Celebrity privacy is a fairly complicated issue, with paparazzi getting away with an awful lot because no one can quite decide where a celeb’s private life ends and their public life begins. With some celebrities courting the cameras and others trying to avoid them, how do you decide when someone should and shouldn’t be taking pics? It’s also true that in many places, even if a photographer does something patently illegal, the tiny penalties or unlikelihood of prosecution mean they’re prepared to ignore the law to get the shot they want.
However the issue isn’t just about the pictures themselves, as for many years some celebrities have been saying that if something isn’t done about the packs of photographers that follow them around, someone’s going to die. To try and deal with the problem, a new law went through the California legislature that will allow people to seek damages against both the paparazzi and media outlets that buy and sell unlawfully obtained photographs. The new law also hopes to put boundaries in place that will make things safer for everybody, and increase the penalties for those who break existing statutes that are designed to protect privacy. The hope is that it will make paprazzi think twice before taking pics of celebs engaged in private family activities, or in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
One of the people who’s been most vocal about the dangers of the paparazzi has been Jennifer Aniston and it’s been announced that she’s one of the main forces behind the bill. According to the LA Times, she and other celebs related their paparazzi horror stories to California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who was so shocked at how out of control things had become that she decided to fast-track the new legislation, which becomes law today.
There have been several cases where paparazzi have been accused of deliberately causing car crashes, as well as terrifying children and making everyday activities dangerous for all involved. Aniston said “There have to be some boundaries. When you have children in the car and the photographers are rushing you, it’s just absolutely out of control. It’s become a public safety issue. Somebody’s going to die if we don’t do something.”