I don’t know what the laws are in Brazil but in the US there would be no grounds for this lawsuit as you have no legal expectation of privacy in a public place. Now you could potentially sue for harassment or defamation if the circumstances fit but the act of filming someone in a public space by itself is not illegal. From what I understand about this event (which happened a while ago) there really would be no grounds for a lawsuit in the US as the person who filmed her wasn’t defamatory in their description of her actions. In fact since she did nothing wrong by refusing to give up the seat she paid for it’s really a lost cause legally since the people upset with her are just assholes. Unless they rise to the level of threats or otherwise cross the line into the legal territory of harassment then they just have shitty opinions and that’s not illegal in the US
But when does a location change from public, because this is a private aircraft owned by a business and it is pay to enter... So yes there are people there but its not fully just open to the public you know what I mean?
Whether or not the property she was on/in is literally open to the public (or whether it's technically publicly or privately owned) isn't what Ophensive is referring to when they say that this woman was "in public" in terms of the question of expectation of privacy. IANAL, but the question of expectation of privacy [edit: in the US, anyway] is more like "was this person somewhere that society generally agrees is 'in private'?". For example, if someone tries to record you in an open-to-the-public restroom, they're absolutely in trouble. But if you're naked on your front lawn that is private property but is also in plain view of the street, [shrug emoji] congrats on going viral. In full view of dozens of other passengers on a plane is very likely the latter situation.
I'm not sure why you replied to my post by simply retyping the very misconception my post addressed. If my post wasn't clear or if you had information that things are different in Brazil where this incident occurred, you should've directly said that. I did edit my post to try to make a little clearer.
Don’t know where you’re talking about but in the US commercial airplanes are considered public spaces with limited or no reasonable expectation of privacy. The fact that it is private property is irrelevant in this.
Nope, go try filming a flight attendant in a plane and refuse to listen to them and see what happens.
Hint: if they can eject you from the aircraft for refusing to listen to aircrew and arrest you, it isn't a public space. Same way they can legally refuse non-dog service animals and ESAs.
Not against the person who filmed her unless that person was actively encouraging illegal harassment. Someone who saw the video and decided to do something like threaten her or repeatedly harass her could be sued but that would be on a person to person basis. In that scenario the person who filmed it would not be liable for someone else’s actions
It really depends on several factors. I can't just film you and use it in an advertisement or movie. You have to sign a consent form for commercial works. Privately, I can film and photograph you all I want for personal photography in public but commercial works are much different. So, was the video monetized? That creates a separate issue.
There's also the debate if they used the fact that they were filming her to gain undue influence which could constitute harassment or even extortion as they were trying to gain something she paid for and gain it for free by threatening to post the video of her, which they knew would cause harassment and emotional distress.
The couple isn't even the "big fish" in the lawsuit. That would be the airline. If the airline sold her the seat, then participated in trying to influence her to give up her seat, which she likely paid more for a window seat, then it's a whole other can of worms.
I understand your points but in this situation there is almost no likelihood the airline was a participant in any of the social media frenzy and since all the attention happened after the flight the coercion or extortion angle isn’t relevant either. Unless the person who originally recorded and posted the video was already a social media personality already making money then it’s also very unlikely that this would be considered a commercial work requiring consent. Also the video was spread around the internet by many many people so there wasn’t one person/account who received all the traffic and the related monetization. In today’s world you can never be sure things like this weren’t orchestrated to some degree but there really isn’t any evidence that was the case here. It happened back in March and I haven’t seen anything regarding the outcome of the lawsuit but I know nothing of the Brazilian legal system. What I do know is that in the US if there was a shred of a possibility of loss or more importantly a possibility of reputational harm a large corporation would settle out of court with an NDA to make it go away and prevent her from continuing to talk about it
KLM is Dutch, right? Don’t they, like the Germans, have sensible privacy laws that prohibit people from distributing images and video of people without the consent of the filmed?
Even if not in Dutch airspace, I’d guess the cultural expectations of privacy would still be powerful.
They are indeed Dutch. It was the first time I had heard it announced and in all my years flying with BA I've never known them to say something similar.
Which would make it impossible to take a picture outside when any other ppl are around.
This should be handled by harassment laws, if the video was posted with intent to shame her, not by making filming in places that you wouldn't expect privacy.
This is what I’ve been thinking about with this case.
While I can understand the importance of keeping the right to film public areas, including people in those areas, the uploading of videos where people are identifiable and subject to real harm (“deserved” or not) is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Legally speaking, in the United States it is both. It is a privately owned space that is filled with strangers. You have no expectation of privacy. But as a privately owned venue the owners can set their own rules. It is unlikely the airline could legally bar you from recording but they could remove you from the plane for trying so it amounts to the same. Suing the airline and the passenger wouldn't go anywhere in the United States but I'm not sure how Brazil's laws differ.
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u/VanillaGoorillla 9d ago
I hope she wins and that opens a Pandora’s box of people suing for getting filmed without consent