual is responsible for their body and what they display to the public from all angles. It doesn't matter if its the guy with his pants falling down showing his butt crack or the woman with the short shirt showing her cheeks. If someone goes to the grocery story naked, we hold that person responsible.

If it can be seen by the public, then it can be photographed by the public. This is why the courts eventually throw these things out. The doctor in Texas probably won't go to jail, but his name will show up on every Google search, and his career as a doctor is pretty much over. The punishment is going to be very server regardless of the law. The general public is much more vindictive than the legal system.

[MRRiley]

I wasn't talking about People of Walmart photos, I was talking about upskirt photography. Either that's a straw man, or you are arguing that a woman -- or in some cases very young girls -- in a skirt is automatically "wearing next to nothing" and "making a spectacle" of herself. And therefore deserves to have pictures taken, without her consent, of parts of her body that she IS concealing.

Upskirt photography is unethical and wrong not because it shows a woman's private parts but that it does so in spite of her taking "reasonable" measures to prevent those bits from showing. When a person shoots these types of photos he is actively defeating a privacy measure (the wearing of clothing).

This is a whole different thing than taking photos of cheerleaders in plain sight of the general public. Is it creepy that he concentrated on butts and busts? Maybe, but is it illegal? Maybe again... Should it be? NO. Frankly if you are in public, everything that you freely display to the public is vulnerable to being photographed. This includes under-aged children. If parents don't want people to be able to see or photograph their legs of butts or busts, then they need to proscribe more concealing clothing.

Now, if it's true that this photographer was doing upskirts, then he should be charged with that... specifically! You won't get any argument from me. But any other shots, such as telephoto leg, butt and bust shots, should be immaterial.

Mike

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Last edited by MRRiley; 06-11-2014 at 07:04 AM.

[monochrome]

This is a whole different thing than taking photos of cheerleaders in plain sight of the general public. Is it creepy that he concentrated on butts and busts? Maybe, but is it illegal? Maybe again... Should it be? NO. Frankly if you are in public, everything that you freely display to the public is vulnerable to being photographed.

Now, if it's true that this photographer was doing upskirts, then he should be charged with that... specifically! You won't get any argument from me. But any other shots, such as telephoto leg, butt and bust shots, should be immaterial.

We get defensive because we fear if society restricts a creeper (who's to say which photographer is a creeper?) we'll get scooped up in the prohibition net, though we be innocent of creeper-ness. And we are right to be fearful and defensive.

In reality it is the jerks who abuse the freedom and rights we enjoy who cause the problems and encourage inelegant solutions.

As far as telephoto shots of my daughter (or my cheerleading partner when I was a cheerleader at a Division 1 University 40 years ago) doing high-kicks, the point of a telephoto lens is to acquire the image without the knowledge or consent of the subject. The 'presumption of consent' by merely being present within the range of the lens is, at best, specious. Was the Duchess of Cambridge in a presumption of consent when the papparazzo took the famous topless shot from 1200 yards with a 5000mm lens? They were taken from a public roadway!!

I don't think so.

Once again, a football stadium is not public space - it is private space to which a limited-use license has been granted. In order to permit us to take telephoto images of our children playing football we are permitted proper lenses. In return it is assumed we won't take inappropriate images of teenaged girls (or boys if that is your desire).

I'm less concerned with the law and more concerned with what we all know is inappropriate advantage-taking by others - and so should we all be. The real solution to the Texas problem is to simply ban telephoto lenses (or cameras) from football stadiums - and they DO have the right to do so under their Grant of Limited Use.

Once that line is crossed it won't be long before public photography is a privilege, not a right.

As an aside, at college (University of Virginia in about 1976) I witnessed a roving band of student-aged photographers and a Professor-aged man following another group of students, surreptitiously photographing their butts. I followed them around for a while and it was very clear what they were doing - and not just any old jeans pocket - they clearly selected pretty girls.

Couple weeks later there was a big scandal about a Photography Class Project and what were at the time called voyeuristic images of clothed female students. There couldn't of course be any prosecution but the Student Judiciary Committee and the Faculty Senate assessed penalties.

Everyone knew it was inappropriate then - though actually not illegal - and we still know it is inappropriate now.

[monochrome]

"...a visual image of another at a location that is not a bathroom or private dressing room without their consent and with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person."

So it's OK to shoot someone on the toilet without their permission? Texas is funny.

There's already a statute that covers peeping / creeping in bathrooms and dressing rooms (for instance, changing rooms in stores). This one is intended for places other than those already precluded.

[savoche]

We get defensive because we fear if society restricts a creeper (who's to say which photographer is a creeper?) we'll get scooped up in the prohibition net, though we be innocent of creeper-ness. And we are right to be fearful and defensive

(snip)

Once that line is crossed it won't be long before public photography is a privilege, not a right.

Much like what we're looking at in Hungary, I guess. Hungary law requires photographers to ask permission to take pictures | World news | The Guardian

[normhead]

I find the logic of puritans to to be so backward.... let's not discuss the practice of having underage girls dance around in revealing garb. let's discuss whether or not anyone should photograph them. Honestly, does anyone really think that cheerleaders are not a games to add a sexual component to the violence? A sure entertainment double whammy. So instead of sitting drooling in the stands like many of the make participants, this guy takes a few pictures so he can drool at home. Let's find out what's really going on here...wire up the whole audience and find out who is sexually stimulated by these young ladies parading around. I'm willing to bet, the biggest pervert won't be the guy with the camera.

This legislation exists in the middle of obvious conflicts. No one who objected to the exploitation of children for sexual purposes would even be at the game. Everyone there accepts that underage prancing around in few clothes is OK, and many of them are getting their jollies watching them. The prudish response is to make out that it's not OK, (even though everyone is doing it) by defining a scapegoat, and claiming you're only doing something criminal if you go too far.

Or to put it another way, you've started down the slippery slope. This guy obviously has gratification in mind. But what about the guy who makes a movie of the whole game and then goes home and does edits with just the cheerleaders. As long as sexually arousing performance is allowed, but enjoying them is not, this kind of issue is going to keep coming up. After watching my school cheerleading squad perform their routine, which got them to the provincial finals, I ended up wondering, what kind of job skills are these girls acquiring... the closest thing I can think is strippers. Maybe this guy is a criminal pervert, but if so, then so are a lot of the rest of us. The human brain seems to have been designed to be attracted to specific shapes and forms, trying to normalize that in a socially acceptable way is always going to be a scapegoating process.

What people in in football stadiums think is acceptable in terms of even having a cheerleading squad bothers me. I think it''s a sign of a completely dysfunctional system. But I'm not passing any laws putting them in jail am I?

This is at best a piecemeal way of dealing with a problem, that needs to be extensively studied and defined. We know less about the dangers associated with this type of sexual behaviour than probably any other type of crime. For all we know this guy could have gone through his whole life without anyone but himself being harmed or even aware of what he was doing. IN essence, because surveillance was directed his way by a police officer, an otherwise unknown crime with no victims and no known negative consequences is going to be punished, because the man was using a camera. meanwhile most of those who commit sexual assaults on young women are family members or people who know them. There's a problem with the sexualization of children, but I'm not sure busting this guy helps. What he did was socially un-acceptable, but there are lots of things that are socially un-acceptable that aren't crimes.

What I need to be happy with this, is that someone has to demonstrate that people who demonstrate this type of behaviour are more of a danger to society than say Uncle Bob or Aunt Stella. And my guess is, that might be real hard to prove. If someone can demonstrate that someone with these kinds of tendencies is more likely to harm someone else than someone who doesn't have these tendencies, then we have to do something. But I've never met a woman who was molested in their youth, who was molested by anyone other than a relative or school mate. OK, one buy guy from the projects nearby.. but, are we arresting those people? We'd be arresting all of us. Most of us are a relative of someone, a friend of someone or live in the neighbourhood of someone. We have opportunity to commit sexual offences. This guy with his photograph doesn't even have opportunity, and there's no evidence I know of to say he'd escalate his behaviour if he did. But it's quite possible the police know something I don't. I hope the courts will sort it out. My vast information resource the internet has very little credible information, on the patterns involved in sexually deviant behaviour. And the whole issue of victimless crimes may come into play here.

Way too many people have been convicted of serious crimes, because they were different, not because they were dangerous.

[MRRiley]

We get defensive because we fear if society restricts a creeper (who's to say which photographer is a creeper?) we'll get scooped up in the prohibition net, though we be innocent of creeper-ness. And we are right to be fearful and defensive.

In reality it is the jerks who abuse the freedom and rights we enjoy who cause the problems and encourage inelegant solutions.

True... basically what you are saying is that one man's artist is another man's "creeper." No argument there

the point of a telephoto lens is to acquire the image without the knowledge or consent of the subject.

Often the reason for using a telephoto lens has more to do with the fact that they won't let you run around on the sidelines.

The 'presumption of consent' by merely being present within the range of the lens is, at best, specious. Was the Duchess of Cambridge in a presumption of consent when the papparazzo took the famous topless shot from 1200 yards with a 5000mm lens? They were taken from a public roadway!! I don't think so.

If one is careless enough, especially if you are a public figure, to go topless anywhere where it is possible for someone with a telescope to see you, then you have, even though you may believe you have taken "reasonable" safeguards, in my mind, failed to insure your own privacy. Sorry but you are fair game!

Once again, a football stadium is not public space - it is private space to which a limited-use license has been granted. In order to permit us to take telephoto images of our children playing football we are permitted proper lenses. In return it is assumed we won't take inappropriate images of teenaged girls (or boys if that is your desire).

What makes a football stadium a "private space?" Many, I would dare say most, are public facilities, paid for and supported by the taxpayers. Unless it is a bonafide private stadium, say at a private university or school, there is little recourse for prohibiting particular lenses or controlling the type of shots any photographer takes.

I'm less concerned with the law and more concerned with what we all know is inappropriate advantage-taking by others - and so should we all be. The real solution to the Texas problem is to simply ban telephoto lenses (or cameras) from football stadiums - and they DO have the right to do so under their Grant of Limited Use.

Not sure they actually have that right. Please cite some specific Texas laws and policies at these kinds of facilities which support your analysis.

Once that line is crossed it won't be long before public photography is a privilege, not a right.

That is why we need to resist seemingly innocuous attempts to limit our rights to shoot "anything" in public that does not involve actual criminal behavior (upskirts and hidden cameras in bathrooms for instance).

As an aside, at college (University of Virginia in about 1976) I witnessed a roving band of student-aged photographers and a Professor-aged man following another group of students, surreptitiously photographing their butts. I followed them around for a while and it was very clear what they were doing - and not just any old jeans pocket - they clearly selected pretty girls.

Couple weeks later there was a big scandal about a Photography Class Project and what were at the time called voyeuristic images of clothed female students. There couldn't of course be any prosecution but the Student Judiciary Committee and the Faculty Senate assessed penalties.

Everyone knew it was inappropriate then - though actually not illegal - and we still know it is inappropriate now.

Once again... creepy, but not illegal. And it was probably only actionable under the school's rules because it violated some ethical policy the students had to sign upon admission. That situation/scenario does not apply to general citizens in a purely public sitting.

[monochrome]

Deleted and edited

We're never going to agree and probably that's as it should be. But I'm happy to be encourage differing opinion, tolerate those that differ from mine - and even tolerate the guy who amasses 3,000 grabs of just bosoms in sweaters. But I still believe it is inappropriate behavior.

As far as public / private - a ticket to see an event or game anywhere is a Limited-Rights License whether the venue is public or privately owned. If entry is limited by the requirement to purchase a ticket, the event sponsors can prohibit just about anything they want to prohibit, subject to having made the prohibition known.

In my community we cannot carry containers into the High School stadium for ticketed games, ostensibly to preclude underage alcohol consumption. Since we all believe the Parents' Club and Athletic Department really just want to control concessions somebody threatened a suit against the policy - it never even made it to court.

The facility is publicly-owned BUT - the Event Sponsor is the High School Athletic Department (which legally 'leases' the facility for the Event for insurance liability reasons), High School football games are ticketed Events, the License is Limited and the Policy is published.

'Public' sometimes isn't as public as we think.

[monochrome]

Once again... creepy, but not illegal. And it was probably only actionable under the school's rules because it violated some ethical policy the students had to sign upon admission. That situation/scenario does not apply to general citizens in a purely public sitting.

Yep - we definitely did. I will note without rancor for this discussion that it was a public University, not a private college, and the students (photographers and subjects) were clearly in public space.

[NicoleC]

I don't know what the cheerleaders were wearing. Again, I think it's immaterial to whether are not they are being exploited against their will. Although I agree that much of cheerleading is exploitative to begin with, the girls (and men) tend to be accomplished athletes in their own endeavor and they choose to do it. When I went to school, the high school cheerleaders wore miniskirts, but they were reasonably long and were designed to flare and move dramatically. They weren't stripper outfits like the pro teams wear -- and as those ladies and gents are adults, they can decide to participate or not. Maybe things have changed. Not locally; they still wear similar outfits here, and they are pretty fanatic about high school football in Alabama, too.


I must vehemently disagree with the notion that if a bad thing happens to you -- in this case, embarrassing photography -- the victim is to blame for not somehow protecting themselves against all possible ways someone else could victimize them. The other side of that is an attitude that says you are entitled to do anything you want to as long as someone can't stop you. That's the ethical view of a sociopath, or at least someone who didn't get whipped behind the woodshed nearly often enough. It's not just the victim that has responsibility for their behavior, but you as well.


When we wonder why there is backlash against Google Glass, or people wonder why street photography has a bad reputation, this is why. When we wonder why jurisdictions pass laws about photography, this is precisely why. Unfortunately for serious photographers, every Tom, Dick and Sally has the ability to take pictures almost anywhere, and some of their casual gadgets are getting quite good. Technological progress has outstripped deeply ingrained cultural rules and our legal code, leaving individuals to act on their own ethics and compassion. If serious photographers don't want sharper and more restrictive laws against photography, as a group we had better start acting like we have some jerkin's up and have a sense of right and wrong. There will always be outliers -- creeps with gear -- but outliers can be handled one by one. A large problem is going to attract further legislative attention.


TLDR; This is why we can't have nice things.


We are unlikely to come to a meeting of the minds, like monochrome I shall bow out.

[normhead]

Homosexuality used to be deemed offensive and illegal behaviour, but over time, it's turned out to be pretty harmless. The emotional responses of individuals are the responsibility of those who feel wronged in some cases. The fact that there is indignation is not evidence of wrong doing. And enforcing values through legislation is pretty much pointless, and is itself offensive. Let's get right down to it, if this man had not been the subject of police surveillance, what harm did he cause? It's only the fact that the "victims" found out that they felt humiliated. It's somewhat odd, that you're doing something, but it's not humiliating, but a camera catches you doing it and it is. There is so much fodder for critical thinking in this equation, all I can say, I'm really interested in reading the judgement. There are people who are paid to think about these things, and they're often ( but not always) smarter than me.

[monochrome]

It's all about consent. Else why do we have a Model Release.

Considerate people do not grab telephoto street shots at all, much less bosom shots or leg or butt, whether or not it is strictly legal. My God, a male can't even appear to look at a female co-worker below the neck, much less leer at her. Gulity! Doesn't matter what you say - Guilty!!! And we're debating whether someone should amass a catalog of grabbed leg and butt shots. The very expression 'grab shot' tells the story. Hypocrisy alert!

Glass is the next big argument - I don't give a good Gad D@#$ what type of space I occupy, may I presume I do not consent to whatever the Glassh*&^ might be doing with my image or do the rights of the Glassh*&^ trump my presumptive right to non-consent?

[MRRiley]

I must vehemently disagree with the notion that if a bad thing happens to you -- in this case, embarrassing photography -- the victim is to blame for not somehow protecting themselves against all possible ways someone else could victimize them. The other side of that is an attitude that says you are entitled to do anything you want to as long as someone can't stop you. That's the ethical view of a sociopath, or at least someone who didn't get whipped behind the woodshed nearly often enough. It's not just the victim that has responsibility for their behavior, but you as well.

Just for the record, I am not into victim blaming and if that's what you took from my comment you could not be more wrong. In the case of a "crime," the victim can in no way be blamed for the actions of the criminal victimizing them. However If a photographer uses a 5000mm lens to shoot a photo from a public property vantage point overlooking a remote private beach there is no fundamental crime. It is pretty settled law in this country that if it can be seen from public it can be both viewed and photographed. In the case of a celebrity sunbathing nude in such a place, that is a risk THEY are taking. It is their choice to take that risk and they do so freely. It is not a crime... nor is taking photos of people, including little kids in public, a "crime"

Also, for the record, I will say that shooting photos of an unsuccessful privacy seeking celebrity is not something I would do personally. I also do not generally go around singling out people in public to photograph either so on both counts, please refrain from characterizing me as a sociopath. People on this board who have known me for years, and far longer than you have been on PF, that that is not a true description of me.

I simply and strongly cherish the concept that "that which is visible from public property is fair game for the camera." This is the entire reason that people live in houses with shutters and blinds. They are taking reasonable measures to maintain their privacy. If they chose to dance nude in front of an open window though, they should at least consider that there might be someone around with a camera. Same goes for simply being in public. You have no expectation of privacy except under your clothing. However, every piece of skin that is exposed to view and every bump or lump that shows through your clothing is again, liable to be photographed if an interested photographer takes notice. Your children have no, nor are they entitled to any more, protection. The only way to protect yourself and them from being viewed, looked at. leered at or photographed is to keep out of public spaces. I imagine you find that as ludicrous as I would. It's impractical and for the most part unnecessary because while there are indeed sociopaths and monsters out there, they are really fairly rare and most people who see you or your children, or who take photographs, have no ill intention whatsoever.

Mike