Ist es jemals in Ordnung, Fremde in der Öffentlichkeit zu filmen?
https://www.vox.com/culture/24158534/filming-strangers-tiktok-joey-swoll?utm_medium=10today.us.sun.edition.rd.20240519.436.2&utm_source=email&utm_content=article&utm_campaign=email-2022
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The experience of realizing you are being surreptitiously filmed by a stranger is now a relatively common one, but this is how it happened for Mitchell Clark: The 25-year-old was working a shift at his Atlanta Target when someone propped up a phone nearby. “I thought it was for some dumb prank channel,” he says. It wasn’t until a young woman bent over directly in front of him, her dress short enough to expose her entire bare bottom, that he realized what was going on. The resulting video captures his shock — his eyes widen and his hands grasp his chest, agog — and later ended up on the OnlyFans model’s [Instagram](https://www.vox.com/instagram-news) account.
“It made me look like a creep,” he tells me. The video was an extreme example of a trend where women secretly film men’s reactions to them, often in [the gym](https://www.tiktok.com/@rosafit/video/7195632699464404270?_t=8mBdAmmhxEd&_r=1) or in [public spaces](https://www.tiktok.com/@carina.tss/video/7207365691756924165?_r=1&_t=8mBdBWL3Lot), either to shame the men for being inappropriate or to highlight the power of their own beauty — in Clark’s case, arguably both. But this time it caused an uproar: After Clark [made a video](https://www.tiktok.com/@mitchelliguesss/video/7346292075832347947) about how uncomfortable he felt, other accounts reposted and responded to it, highlighting the ways in which public filming culture had gotten out of control.
Do arguments about First Amendment rights and social justice really apply to people who make strangers uncomfortable for engagement on TikTok?
I wish people would understand the difference between public spaces and public accommodations. A business is a public accommodation, target could ban anyone filming in their stores that does not infringe on anyone’s first amendment rights. The same goes for gyms, they need to start enforcing their own rules (many gyms have a no photo policy especially around or in the changing rooms).
Banning filming in a public space like a park or sidewalk is problematic and would violate the 1st amendment.
Now on to the topic of filming for commercial purposes. Anytime you film and throw up on tik Tok, YouTube etc and you get money for it or if it is in connection or promotion of your content, you have to get a waiver (talent release form) for EVERY SINGLE PERSON, ART, LOGO, or ANY other copyrighted material.
It’s called the right of publicity law. We need to start enforcing it. People like the person at target in this story need to start suing for damages.
It’s becoming fairly unbearable to go to any event or public accommodations without some nonsense. I’m not an extra in your little ego trip and if I am an extra I get paid the standard sagafra day rate.
I know this is a pretty US specific debate, as the incident in question took place in the US, but the Sub is international and the question was phrased very openly.
So let me offer a little outside perspective to First Amendment concerns from the US crowd.
In Germany we have something called „Recht am eigenen Bild“ (the right to your own picture/pictures of you).
The way this law is structured seeks to balance concerns for freedom and unhindered activity of the press (which we have) and the privacy of the private individual (which is highly valued).
Individuals may not be recorded (filmed/photographed) without their explicit permission. Period.
That means you can not film individual people in public in a manner that targets them specifically. That has them recognizeable (shows their face, figure, what they are doing, etc.) Even if you never distribute the footage anywhere, the act if filming/picture taking itself is prohibited.
There are exceptions:
Individuals have to tolerate being on footage of public spaces as part of a crowd. You are allowed to film/photograph a crowd, a public place with many people in it (there are specifics as to what constitutes a crowd and what makes someone part of a crowd and not an individual). Simply being out in public is not enough, though.
Filming gab be an act of self defense.
You are allowed to film someone if there is plausible public interest.
That could be documenting a crime. It applies to celebrities (even very minor ones) and public figures, for example, who have to legally endure a degree of public interest and therefore picture taking in certain contexts. Events of significant public interest may be filmed. If there is conflict about it, court will handle the final decision over what exactly constitutes such public interest, but it has to be important enough to warrant violating someone’s privacy.
Acredited press has extra rights to guarantee their ability to freely report.
Their rights originate with the aforementioned concessions to „public interest“, they just got a little more concrete backing on it.
There are further regulations about filming someone in humiliating or compromising circumstances, which would, for example, apply to the case in question here.
It is a balancing act, but so far it has worked here. It may seem like a huge cut to press rights for Americans, but this is not my experience here at all.
We do have a healthy press that can report effectively on all kinds of topics.
But what this guarantees is protection of privacy for ordinary people going about their day.
There is power in the knowledge that you do not owe the public the details of your existance so long as nothing you do is of legit, plausible interest to a wider audience.
It gives us solid legal means to defend a private existance and private modes of being.