Fair point, Gaius, and if these were ordinary Mr and Mrs W on honeymoon, they'd be right to be hopping mad. But they're not. If they really want to stop something like this happening again, they need to assume that unless they're behind closed doors/curtains/whatever, someone, somewhere, might be watching. And yes, taking pictures. Rocket science it ain't.

I can never agree with the argument that celebrities are not entitled to privacy, ever. Even someone who has chosen to be a celebrity is entitled to be treated like a human being. Otherwise, we're simply living in a world where treatment akin to that which used to be meted out to slaves has just been transferred onto a different set of people.

<Added>

Furthermore, try applying the argument, "they were asking for it" to other forms of personal assault.

Yup!

Fair point, Gaius, and if these were ordinary Mr and Mrs W on honeymoon, they'd be right to be hopping mad. But they're not. If they really want to stop something like this happening again, they need to assume that unless they're behind closed doors/curtains/whatever, someone, somewhere, might be watching. And yes, taking pictures. Rocket science it ain't.

How far underground would you need them to be before you'd assume they had a legitimate right to think of themselves as being in private?

When I worked on a building site, the phrase I picked up was that "even a donkey stops for a piss."

In this case, I think even a public figure can and should be able to relax after taking reasonable precaution to obtain privacy.

This is not the same as getting drunk at a nightclub and expecting the tabloids to ignore it, this is actively making every reasonable attempt to remain hidden and still getting photographed.

G

I brought this issue up precisely because something so trivial was dominating the news. Leading every bulletin. In a sense that seemed to me to show at least a lack of a sense of proportion and perhaps a very distorted sense of moral priority given the really important, appalling things happening in the world relegated to the 3rd or 4th item on the news. It's very comparative triviality is the ethical issue. So I think it was worth raising.

I was wrong: there were two substantive issues - the second far more important than the legal one: the most important of all is that the telephoto lens could just as easily have been a gunsight.

Do I approve of the pictures? Of course not. Are they tacky, intrusive and indefensible? Of course. Despite not being a Royalist I do not begrudge a penny spent on ensuring the safety of these two young people. But when they behave foolishly and ignore the professional reality of the role they have either inherited or chosen I find it hard to agree that a few badly taken candid pictures constitutes a major ethical issue. This is the area of taste and sensibility: both of which were offended in this case. I find the taking of the pictures offensive, tasteless and lacking in sensibility. But you can't court and manipulate and exploit publicity one minute and then scream foul just because the public interest you have intentionally generated decides for itself that it wants to know stuff you don't want known.

Wills and Kate have a private life - just like the rest of us: it is weird to call it a right, it is a given. And they are just as entitled as the rest of us to the protection of the law to guard their safety and protection against intrusion. That is why the substantive issue is one of legality. That is why hacking their phones etc is totally unacceptable.

They have plenty money, available places to stay - usually for free, and a publicly funded 24 hours a day security screen. They know that having promoted their word-wide fame, pictures of them as a consequence acquire a media value. The normal protections available to any citizen are available to them. To behave foolishly and then berate the world and his wife for being interested in every salacious bit of gossip seems to me to be pretty small beer as an 'ethical' issue and is claiming a privilege not asserting a principle beyond the proper legal protections which they have not been denied and through which they are seeking redress.

No merely conforming to the law does not exhaust ethical responsibility: it was wrong to take the pictures, wrong to sell them, and wrong to print them. But adherence to the law is a must: observing ethical principles is a should. Those who regard this as an ethical issue won't buy the papers, seek out the pictures on the internet etc etc. Those who don't see it as raising any serious moral issue may well do both. That's what the 'solution' to an ethical issue looks like. Messy, contradictory, i.e. human.

If we support the monarchy; pay for much of the activity of people like Will and Kate, including a massive sum for 24 hour security; then I rather think they have a moral responsibility not to behave carelessly, naively or unprofessionally - as they did in this case. This was an easily avoidable problem; and thus a self-inflicted unpleasantness. If they had refused the Palace media machine pressure to jump up and down and just made no fuss, refused to multiply the value of the pictures exponentially by offering them millions of £s of free publicity, few people would have heard of them, fewer would have seen them, and their common sense would have earned them the respect of most of the British Media and much elsewhere, to the point where more people would have responded as they should have done on the first place. Thus demonstrating a shared sensibility and moral perspective.

Of course Kate Middleton is still Kate Middleton (we hope) with the same mother and father etc etc. But she is not and will ever again be just Kate Middleton as any visit home or to meet her friends and relations will demonstrate with security screening and risk assessments etc etc will show.

She was right to think seriously about whether she could accept this way of life. But she did and now she must learn to manage the life she's chosen and hopefully avoid the fatal mistakes of her deceased mother-in-law. This fuss isn't a good omen. They will get the media treatment they earn not what they demand or assert. My instinct is that if they'd handled this the way two laid back, modern, sensible young people would have wanted - it would have blown over very quickly. First step: get your own people to deal with the media and manage them yourselves - and tell the Palace to go jump in the lake.

So basically, Zettel, they were asking for it?

I don't think it is "the Palace" which has pressured them to make a fuss, as I can't remember any previous occasion when the Royals have bitten back like this. I think it's the reaction of a young man who remembers his mother being hounded to her death by similar people.

Can't agree with you Zettel. They did take precautions for privacy. They were in the private grounds of a secluded chateau. The pictures were taken from over a mile away and were clearly a disgusting and money driven breach of any 'ethical'behaviour. Just because technology makes that intrusion possible doesn't make 'it' right and 'them' wrong. As far as I'm concerned they were in a private situation. They could have been dangling from the chandeliers naked, and so what? You, I, any seedy immoral photographer out to make a quick buck, have no right to intrude. Sorry. There's no justification.

No, can't agree either... not least because of the word "foolish" to describe perfectly reasonable behaviour in the walled and private grounds of a private chateau where the photographer needed to be around a mile and a half away in order to "overlook" them.

However trivial _you_ consider personal freedom. I consider the whole episode an example of something I do not condone.

As I said before, anything that occurs publicly is fair game. Otherwise, people - and I mean in general - should be able to live reasonable lives reasonably.
G

Alone on this one I guess.

Thanks for all the comments. I guess that's what an ethics forum is all about.

best

Z

First off, I didn't know anything about these pictures until reading this thread. I don't read the papers very much or watch the news, so missed it.

I can't help feeling that at some level, however, this kind of debate about nothing much really is exactly what the establishment want us to do, so we're distracted from the real issues. I didn't really believe the establishment controls our lives until recently. First, a friend of mine (and his business partner) made a film about the death of Diana. It wasn't so much about the death itself as the cover-up that followed it. My friend has spent years on this film, and quite a bit after it too. I met him recently and asked him what his main thoughts about Diana's death now were. He said that beyond a doubt the aftermath (and possibly the death itself) was controlled and directed by the establishment (which includes senior press figures, of course).

Don't think so? So how come the film has been shown all over the world except for one country where it's banned - guess which one. Think about it: we're not allowed to watch a film that question the British establishment.

Second, the outcome of the latest enquiry into the Hillsborough deaths. Again, I didn't really believe the establishment could be quite that intentionally manipulative; that they would actually meet and plan mass deception. Maybe a kind of subconscious self-preservation instinct, yes. But they did.

And I think the reason it's hard to believe is because our minds simply aren't formed up to think on that kind of scale. And part of the continuing deception is to keep feeding us small-scale tittle-tattle nonsense about the royals, instead of opening up their precise role in the establishment.

I couldn't agree more Terry. And your points link very closely to the nonsense about these stupid pics.

It was said on the news today that Hillsborough was the worst establishment cover up in British history.

No it's just the worst one that has been uncovered.

With courageous women being tortured, killed, repressed, abused around the world usually in the name of some macho-centric hierarchy a glimpse of a pretty girls boobs doesn't seem to amount to much. No disprespect to the pretty girl, or her boobs, intended.

Z

Zettel's said it all, for me - agree with every word.

On the one hand, yes, the manipulation was never more obvious than during Gulf II.

On the other, there is a difference between that and stating that something which is a bloody stupid and unacceptable overstepping of any mark of decency is somehow appropriate because the personages concerned were in the public eye and therefore asking for it...

Or, to put it another way:

Things being wrong are not mutually exclusive.

It is wrong that this hoo-hah has been blown up in this way, but the hoo-hah that started it was also wrong.

G

At no point did I say this was appropriate - quite the reverse.

Nor did I say they were asking for it. But from their own point of view they seem to be in danger of repeating the mistakes that led to the tragedy of Diana.

Read the non-uk press response to this, especially European. That doesn't make it right - just preserving a sense of proportion or even dare we say it, a sense of humour. Their public life will be an endlessly escalating battle with the press if they don't accept and manage the unfortunate consequence of their celebrity status. On the whole the British press have behaved well. Take it to a French court. Seek punitive damages if they wish. But they'll never stop most people being interested in the more candid aspects of their life and thus creating a lucrative market for pics and information.

Deep down here I still believe there is a suppressed premise: that being caught unawares, seen in a candid, intrusive situation is somehow worse, more morally objectionable because they are Royals than it would be for anyone else. There is an underlying appeal to the belief that this was a much an offence against deference as simply one of common decency. And many British people instinctively agree with that double standard.

At no point did I say this was appropriate - quite the reverse.

Actually, you started this thread by saying that you didn't think taking topless photos was an invasion of Kate's privacy. Also you strongly implied they deserved all they got for being foolish.

Now you seem to think it appropriate to suggest she gets it into proportion. I think it is for Kate to determine how she feels about this issue, not you.

Nick