I'm sorry, but if you are literally marching down the street in a parade, you lose the claim of "privacy". I understand the "exploit them for money" part and I agree with that part of your argument. However, the "cannot just film random people and share the images" seems, to put it bluntly, insane. If you march in a parade down the street, people can take pictures and share them. There is absolutely zero expectations of privacy when you march in a public parade down a public street.

Having lived in Germany (Muenster) for 4 months, I noticed they have many such laws Americans would be aghast at. For example: blue laws that enforce family friendly working hours for stores (i.e. 9-6), laws that keep your employer from snooping on you, a two year required warranty on consumer electronics.

It comes down to how you want to live your life. While Zuck bombastically preaches that "privacy is dead" and the rest of us American sheeple fall in line, those in Germany have seen the worst of authoritarianism under the Nazis and the Soviets and have chosen how they want to live. Not a bad idea.

> a two year required warranty on consumer electronics

This isn't limited to Germany, it's a European-wide directive. And I fail to see how it can be viewed as negative.

It drives up prices. I prefer having a choice. I don't need a 2 year warranty on simple cheap devices. But the warranty is always there for a small price for the important things (like my motherboard or laptop).

Often times the additional cost of the mandatory warranty will put a product out of reach for people who would be happy with the mfr's standard warranty.

Warranty replacement costs are proportional to failure rate - for example, if 1% of devices will fail within 2 years, warranty costs would add 1% to the cost price.

What sort of electronics products have a failure rate so high that the costs of a 2 year warranty is anything but trivial?

I am typing on a cheap Logitech K120 keyboard I got at Walmart. (at work I have a nice WASD[1] keyboard) I spent about $10 on this keyboard. if it stopped working in the next two years I wouldn't want to even bother dealing with the warranty mailing it back and waiting weeks for the replacement to arrive. I'd just throw it out and go buy another $10 keyboard.

1) http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/

I'd say that you chose a poor example as Logitech's customer service (in Europe at least) is second to none. They will send you replacements for free very easily, while asking only minimal proofs (usually your serial number is enough). I know plenty of people who got their mouse or keyboard replaced in a few days after contacting customer service, without being asked to send the defective one.

Yes, strict laws on private behavior certainly keeps authoritarianism at bay. Personally, between free speech and a two year warranty, I go for the former.

>a two year required warranty //

Excellent.

I'm an American and none of those even begin to put me aghast. We're not all right-wing, war-monging cowboys with gun racks. Conversely, we're not all Occupy protestors carrying protest signs 24/7. Don't pay attention to the media.

When the government dictates what hours you can keep your store open, that sounds authoritarian to me.

There's two sides of the medal: In general, I do agree with you. However, large store chains (think walmart) have a larger lever in the power game between employer and employee, so they can force long working hours. The idea was to prevent that. The laws have been relaxed very much though - in Berlin there's 24h supermarkets and stores that open on sundays. However, in the smaller towns stores still close at 6 or 8, but it's more of a habit than a law.

Don't forget that Walmart tried opening their stores in Germany and then pulled out.

Sure. They broke a couple of laws and tried to enforce some company policies that are actually not acceptable in germany. They were taken to court and lost and later sold off all their stores and left.

I don't think you know what "aghast" means.

Perhaps "aghast" was overblown.

My point was that we're capitalists. Government should only intervene to prevent others from harming me or my property as the base understanding of the word.

Who is the government to tell me the hours I can operate my business, the restrictions I can enforce on my employees, what I can coerce people into buying, or how others can exploit my likeness? They might all seem like sensible restrictions in Europe, but I've known a good many Americans who want to retain that freedom, even if it leaves our life expediencies behind the third world at the end of the day.

Finally, I threw in the authoritarianism regime reference as an example of the extremes that society can find itself in. Germany, as a wealthy, highly educated country has made the decision that they want to live well in many ways at the cost of some "freedoms" that we defend. While we're "free," I must admit that I passed twelve homeless people today on the way to work while I never saw a one my entire stent in Germany.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, but it is a different way of thinking that you must consider before you blast their Bild law.

> I'm sorry, but if you are literally marching down the street in a parade, you lose the claim of "privacy".

True and that assertion holds as well in germany. The issue with the techno-viking video is that he is not shown as part of the parade, but specifically and personally filmed and made the center of the video. This is the point where it crosses the line from filming a public parade with the techno viking being part to filming the techno viking as a person. The first would be completely legal, the second requires a permission of the person.

Thanks for an actual sane response to the OP. I can understand this a lot more than "it is illegal to video parades".

Also note that public figures have fewer rights to their own image than Joe J. Random. It's fine to target a politician at a demonstration, etc.

If there is public interest in a specific person, pictures of that person can be published (within the limits what's newsworthy to the public) without their consent.

Lawsuits in this area are not uncommon, since it's hard to nail down the specifics.

> I'm sorry, but if you are literally marching down the street in a parade, you lose the claim of "privacy".

I'm sorry but different countries have different sets of laws, and it turns out there are whole legal systems which disagree with your overly broad assertions.

Actually I'm not sorry at all, you are in serious need of a clue.

What? Parent comment is talking about what he believes as the societal expectation of privacy in his view.

He doesn't say "Wow, it's ridiculous that Germany has different laws. How dare they!"

Instead of talking about whether or not his view of privacy is correct, this comment thread has devolved into a "look at this clueless foreigner" match.

Germany has different laws? The nerve!

Who knew there were these things called democracies that allowed their people to create their own laws!!! I understand that America usually "encourages" other countries to follow their laws, but it looks like some freedom still exists, as tiny as it is...

How they dare to have laws and expectations different to the ones in my country?

Outrageous!

The same law exists in France, it's called "Droit à l'image", which is the exact same meaning than "Recht am eigenen Bild".

> In Germany there is the so called "Recht am eigenen Bild" which means you cannot just film random people and share the images or even exploit them for money. This is a law specific to Germany

I don't think that law is unusual, in Argentina we have it too, and sounds like something very basic anyone would want (though creeps don't seem to understand it, and act surprised when they realize such law exist, and start complaining on their lack of freedom and whatnot, lol). I thought it kind of came packaged with the IP laws that the US pushed everywhere.

How about filming police, or people activity participating in crime? And if you allow exceptions for that, who's to decide what constitutes crime and what happens to people who film perfectly legal acts that look suspicious?

Filming or taking pictures in itself is not a problem and perfectly legal. Go film all you want. You're just not allowed to publish those pictures. So if you see a suspicious act, take your pic, hand it to the police and let them deal with it.

You can film the police and film public figures all you want, as long as they're acting in their public capacity. You're allowed to film Angela Merkel doing her state visit, going to the beach with Barack Obama and later publish that clip. You're not allowed to film her naked in her private backyard.

The border between the two is sometimes hard to determine, so there are some lawsuits about that, but all in all it's pretty clear.

I answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687247

> Weird piece.

And the techno festival known as Fuckparade wound its way down Rosenthaler Straße didn't even warrant a mention in your list of weirdness.

Very strange to me as an American. So would you actually get in legal trouble if you took a picture at a public event?

Nope, as long as you don't publish it.

How does the media work if you can't take photos/video of the public?

In Argentina you can take photos on public places and publish them, given that you are not obviously targeting one specific individual without his (explicit or implicit) consent. For instance, in tennis matches, the cameramen and tv program can get into trouble if they do things like zooming and making focus on a beautiful girl from the crowd. There are also other specifics, like that the person can't already be famous or a public figure, since those people have voluntarily exposed themselves. Eg: TV actors don't have this right to privacy when they are on public. If you see a famous person in the street, you can take a picture of him/her and publish it.

Basically: the media can take photos/video. But they have to remove it from their publications if someone invokes 'droit à l´image'.