Will this proposed law make it illegal to take pictures of anyone in Hawaiii, or just celebrities? Who decides who qualifies for this extra protection?
If they want to make a law that you can’t sell a picture, or publish it for profit, without the subject’s permission, I might get behind something like that.
I don’t see how laws are really going to help fix this. This is a culture problem. As long as tabloids and celebrity gossip are big business, people will go out of their way to get pictures or videos of celebrities that the people consuming that stuff want to see. To that end, considering that celebrities have greater resources than the rest of us pretty much proportionally to how much the public wants to see them, if their private life is important to them, realizing this, they should use some of that to make it more difficult, fences, hedges, larger lots, etc. and generally keep their private lives private.
At the same time, there’s a clear leevl of hypocricy here. I don’t follow celebrity gossip at all, so I don’t know anything about the private lives of Steven Tyler, Avril Lavigne, or Neil Diamand, so for all I know they are doing exactly that and perhaps people are going to extreme lengths to harass them. But I also know that seeing Brittney Spears and the Osbornes also complaining, considering that they’ve not only apparently made little effort to disguise their personal lives, but seemed to make efforts to put their personal lives in the spotlight is where I see the hypocricy. That is, it’s one thing if you’re doing what you love and celebrity status is just part of what goes with it. It’s something else if you thoroughly embrace celebrity, put your life out there, then change your mind and expect what you’ve created to just… go away.
So, sure, I have a level of appreciation for some of these people. Maybe they never wanted to be famous, they just love what they do and accepted it as a necessary evil. But I still have trouble feeling sorry for them because they get to do what they love, where so many people couldn’t even if they want to, and they’re upset that what they love has unfortunate consequences. Like I, for instance, would hate to be a celebrity, but if it meant I could be a musician professionally, I’d take it in a heartbeat and deal with it.
Yeah, hard to take him seriously after years of “Nyah, nyah, can’t make me stop annoying you!”
Good retort, goat fucker.
Is Tyler the frontman for this because of the picture of his manboobs a few years ago?
aka the Streisand effect. She attempted to force a photographer and website to take down pictures of her Malibu mansion. The website contained over 12,000 pictures of the California coastline. She lost, wound up having to pay court costs, and the picture of her mansion got far more exposure than it would have had otherwise.
But should rudeness be a matter for legislation?
I have no sympathy for famous people who complain about the fact that there are disadvantages to being famous in addition to the millions of advantages. Every job in the world has good and bad things about them, and if you have half a brain you’ll figure out the bad parts before you choose that job. If I become a garbage man, I have to deal with rotten smells and the occasional dead body. But it’s a job I can get without much education and it’s stable and pays decent. If I get a job as a doctor I have to spend a lot of time in school, I have to work odd hours, and I have to deal with rotten smells and the occasional dead body. But it is prestigious and pays well and I get a sense of accomplishment.
And if I get a job as a rock star, I get paid more money than most sane people can spend. I can travel the word, stay in the finest hotels and have those hot babes screaming for me. I can take a year or two off work to get my head together. But the disadvantage is that people will follow me around with cameras and bug me for my autograph.
In all of these cases, if the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then find another job. All these people knew the deal before they got involved, and if they didn’t know that stars are often photographed when they don’t want to be, then they are idiots. They have jobs that most people would trade them for in a instant, so they should shut up. If Stephen Tyler had become a waiter at Denny’s he wouldn’t have to worry about people taking his picture when he’s on the beach in Hawaii.
I used to feel this way until I watched a documentary on celebs and depression.
What you don’t realize is if these people decide to turn down a job ore take a couple of years to get their head together; that means lots of people don’t get to work as a result of that decision. People who actually need to work and can’t afford a two year vacation. And a lot of these people are people that the celeb personally knows and actually cares about.
Think about it, would you be so quick to quit your job if it meant it would bring hardship to your best friend?
The flip side to this, celebs never know who their real friends are. If you’re a celeb and you ask “So-n-so” should I take “Such-n-such” job? Well, of course they are going to say yes because to keep you working is to keep them working.
I just watched a show on Dateline (or 20/20, I can’t remember which) and it was talking about celebrities deciding whether or not to release pictures of their newborns. If they chose not to, the price for the first shot was astronomical (well, if it’s someone uber famous like Kim Kardashian or Kate Middleton) and the paparazzi would do absolutely anything to get it. If they chose to share in a magazine pictorial (for example), then they were seen as exploiting their child. But here’s the thing, either way the press was freaking insane! And this was all day, every day, even when we’re talking about minors who obviously didn’t (A) sign up for this, and (B) were scared shitless. If anyone doesn’t buy that, just look up photos of Suri Cruise. So, I do have sympathy for them and there’s no amount of money in the world that could make me want to out up with that. < shudder >
I do think it’s kind of ironic or hypocritical that Tyler is one of the spokeslebrities for this bill, given his participation in this invasion of his privacy.
But have you considered the fact that people more successful than ourselves need to be punished for the offense?
I wouldn’t want it either. I have no desire for that level of intrusion. So that’s one reason I didn’t choose to try to become famous! (well, that and having no talent) But they tried and worked and struggled in order to become famous, knowing full well that it means giving up your privacy. Why should celebrities, alone among all people of the world, get a job with only pros and no cons?
My standard is generally this:
If whatever behavior the stars are annoyed about is something that would get someone arrested for stalking or being a peeping tom or whatever in say… Des Moines, then it’s probably out of the pale for the celebrity as well. Taking pictures when they’re out running- fine. Using a 1000mm telephoto from a helicopter miles away to take photos of them sunbathing in a private backyard- not cool. Hiding in bushes - not cool. Mobbing, hindering their daily lives and generally being a pest - not cool.
It’s basically the golden rule, just applied to celebrities.
Just because someone’s a famous actor or singer or whatever doesn’t automatically mean that they’ve abandoned any pretense of having any privacy or private life. I realize that there are nosey assholes and tabloids out there who live for this stuff, but it really should be the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law that’s followed here.
That being said, the smart celebrities are the ones who embrace the fame and manage the paparazzi instead of fighting them constantly.
Well, I lol’d.
I would happy if there no more Steven Tyler photos. Ever.
Same with the annual ‘best\worst beach bodies’ photos.
That said, I think the photographers should be able to take photos anywhere. I also think the subjects should be free to open up a can whoopass on 'em.
Who here wants to see a photo of Steven Tyler sunbathing?
I think, there should be a ‘del Boca Vista’ for aging celebrities and Mr. Tyler can be the association president.
I imagine there are plenty of cons to stardom even if paparazzi aren’t constantly snapping pictures of you going about your private business on private property.
Always being pestered by photographers and others when you’re out in public, having everything you do or say in an interview picked to pieces in the media, not being able to go to your kid’s recital or sports game like a normal person, having the success and prosperity of lots of non-celebrity colleagues depending on how much work you do and how well you do it (as Shakes noted), being constantly badgered by opportunistic people trying to hook onto you for advantage or notoriety, just to name a few.
It startles me sometimes how much some people seem to loathe and despise the normal life of ordinary people, judging by how inferior they consider it to the lavish lifestyles of wealth and fame. Personally, I’m a thoroughly and deservedly obscure ordinary person, and for the most part, I love it. I love feeling like a “regular” person with a regular person’s ideas of the value of money, I love the democratic feeling of living a lifestyle that isn’t too exclusive for millions of other people to share, I love the sensation of being sturdy and tough enough to be able to, say, carry my own luggage or make good things with my own hands or walk a couple of miles to get somewhere without having staff and personal assistants fussing over me and constantly smoothing my path and buying everything I need from some overpriced store.
It does kind of shock me that so many people seem to think that getting away from the small challenges and triumphs of ordinary life would be such a blessing that nobody who achieves it has any right to complain about their life at all. Sheesh, I don’t even think that wealth and fame in themselves are all that great a deal; certainly not a great enough deal to make losing the joys of normal life completely insignificant by comparison.
Well, not more so for celebrities than it is for ordinary people, it seems to me. bump’s criterion for what celebrity-hunters should and shouldn’t be allowed to do sounds reasonable.
It’s really bizarre how we as a culture make actors, musicians, and athletes our royalty, pay them millions of dollars for entertaining us, spend countless hours of our downtime paying attention to magazines/blogs/tv shows/gossip columns about their lives, basically treating them as if they are the highest tier of our society, etc.etc.etc… but the minute one of them fesses up to the fact that life in that tier isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, we turn on them and spit bitter invectives about how spoiled/bratty/ungrateful/useless/[fill in the blank with your word of contempt here].
What’s up with that? Besides sour grapes?
Dunno. Like I said above, some people seem really pretty invested in the idea that the life of the rich and famous is genuinely way better than that of us plebeians. So maybe if a rich and famous person shatters that illusion, it provokes resentment.
Ultimately, I think it’s a matter of desiring equality.
If someone hits it big as an actor, or athlete, they should fucking well deal with a horrible downside that makes their lives just as miserable as my own.
Since I don’t complain constantly about my meager paycheck*, they don’t get to complain about paparazzi following them around like stalkers, and peeping into their windows while they’re taking a dump.
*Not intended to be a factual statement
they work hard on putting their best foot forward and show a carefully cultivated image. the last thing they want is to be caught in a casual moment where they aren’t at their best.