Intent Matters: Not Every Public Recording Is the Same

There is a difference between deliberately taking pictures or videos of people in public to post online and someone accidentally appearing in your picture or video.

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The first is a deliberate act. It is completely within the person's control, yet they choose to do it for reasons best known to them. If that act violates another person's rights or causes harm, the person responsible should be held accountable.

A good example is someone sleeping in public and another person deliberately taking a picture of them while they are drooling because they know it will attract engagement. The content creator benefits from the victim's embarrassment without considering the damage it may cause to the person's dignity or self-esteem.

People can be unbelievably insensitive. You can simply be eating your food in public, minding your business, and before you know it, someone has secretly recorded you and uploaded the video because they think it will get likes and engagement. The next thing, people are tagging you to a post you knew nothing about, laughing at the way you eat, and making jokes at your expense.

I remember a case in a school hostel where a girl was sleeping and snoring. One of her roommates, who clearly didn't like her, deliberately recorded her and posted the video online. The comments were filled with insults and degrading remarks. People were saying, This is going to be someone's wife, while others mocked her by saying, "Someone's future queen." The video went viral, students in her school saw it, and she became the subject of ridicule.

Acts like these are targeted. The intention is to embarrass, humiliate, or profit from another person's moment of vulnerability. Whether the motivation is clout, revenge, or entertainment, the victim becomes the price for someone else's engagement. In my opinion, this is where the law should step in.

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Now compare that to someone filming a video or taking pictures in a public place, and another person simply walks past and appears in the background. That should not automatically be considered an offence because there was no intention to record that individual. There was no hidden agenda, they just happened to be there.

Even if the person later contacts the creator and asks for the content to be taken down, and the creator refuses because the post has already gained significant engagement, I still don't believe that alone makes the creator an offender, provided the person was only accidentally captured. Morally, removing it may be the considerate thing to do, especially if the person has a genuine reason, but legally, it is different because the recording was never targeted at them.

If the law starts treating every accidental appearance in a public recording as a crime, then public photography and videography would become almost impossible. Public spaces are crowded. You can't realistically stop everyone from walking past while you are recording, nor can you ask people to vacate an area just because you want to take a picture.

Situations like these are an unavoidable consequence of being in a public space. They should be handled through communication and mutual understanding. If both parties can reach an agreement, that is ideal. If they can't, it shouldn't automatically become a legal issue unless there was a deliberate invasion of privacy, harassment, or another form of misconduct.

Intent matters. There is a world of difference between accidentally capturing someone in the background and deliberately making them the subject of your content.

One is an unavoidable consequence of filming in public. The other is a conscious decision to use another person's image for your own benefit, often at the expense of their dignity.

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