The art is public, not their bed

There is a great misunderstanding in the age of social media. As soon as a person becomes famous, we think that his or her private life also becomes public property.

But it is not so. It should not be so.

The case of the intimate videos circulating these days, featuring composer Adrian Hila and several singers, is a good case for holding a debate that goes beyond the specific persons. Where does the public’s right to know end and where does a person’s right to have a private life begin?

First, we need to make a fundamental distinction. Being a public figure does not mean being a person without privacy.

Adrian Hila and the singers in question are public figures because of their artistic activity. Public is their art, their creativity, their professional activity, their artistic success or failure.

But this does not automatically make their sex life public too.

The European Court of Human Rights, in its case law, accepts that even people who are very well known publicly have a legitimate expectation of protection of their private life.

In today’s Europe you are severely punished for violating privacy. The public interest is not the same thing as the public’s curiosity.

The public may be extremely curious to see an intimate video of an artist. It may click millions of times. It may comment on it. It may share it.

But the large number of curious people does not turn that curiosity into public interest.

Strasbourg has said very directly that the public’s right to be informed, although essential in a democratic society, cannot be reduced to the public’s thirst to know details from other people’s private lives. This is especially important when it comes to sexual intimacy.

A photograph from a public activity is one thing. A public statement is another thing. A romantic relationship that a person decides to make public themselves is something else.

But a sexual video made in a private space is at the core of what Article 8 of the European Convention protects as private life.

The Court has also stressed that images can contain extremely personal and intimate information and that the right to control the use of one’s image is part of the protection of personality.

Here our society must ask a not very pleasant question about mass curiosity:

Do we have the right to watch something private just because someone else had the opportunity to put it on the internet?

I think this is the essence of the debate. Filming yourself in intimacy does not mean giving consent for the video to be published.

Consent to the sexual act is not consent to its publication. Consent to the recording is not consent to distribution.

The fact that a material has already been published somewhere on the internet does not extinguish the person’s right to privacy.

On the contrary, Strasbourg has specifically treated the non-consensual publication of intimate images as an interference with private life, with serious consequences for personal dignity and integrity.

What about the media?

The media has the great right and duty to inform the public.

But the media is not simply a distributor of what the public wants to see.

It is also a filter.

A professional and ethical journalist must ask not “Will people click on this?”, but “What public interest does publishing this fulfil?”

These are two completely different questions.

If the video proves a corruption, an abuse of office, a conflict of interest or another issue that really affects the community’s life, then a serious debate about public interest may exist.

But if it simply shows with whom and how an artist has had sexual relations, then we have far more public curiosity than public interest.

That is the debate, then. The argument “They are public figures” is not enough.

A public figure is not a status that strips a person of privacy.

It is a status that can expand the space of criticism and public interest for what is connected to that person’s public activity.

We undoubtedly live in difficult times for privacy. We are creating a society where technology is increasingly erasing the boundary between what is private and what becomes public.

A phone can record everything.

A person can copy everything.

An application can distribute everything.

And a virtual crowd can watch everything.

But the technical possibility of watching something does not create a moral or legal right to watch it.

This is a point we must understand.

Today it is an artist’s intimate videos. Tomorrow it could be someone else’s intimate photograph. The day after tomorrow it could be a private conversation.

And if we accept the principle that “if it has been made public, then the public has the right to see it”, we have essentially destroyed the concept of privacy.

Privacy exists precisely to protect what the individual has not given to the public. Otherwise even sex would be done openly…

But to close with the artists of the videos, I say that the art is public, not their bed.