[Perseids]

> But that's literally the question I'm asking. Where do you draw the line in a way that stops what we consider to be abuses, but doesn't stop what we think of as legitimate uses by journalists, academics, etc.?

I think the wrong assumption you're making, is that there is supposed to be a simple answer, like something you can describe with a thousand words. But with messy reality this basically never the case: Where do you draw the line of what is considered a taxable business? What are the limits of free speech? What procedures should be paid by health insurance?

It is important to accept this messiness and the complexity it brings instead of giving up and declaring the problem unsolvable. If you have ever asked yourself, why the GDPR is so difficult and so multifaceted in its implications, the messiness you are pointing out is the reason.

And of course, the answer to your question is: Look at the GDPR and European legislation as a precedent to where you draw the line for each instance and situation. It's not perfect of course, but given the problem, it can't be.

[crazygringo]

Generally, you do want the general principle of something like this to be explainable in a few sentences, yes.

Even if that results in a bunch of more detailed regulations, we can then understand the principles behind those regulations, even if they decide a bunch of edge cases with precise lines that seem arbitrary.

Things like the limits of free speech can be explained in a few sentences at a high level. So yes, I'm asking for what the equivalent might be here.

The idea that "it's so impossibly complicated that the general approach can't even be summarized" is not helpful. Even when regulations are complicated, they start from a few basic principles that can be clearly enumerated.

[abdullahkhalids]

This is not how things ever work in practice in representative democracy. The world is too complex, and the many overlapping sets of political groups in a country/provice/city have different takes on what the policy should be, and more importantly, each group have different tolerances for what they will accept.

Because everyone has different principles by which they evaluate the world, most laws don't actually care about principles. They are simply arbitrary lines in the sand drawn by the legislature in a bid to satisfy (or not dissatisfy) as many groups as possible. Sometimes, some vague sounding principles are attached to the laws, but its always impossible for someone else to start with the same principles and derive the exact same law from them.

Constitutions on the other hand seem simple and often have simple sounding principles in them. The reason is that constitutions specify what the State institutions can and cannot do. The State is a relatively simple system compared to the world, so constitutions seem simple. Laws on the other hand specify what everyone else must or must not do, and they must deal with messy reality.

[crazygringo]

This is not just unhelpful (and overly cynical), but it is untrue.

Courts follow the law, but they also make determinations all the time based on the underlying principles when the law itself is not clear.

Law school itself is largely about learning all the relevant principles at work. (Along with lots of memorization of cases demonstrating which principle won where.)

I understand you're trying to take a realist or pragmatic approach, but you seem to have gone way too far in that direction.

[jakelazaroff]

The principle is that you should be able to casually document what you see in public, but you should not be able to intrude on the privacy of others.

[rootusrootus]

Emphasis on casual, IMO. It is perfectly reasonable to decide that past norms which evolved in the absence of large scale computing power, digital cameras, and interconnected everything do not translate to the right to extrapolate freedom of casual observation into computer-assisted stalking.