How are paparazzi not considered harassment?
Celebrities will complain about how hard the paparazzi makes their lives, and when one is particularly egregious, they may even sue, but ultimately most of those “famous” people desperately need to be famous, and the paparazzi makes that happen in a very real sense. The only thing worse than having somebody want to take your picture is not having somebody wanting to take your picture. There are lots of examples of stars and other public figures who have opted out of this trap. Renee Zellweger, who seemed to really relish the game early on, moved out of LA and stopped behaving in ways that attracted them. Matt Damon never played along. Ben Affleck figured it out. Note that these are all stars with *actual talent.* (OK maybe not Ben Affleck.) They don’t need the paparazzi to have careers.
The paparazzi are pretty savvy about what the law is. They’re also extremely savvy about when the law can be ignored. Individually they’re likely to be well-behaved, but as a group, they can be quite monstrous, because they know, even if the cops were called on them, most police don’t have any way (or even inclination) to arrest 60 photogs who may then all simultaneously file suits claiming free speech has been violated.
In the EU, courts basically have to balance art.8 (respect to private life) with art.10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. I think the trend has been to expand what counts as private life so as to protect “celebrities” – e.g. Campbell v MGN Ltd, and more recently von Hannover v Germany. However, courts recognise that “private” events can come into the commercial sphere – e.g. Douglas v Hello!, so that selling your wedding photos to a magazine means that you can’t claim protection under art.8 if paparazzi get photos as well. The test now is whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy (in the UK at least – implementation/interpretation of the ECHR can differ country-to-country). Also, in the UK it’s interesting to see how the law of confidence has evolved with the HRA 1998 to now incorporate privacy and freedom of expression.
Point taken sharkfu (great nickname, by the way), but I don’t think Brad and Angelina exactly discourage the paparazzi. That’s one of the things Zellweger talks about– how to discourage the shooters by altering her behavior (and not in ways that affected her freedom, either. She still does her own shopping and gets her hair done in public salons. She just doesn’t alert the media every time; she’s stopped signing autographs. She’s stopped going to the hot spots. etc.) Affleck and Garner also seemed to have figured this out, as well as Julia Roberts, largely to protect their children. They still get stalked, but not nearly to the same extent anymore.
