NAMIE AMURO Sues Women's Magazine Over Photos
NAMIE AMURO SUES WOMEN'S MAGAZINE OVER PHOTOS
Japan Today
Singer Namie Amuro, 30, this week sued the publisher of women’s magazine Shukan Josei, claiming that the magazine violated her privacy by publishing photos of her and her 10-year-old son. Amuro is seeking 22 million yen in compensation.
According to Amuro’s lawyers, on June 10, the magazine published photos of the two of them walking together and shopping at a convenience store. In a statement released by her agency, Amuro said, “We don’t want our private life to be exposed to the public and we don’t want to live with the fear of always being on display to the public.”
Japan is known to have some strict rules when it comes to media coverage, and privacy rights are firmly imposed. It’s one reason why you don't see TOHOSHINKI on tabloid stories whenever they’re in Japan. And fans don’t really stalk them and follow them around, unless you’re careless enough to face some possible consequences.
For public figures, mostly it (the law) has a sole purpose of protecting the "private lives of the people in the “public” eye. But application of the law will depend on the story behind the “subject” (the person whose story/photos are published). If his/her story serves the public interest then it might be as acceptable as any other articles and photos published everyday.
Anyway, still... suing someone for some undamaging photos really sound funny to me. In Amuro’s case, the photos had his son’s face “blurred.” Sounds harmless right? But we don’t know the story behind Amuro and the press, and why exactly she got so worked up by the photos. Probably they’ve done it all before to her and she thought its time to make them realize when to stop.
Another incident happened to actress Ryoko Hirosue, but with hers, the tabloid paper ran a rather degrading story of her as a wife and a mother. Hirosue won the case. Why she filed a lawsuit against them sounds very reasonable. As for Amuro’s, I don’t know. Maybe she just had enough money to piss off some people she didn't like (no pun intended).
But like I said earlier, photos/articles that don’t have anything to do with the public’s interest can be questionable, and that can be quite extreme for the non-Japanese to know. And, to make it short, yes Namie Amuro can actually have a case.
Namie Amuro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namie_amuro
Ryoko Hirosue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoko_Hirosue
SpiderLiliez
http://spiderliliez.livejournal.com