Posting someone's name and picture on a public webpage, without their consent

Great Debates
21

What do you mean a restaurateur doesn’t have the privilege to refuse service to someone they dislike? I don’t know where you are posting from but in the United States a restaurateur can definitely refuse service to someone solely because they dislike that person on a personal level.

I also know from various readings that a few celebrity chefs in the UK have in the past actually kicked critics they disliked out of their restaurants. So at least in two countries that aspect of it certainly isn’t illegal.

The argument about him “doing damages” to her is probably irrelevant. For a lawsuit to succeed obviously you need to be able to show damages, but you also have to demonstrate that the defendant has committed some sort of civil tort. Lots of things result in damages that aren’t torts for example if I open up a massive discount supermarket right next to a Mom & Pop grocery store, I’m doing massive damage to them, but I’m committing no tort against them so they can’t sue me (or rather their case will almost certainly not be permitted to progress very far) just because I’ve caused damages to their business.

Throwing out the legal issues, I find it disingenuous on a personal level for someone who makes a living in part based on writing things that dramatically harm businesses to get upset because a business owner has decided to do something that might harm their career. I don’t have a problem with critics, but there is nothing about being a critic that makes you some sort of specially protected person, and you shouldn’t be shocked if a restaurateur you’ve given bad reviews to in the past decides to do something against you. Just like the critics bad reviews are entirely legal, there are many “negative actions” a restaurateur can take against a critic that are likewise entirely legal.

22

Nothing wrong. If you go out in public countless CCTV cameras are recording you, If you pay by by card then you are giving out your name. You have no privacy. Sucks for this food critic but I’m hard pressed to believe that the person taking the photo is doing anything more than being a jerk.

23

I’m posting from the good side of civilization, so maybe it works differently in the States, but THAT differently, I have my doubts. That means a restaurant owner defintely has the right to refuse all blacks to his restaurant. Hey, he doesnt like them. He doesnt even have to justify it and say it’s because of racism, just he cant stand the specific people that showed up, oh yeah, incidentally they all were black.
Disneyland could do the same. So I dont know how it works exactly in the States but from here it looks your confusing Club rules where they have discretionary power over who comes in or not, and any other business.
A critic has a legal right to write critiques, it’s definitely part of the freedom of press package, it has nothing to do with a guy putting a big sign in the street right in front of the restaurant saying this restaurant sucks.
Sorry, but the press does have special privileges. Restaurant owners dont.

24

I’m sure the OP is aware he can take pictures of public crowds. What he’s asking about is specifically zeroing in on one person and posting that picture on a website along with her name. See post #13. If she wasn’t a public figure there might be some legal implications.

Yes, you’re giving it out by choice to the person you’re doing business with. Not even analogous to the situation in the OP.

25

I thought it a bit curious that she said, according to the BBC story, that “Restaurants could change their behaviour or serve different food if they recognised a critic with a wide readership.”

By that I guess she means ‘obsequiously, with better food, suitable for me to review favourably’

26

Did you change your mind or do you not see the contradiction? You can’t refuse service based on race, btw.

27

The press actually does not have special privileges in the United States. Any citizen who is doing something that could be construed as journalism or reporting of news is protected by the First Amendment, not just persons who are professionally employed as members of the “formal press.”

Your post about discrimination and excluding blacks from a restaurant shows you know vanishingly little about American law, so in the future I really think you shouldn’t talk about it with such a definitive tone until you’ve done more research.

In the United States, business owners have the right to refuse service to anyone. This has nothing to do with the distinction between public businesses and private clubs, whatsoever. If I own a restaurant I can refuse service to anyone I choose based solely on the fact I think they’re ugly, I think they smell bad, I don’t like their hair style, I don’t like them because I know them on a personal level, because I don’t like their clothes, because they are too young, because they are too fat, because they are gay, because they are professional wrestlers, because they are convicted sex offenders, or because they are Civil War re-enactors.

In the United States any business which serves the public (essentially most businesses aside from entities which operate as private member clubs) has basically only one set of restrictions on the right to refuse service. Based on the legislation that came out of the civil rights movement, a business owner cannot refuse service to a person based on that person’s membership in a protected class. What this means is I do not have the right to refuse service to someone because they are black. Race is a protected class. I cannot refuse service to someone because they are Christian, religion is a protected class.

I don’t know all the protected classes by heart, but I know race, religion, and disability are the big ones. This is United States Federal Law, meaning there may be more protected classes in any of the fifty states, but the federal law’s protected classes apply in all 50 states.

What I do know is that sexual orientation is not a protected class. So barring any state law, I could prohibit homosexuals from eating in my restaurant, based solely on their sexual orientation.

Age is a protected class only if you are over a certain age, meaning I can’t prohibit granny from coming into my trendy night club just because she’s too old. However, the converse isn’t true. I can run a bakery and prohibit children from being brought in because I just don’t like kids.

Weight isn’t a protected class, so I can bar fat people.

Having a criminal history does not make you a member of a protected class, so any known convicted murderers, pedophiles et cetera I can bar from my establishment. (However there are laws about hiring procedures and whether or not you are allowed to use criminal history as a bar to employment, that is a different law separate from laws about who businesses must provide service to.)

Now, to address you hypothetical racist store owner who bars all blacks but does so under the technically legal excuse of “I don’t like that person” or “I don’t like their clothes” or whatever–that would result in a law suit. In the course of the suit if the aggrieved parties could demonstrate that the owner’s behavior was solely directed at blacks and et cetera, they could show that he was de facto refusing service to a protected class and he’d suffer the legal consequences (probably financial in nature in that case, not sure.)

While it should be obvious, being part of a protected class does not mean you can’t be refused service. If I’m black but also a known convicted murderer out on parole, a restaurant can refuse to serve me based on the fact that I’m a convicted murderer. They can’t refuse to serve me just because I’m black.

Finally, back to the press issue, a restaurant critic has no intrinsic “right” to be on a restaurateurs premises and to review their restaurant based on eating there. A journalist can write anything they want (within the bounds of certain laws about libel/slander etc) about a restaurant, and the L.A. Times has probably written negative articles about the restaurant in question. However, there is no special “critics privilege” which exists that says restaurant critics have a protected right to eat at any restaurant they choose. There is also no privilege that exists for any individual in America that says someone is prohibited from taking a picture of a journalist and publishing it on a website. There might be some privacy laws that would protect some people, but I don’t really know about that. If someone takes a picture of me on a public street I’m not sure what rights I have in regards to the dissemination of that photo. I would suppose if that photo was used in an advertising campaign, I could sue for use of my likeness in that regard. However if it was just posted on a non-profit website or something, or in a local newspaper, I’m not sure I’d have any leg to stand on legally.

28

According to legalmatch.com, some of those reasons won’t cut it in “most courts”.

According to the same webpage I linked to above, nightclubs can have rules a restaurant can’t (not sure if that means they are allowed to bar granny from entry based on age, though)

29

Sans a law specifying whom a business owner must do business with, I am not aware of anything that would legally prohibit a business owner under Federal law from refusing service to ugly people or people with bad hair cuts or et cetera. As I said in my original post, each of the fifty states has different laws and legal systems with different case history and et cetera, which is why I restricted myself to the matter of the Federally protected classes.

Night clubs at least from what I’ve seen, like to sometimes enforce a certain ambiance. This might mean, for example, they want people wearing a collared shirt, or they disallow the wearing of hats. It might be the case that certain clubs desire for ambiance would conflict with the clothing habits of your typical 85 year old woman. If so they could probably exclude the woman over the clothing issue but I don’t think anything about night clubs would make them able to exclude someone solely for their membership in a protected class (which being over a certain age places you in.)

30

He can certainly refuse service. He is not kicking her out because she is a member of a protected or for an arbitrary reason. He is kicking out for behavior that he finds unacceptable.

31

So Martin Hyde, restaurant owners maybe could do this on a federal law level, except that each state can and do enforce legislations on the subject and, apparently, most of the examples you’ve used wouldnt be legal under such legislation.
Except in night clubs.

Darn, that looks so much like what I have written above, I’m sure we could both have saved on the pixels.

You can use a joker to get out though, find a reliable source that says where the scene happens (Los Angeles I beleive) has absolutely no such legislation, and owner does what he wants. Run, Martin, run.

32

I pointed out your contradiction and your incorrect assertion about being able to refuse service based on race in post #28. How about responding to it?

33

I dont believe this. Dude, I was trying to be diplomatic. I was pretty sure you had written your post in a hurry and had fast read my own posts. As everyone else seems to have understood (**Martin Hyde **did), I’ll explain what I think is quite obvious:

Proposition 1 is what I thought was legal.

Proposition 2 is me taking Martin Hyde’s reasoning and trying to establish how that doesnt make sense, by using an example of a restaurant owner doing precisely what Hyde says is legal, and what I think isnt (though, contrary to what Hyde seems to believe I dont hold my position as the absolute truth, I could be wrong).

34

And the phone number used to make the reservation (possibly her private line).

Not sure about the legalities, but a known food critic who’s catered to certainly makes for worse reviews for readers.

Two funny things about this case: The restaurant owner complained that the place was packed and was clearly scared of getting a bad review because the critic and her party had been waiting a while to be seated. But any critic worth their salt makes multiple visits to a restaurant for each review. Except that, as the critic points out, she actually wasn’t there to review the place – just to check it out with her husband and two friends. Even food critics have to eat.

The restaurant owner’s tumblr complaint boils down to her reviews being overly cruel and untrustworthy because she has no experience behind the scenes at a restaurant… except that she does. And even if she hadn’t worked in multiple jobs at restaurants or trained as a sommelier, why the hell should restaurant-goers care if all they want is a review? If you or I had a bad meal there, being told we don’t know how things work in a restaurant would hardly make up for it.

35

Gotchya. I just re-read your second post and it’s not obvious you didn’t mean what you wrote but I get your point now.

What I quoted from a legal site still does not prove the assertions you made in your first post are accurate.

Do you have evidence that’s so in CA?

There’s a difference between refusing someone for arbitrary reasons and doing so because you don’t like them. I know people that were barred from particular bars in the town I grew up in simply because they were dicks. That’s different than being barred for having a lazy eye. But if you disagree and think not liking someone is arbitrary, you still have to provide evidence CA has such a law since you made the claim that refusal isn’t allowed based on not liking someone.

As others have pointed out, damage and malice aren’t enough reason to be sued successfully. It would also help if you answered this question:

you said this:

What Martin Hyde said doesn’t mean a restaurant owner has the right to refuse service to all blacks by claiming the refusal is for another reason. Whether or not the owner gets away with it is another matter.

Why do you think he seems to believe that?

36

Actually you’re still completely incorrect. Some posters have suggested that there are protections for customers above and beyond being members of a “protected class” namely that customers cannot be kicked out of a restaurant for an “arbitrary” reason.

I would wager that any case in which the “arbitrary” nature of a customer being kicked out of a restaurant becomes a matter in court is a case in which a person who is a member of a protected class has brought suit claiming they were refused service because of their membership in said class. So in essence what the comments on “arbitrary” mean, is that if you’re a business owner and you kick a black guy out of your restaurant because he has a “lazy eye”, it means you better hope to god he doesn’t sue. Most likely if it makes it to court it seems likely the lazy eye excuse would seem arbitrary and in essence the court would “believe” that your real reason for ejecting the person was based on the membership in a protected class.

Your original claim is that someone cannot be refused service simply because a restaurateur does not like them. I said that a restaurateur can definitely kick you out just because they don’t like you, and the only person who has even moderately disagreed with me has only said “well, the reason can’t be arbitrary in most courts.” I would argue that if we dug deeper we’d see any relevant court cases actually are dealing with members of a protected class, not some white dude who got kicked out of a coffee shop for being too fat or having an eye brow piercing.

In the United States restaurateurs have the right to refuse service, nothing in this thread has contradicted that whatsoever.

The right to refuse service is well known in the United States. I’m sorry that you’ve been embarrassed by your ignorance of this fact, the wise thing to do would be to acquaint yourselves more with our laws in the future before making proclamations about them.

37

The obvious solution is to pass a federal law that makes it illegal. Posting on the internet involves using interstate communication lines.

But this should not be illegal (and making illegal would probably bump up against the 1st amendment). Imagine the webpage is the New York Times’ page and the person was an anonymous PAC funder. Should the Times be prevented from outing a PAC funder? What is the legal distinction between the Times’ outing of a PAC funder and the owner’s outing of a critic? Both are giving the public information on a person who is trying to influence public opinion.

38

The difference is that if the PAC funder is outed, they still have money, they still have friends with money, they can still fund the PAC to their heart’s content and try to get their moneyed friends to do likewise. There is no negative impact on their ability to do what they want with their money. They may be criticized but that doesn’t mean that they can’t continue to write checks until the accounts run dry.

If a restaurant critic relies upon being low profile/semi-anonymous in order to do their job, and they’re outed, then their ability to do their job in the future is absolutely impacted upon, and in the negative.

Does a restaurant critic need to be anonymous to critique the food? Not necessarily, but it certainly helps. A review from a non-anonymous restaurant critic doesn’t really tell Joe and Jane Q. Public what they can expect when they go as people who don’t have the influence of the readership of a newspaper/magazine behind them. Those critiques aren’t really reviews, they’re unpaid advertising.

39

She hadn’t reviewed this restaurant. The owner felt she had damaged other restaurants with her reviews.

She means she wants the restaurants to serve her the way they serve everyone else, not give her a bigger portion or the most experienced waiter or leave their weaker dishes off the menu because they are serving a critic.

Because that doesn’t give him what he wants. I’m sure he was partly worried about a review hurting his own restaurant, but he has a personal grudge against her. I guess it’s smarter than what he actually did. Then again, what he did was really stupid, so that’s not saying much.

40

For the purposes of the comment I was rebutting, it doesn’t make any difference, but I will rephrase: Does the First Amendment absolve food critics of legal liability for damages their reviews cause restaurants? If so, can they really expect to claim damages if a restaurant reveals their identity and makes it difficult to write reviews that defame restaurants?