A French lawyer called me a legal “ignare” for asserting that the paparazzi and tabloid responsible for the topless photos of Kate Middleton, which went viral last year, should be prosecuted. I don’t speak French, but I knew what he meant.
And he was not the only one who questioned my legal judgment. For the general view was that I was according her a royal privilege that constituted an affront to the democratic principle of freedom of the press.
But the irony (and retort) that escaped my critics is that I have probably written more about the affront the British monarchy itself constitutes to democracy than all of them combined. To the point, far from according Kate another royal privilege, here in fact is what I asserted:
My disgust over these pictures has nothing to do with who she is. For, unlike so many others venting royal indignation, I would feel the same way if Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts were the victim of such a prurient and mercenary invasion of privacy…
I wish governments around the world would enact laws making it a serious crime to take a picture of any person in a place where that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. And it does not matter if that person is fully nude or fully clothed…
This kind of commercial exploitation of one’s privacy is clearly a form of rape and warrants commensurate punishment. This means serious jail time and fines that would surely bankrupt any paparazzo foolish enough to even shoot such a picture in the first place.
(“Topless Pics of Future Queen Kate for All to See,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 17, 2012)
Yet such was the universal reveling in Kate’s titillating exposure that, far from worrying about criminal charges, most tabloid editors seemed worried about not getting in on the act.
Indeed, here’s how French Closer magazine’s Laurence Pieau, the editor who commissioned the paparazzi to capture the compromising spread, expressed virtual contempt for those of us who expressed outrage:
These photos are not in the least shocking. They show a young woman sunbathing topless, like millions of women you see on beaches… Criticising our magazine is stupid.
(Daily Mail, September 20, 2012)
Well, it seems my vindication is at hand:
Closer, the first media outlet to release the controversial images, has been under criminal investigation since September, but Agence France-Presse now reports that two key players have been indicted: Ernesto Mauri, Chief Executive of Mondadori France (publisher of Closer) and a photographer of La Provence, a regional newspaper.
(Huffington Post, April 24, 2013)
Of course, notwithstanding the Gallic arrogance that defines the French, you’d think Closer’s indignant editor would have gotten fool-proof clearance from lawyers before publishing topless photos of the future queen of England. After all, any fool could see that publishing them was fraught with political and legal liability – despite claims that the paparazzi shot them with telephoto lens, while crouching on a public road 1000 yards away
In any case, apropos of the schadenfreude tabloids trade in, the irony is not lost on me that these criminal indictments generated almost as much tabloid sensation last week as those topless photos did last year.
All that’s left now is for the French court to convict and penalize Closer so harshly that, even if paparazzi are craven enough to snap compromising pictures of public figures in private places, no tabloid would dare publish them.
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Topless pics…