Do Celebrities have a right to privacy?

[Stavros]

In the UK this week the Supreme Court upheld an injunction brought before the court by a 'celebrity couple' which prevents any newspaper in England and Wales and social media feeds from identifying the people involved in what it alleged to be a story of a sexual nature. The identities are already known to some through publication in Scotland and other countries, but the Court ruled that the free availability of the story in itself did not undermine the law of England in this case.
Joshua Rozenberg in The Guardian reports that the majority opinion of the judges
said there was no public interest in publishing kiss-and-tell stories, however much they might interest some members of the public and even if they involved infidelity or multiple encounters.
He also reports a view of one of the judges that
commercial pressures to publish salacious gossip must not drive newspapers to violate proper standards of journalism
And one notes that the newspaper which wants to publish the story is Rupert Murdoch's The Sun on Sunday, in other words a newspaper belonging to a firm that has broken the law on numerous occasions to publish 'stories' and whose journalists have been sent to gaol because of it.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ndermining-law

If celebrities -pop singers, politicians, people from the world of film, tv, sport and so on- have not broken the law who needs to know if one or more of the people in a relationship have an affair or take photos or videos of themselves in the nude or engaged in sexual intercourse? Hulk Hogan successfully sued Gawker for publishing a video of him engaged in sexual intercourse, who was in the right and who was in the wrong?

Does your opinion of one of these or all celebrities change if you find out they have been unfaithful to their spouse?

I have noted in HungAngels a belief, almost a demand, that private facts about named individuals become public knowledge. At what point does a person's private life become public knowledge?

[Teydyn]

Yes, they have a right to privacy.

Unless ->I<- want to know about it

[Laphroaig]

Everyone has a right to privacy, just as everyone should be judged innocent until proven guilty.

However, it's hard to sympathise with many of today's so-called celebrities who appear happy to air their dirty laundry, sex tapes, etc when it suits them for publicity reasons but go running to the courts crying foul when it doesn't.

[Jericho]

Does anyone (not just celebs) have a right to privacy?
I dunno!

But it seems to me, if you're doing something you don't want anyone else to know about, either don't do it, or hide it better. You've got to take a little bit of responsibility for your actions.

[Stavros]

Everyone has a right to privacy, just as everyone should be judged innocent until proven guilty.

However, it's hard to sympathise with many of today's so-called celebrities who appear happy to air their dirty laundry, sex tapes, etc when it suits them for publicity reasons but go running to the courts crying foul when it doesn't.

This is a weak argument, because it assumes that all celebrities should receive the same treatment as each other with no regard for anything other than somebody else's interest.
We can make a distinction between celebrities with a recognised achievement, for example Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are both famous because of their work with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, rather than for their consumption of narcotics or their marriages. Someone who claims 'celebrity' status because they failed to win a game show on tv to my mind has less claim on my attention, indeed, none at all. Many celebrities are in the news because they not only have a new film, tv show, album to promote, but are contractually obliged to promote the product, so that there is a difference between being 'seen in public' where this is part of a commercial transaction, and, for example, being seen shopping in the Mall with one's children. It is also not the case that films and photos taken in private are willingly 'leaked' to the media by the people concerned, as has been the case with Hulk Hogan and Jennifer Lawrence.
You have not demonstrated either a moral or a legal case for the disclosure of private material.

[Stavros]

Does anyone (not just celebs) have a right to privacy?
I dunno!

But it seems to me, if you're doing something you don't want anyone else to know about, either don't do it, or hide it better. You've got to take a little bit of responsibility for your actions.

Too vague because it is not necessarily the case that celebrities court the publicity they receive. You need also to take into account predatory investigators working for journalists or the journalists themselves who are determined to find out what X does when they are in the privacy of their own home, by using long-range cameras, sifting through garbage, hacking into mobile phones, and so on. A celebrity may indeed be hiding an affair, but outside the immediate family members, who's business is it?

[Laphroaig]

This is a weak argument, because it assumes that all celebrities should receive the same treatment as each other with no regard for anything other than somebody else's interest.
We can make a distinction between celebrities with a recognised achievement, for example Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are both famous because of their work with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, rather than for their consumption of narcotics or their marriages. Someone who claims 'celebrity' status because they failed to win a game show on tv to my mind has less claim on my attention, indeed, none at all. Many celebrities are in the news because they not only have a new film, tv show, album to promote, but are contractually obliged to promote the product, so that there is a difference between being 'seen in public' where this is part of a commercial transaction, and, for example, being seen shopping in the Mall with one's children. It is also not the case that films and photos taken in private are willingly 'leaked' to the media by the people concerned, as has been the case with Hulk Hogan and Jennifer Lawrence.
You have not demonstrated either a moral or a legal case for the disclosure of private material.

That's because it was never intended to be an argument, just my own personal feeling.

However, in the interests of discussion, to take your example above, how many celebrities proudly display their newborn (or in some cases newly "acquired") children for the cameras before, quite rightly attempting to shield them from public attention while they are growing up? Those children have an absolute right to privacy but their parents should be well aware that once the media dogs have been set loose, they're like a dog with a bone and won't let go. Let loose the dogs of war at your peril... (Apologies for mixing metaphors somewhat.)

I have no intention of demonstrating a case for the disclosure of private material unless it is genuinely in the public interest to do so, as opposed to most celebrity scandals/news which are just of interest to (some of) the public.

The waste of time, money and effort spent on useless Freedom of Information requests in the UK is proof enough that there are some things that you just don't need to know...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...s-9673108.html

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/freedom-of...ght-silly.html

[irvin66]

Of course! everyone has the right of privacy, they are a kind of people too.....lol

[CoolAwesomeBXDude]

ask that ? to yourself. dont you have a right to privacy?

[makerandmodder]

Of course they have a right, and the argument "Well they court it when they want it" simply doesn't wash and here's why. If you take someone out for a date, and it goes well, and you get it on and make love at their place afterwards, does that give you the right to go round to their place and demand sex at any time on the basis that they've done it with you before? Even if they say yes a couple of times, but no more often than not, it would still be rape if you forced them.

IMO - and those are three very crucial words, don't forget - it's the same thing. Just because a sleb courts publicity for their new record/film/book/tv show/whatever today does not give the papers the automatic right to stomp into their lives and demand to know whatever they want whenever they want.

Similarly, in my view, the argument that slebs like Macca or the Jag are more deserving of their privacy because of their achievements simply leads to arguments about what constitutes an 'achievement.'