Slashdot Mirror
In Australia, Even Private Facebook Photos Are Public
littlekorea writes "Australia's telecommunications regulator has ruled that one of the country's largest broadcasters, Channel 7, did not breach the industry code of conduct by lifting photos of deceased persons and minors from social networking site Facebook. Significantly, the regulator noted that it doesn't have the legal authority to crack down on broadcasters that lift material tagged as 'private,' looking to the Attorney General to provide some legal clarity."
Is it that in Australia we just seem to be 18 months behind the rest of the world?
The UK has had the News of the World scandal; however, we are still in the "Nothing to hide" movement of several years back:
A recent article on this topic is at http://www.1place.com.au/1P/blog1p/?p=2269
The problem with “nothing to hide” surveillance or intrusions into privacy is, that if such an approach is left to dominate without regulation, then our secrets will diminish. Secrets give rise to disruptive thought in areas such as in technology contributes to help society evolve. Privacy and confidentiality are areas of law that help ideas develop into disruptive technology.
A "private" tag doesn't magically make a public item private.
Do you really think that once you put something private online it will be private forever?
Privacy is a process, not a product or, worse, a tag on a file.
Do you want to keep your "digital life" private?
Forget about putting it online.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Again, folks, nothing you post on Facebook is private. Nothing. Seriously, there are simply ***NO*** privacy issues with Facebook, because nothing on Facebook is private.
The rule is simple: If you want to maintain privacy, don't post your "private" material on Facebook or any other "social networking" web site.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There are 2 aspects to copyright:
1) Since they were marked private it is evident that they were released (to the social network) under a license that did not include reproduction on television.
2) Were the photographers of the pictures paid by the TV network a fee so that they could be broadcast ?
I suspect that the TV network did not even think of these points and would have ignored the issues anyway.
IN THIS CORNER: Facebook. Google. Slashdot. Forums. Blogs. MSN. Yahoo. Groups. Lists. Sharing. Publishing. Broadcasting.
And in this corner: privacy.
Seriously, if it's private, WTF are you posting it to a web service for?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Hahaha suckers, I don't even have facebook.
Or friends.
So I read the description of the story and thought to myself "this makes no sense, if you posted photos as private or friends only, how on earth did Channel Seven get hold of them?"
So, shockingly, I read the story and it turns out the description is completely wrong. Here are the key parts (bold mine for emphasis):
In short, they lifted photos tagged as public on a public tribute page, littlekorea completely twisted the truth (by mixing up "public" and "private") when submitting the story and timothy didn't do any basic editing.
It'll be interesting to sit back with the popcorn and watch the comments from outraged slashdotters who didn't bother to read the story and the upvotes from those with moderator points who equally didn't bother to read the story ...
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
And that is interesting. They are stating that a private tag is not absolute. Things such as 'in the public interest' would come into play. The 'FoaF posted it public' issue would also come into play, where a journalist may not know that the original source of the image wanted it to be kept private.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
It was never about what you have to hide!
It's about what they want to find.
And in that regard, Cardinal Richelieu (most evil inquisition motherfucker you ever heard of) once said:
Isn't any digital creation automatically copyrighted by the owner, unless they waiver it, so the photos were copyrighted by the user
Read the article. The photos were not published to a "select group", they were PUBLIC in Facebook terms.
This case involved someone complaining that their publicly published photos were publicly redistributed by the media, and the judge rightly said that if it's on Facebook and tagged as public, it is fair game for anyone.
I say again: if you don't want it being publicly accessed, why would you post it to a public web service? Send it as an email, host it on your own secure server requiring logins to view the images, etc. You wouldn't post it as a Slashdot journal entry/attachment and then claim "but I said the links were to my private photos -- you shouldn't have been clicking on my links!"
The judge's argument is very rational: if no attempt is made to protect the media from access, it cannot be considered "private" under the law.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's a point of law and needs to be decided by a different part of the Legal framework. As laws are not global, I suggest that people need to temper their comments based on that. The issue seems to be based of what is Private and who can report or link stuff which may then make make them Public. I would say it's Facebook that is wrong, if it allows 'friends' to link Private photos into a Public area.
There was an unknown error in the submission.