Everyone compromises--it's just that Europe tends to err on the side of privacy, whereas the US usually errs on the side of freedom. From my American point of view though, Europe seems a lot more eager to "export" its preferences abroad through legal means.
I was a bit too broad--by "Europe" I meant France, as when French courts tried to apply the Right to be Forgotten principle to information about French citizens that was stored outside of Europe.
And that's worked great, with Merkel prosecuting a comedian for insulting Ergodan or Germany engaging in the political imprisonment of non-violent radicals.
While there are many problems with the USA, its legal protections of e.g. freedom of expression are vastly superior to those found in European nations.
With most things, I agree, but I'm not sure I see any middle ground here. Can you publish a picture taken in public, even if it includes faces and license plates, or not? This does seem binary to me.
Big public projects can have policies which minimise negative externalities.
You can still privately publish any photo you like, within the bounds of the law.
There is lots of middle ground. "Legally you can, but morally, should you?"
Time series get interesting.
If it comes to actual law and courts, it's definitely context dependent. Intent matters a lot. Surf cam is more OK than "revenge cam" of ex's house. Yes that means humans ascribe morality to certain arrangements of bits (and how the bits are evaluated is affected by who they were created by, and why). No, publishing and freedom of speech are not absolute but depend on purpose and intent.
To put it another way, technically child pornography is just a time series of pictures right?
> child pornography is just a time series of pictures right?
But presumably it's not the capturing of the photons that is criminal in the case of child pornography. Even if you used a fake camera, it's still illegal, right?
Well, then, I suppose what I'm saying is: in an information-age society, it's the child exploitation/molestation that's properly a crime; capturing the same as a piece of media is no modifier.
But the media itself is illegal to posess. Some images / videos are Ok, some are not. Moral judgement is involved.
What I am saying is, if society wants to, it can totally declare that some pictures / videos are ok and some are not. This already happens all the time.
Why does that have to be binary and can not depend on the circumstances? There are conflicting interests and rights. Invoking one violates others, so a balance has to be found. A blanket yes/no is either banning something because it could violate some other right, or allowing senseless violation of some right just because there are situations where that could be justified.
Rights are weighted against each other all the time, why should e.g. freedom of press be any different in this case?
Re your elites argument, right now "normal people" are generally awarded more protections than important figures, although the latter have more resources available to try nevertheless. They'll still have those resources, and normal people still won't have them, if you remove protections.