Interesting Links for 17-09-2012
- So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?
Also, I am amused that people still refer to her as Kate Middleton, on the grounds that nobody knows who "Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge" is.
(tags: uk media privacy ) - Don’t Tell Anyone, but the US Stimulus Worked
(tags: economics usa ) - Bad Children's Books -- Visual ( Read more... )
Should we accept that the pictures will be available online, and say that newspapers can write about a story, but have a stricter restriction on what can be published in "public" venues? That's somewhat unfair on newspapers, but might have the desired effect, in that "Prince Harry plays strip pool" is just about a human interest story, but "Telephotographer snaps the Duchess of Cambridge" isn't.
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Now, in one case you could argue that the person taking the photo had tacit permission (unless they did it secretly), while the other clearly didn't.
But neither case has any "news" justification other than "Naked Famous People! Wahey!"
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[1] See digression in follow-up comment.
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Stalking someone in the UK is a crime.For a UK newspaper to print the photos is to collaborate with a stalker. And it's the stalking that distinguishes the two incidents.
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I guess you could say that if it's a crime, the photographer would be prohibited from profiting from the photos (that's probably a good idea, and I think there are laws against profiting from a crime?)
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And yes, profiting from crime.
Yeah, but that doesn't stop them from being printed, only stops newspapers paying for them. That might cut down the market, but once they've been taken, does anything stop the paper printing them? Can the photographer sue for damages if he wasn't allowed to sell them in the first place?
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What doesn’t change is the property rights - if you receive stolen goods you don’t get good title for them, can never get or create good title to them and the true owner can raise an action of vidication of their property leaving you, the good faith receiver, with no goods and a potential claim in damages against the person who sold them to you.
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But even if you thought that test was relevant, it would only matter if the privacy laws were (I think) rather stricter than they are now.
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I think the monarch still theoretically has absolute power, but they'd probably abdicate if parliament pressures them enough. (Especially if the previous monarch is still around to assent.)
[1] Note to non-British. "For a while" means "three hundred years" :)
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And it was the direct result of a revolution/invasion, it just took more'n a decade to get all the dust settled after 1688.
and yeah, The Crown has a huge amount of power, although it lost some more recently (Parliament now sits in its own right and choses the time of its dissolution whereas until last year Parliament was summoned and disolved by the monarch, for example), but most of the Crown powers are constrained by convention and similar.
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But FWIW:
And it was the direct result of a revolution/invasion, it just took more'n a decade to get all the dust settled after 1688.
OK, I agree it took a revolution, sorry for glossing that over. But having had that revolution, it's not clear we need another one to change the succession again, which was what some people seemed to think and what I wanted to rebut.
the Act of Settlement changed the line of succession and made the monarchy elective
I'm not sure I quite understand. Wikipedia says of his abdication "As soon as King Edward VIII gave his royal assent to this Act". That sounds like he theoretically had to assent to change the succession, even though, as I said, there was an iron-clad presumption that he would do so (partly because he wanted to abdicate, partly because the monarch probably can't rule against the wishes of parliament unless everyone else goes along with him).
Is that wrong?
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