OK, let me distinguish what I'm serious about and what I'm not.
The freedom to capture and use available electromagnetic information should be absolute. Ditto for sounds. And, yes, even for heat signatures.
The freedom to invade privacy is not.
There's obviously an arena where those can clash.
Obviously it's very hard to not reflect light. But that doesn't change the fact that you don't own the light you reflect. So if you don't want your picture taken, and can't keep from reflecting light, you have to find another solution. Like not going naked when and where you know you can be photographed by an enterprising pap.
This self-restraint is not an unreasonable burden. Most of us, for example, don't fart in public if we think we'll be caught. This is not a hardship.
It boils down to the usual harm of the offense vs harm of the remedy proposition. What's the harm of showing a celebrity naked or in an embarrassing pose or whatever? Very little, if any. What's the harm of saying you can't capture freely available electromagnetic radiation (or sounds or whatever)? Potentially a lot.
So I reason that the burden normally falls on the person being photographed. So when does that burden shift?
This case sounds like a clear case of someone who didn't just capture the freely available EM, but engineered a breech of her reasonable expectation of privacy. She doesn't have a reasonable expectation that people won't be trying to take pictures. But she does have a reasonable expectation that she doesn't have to worry about that in her closed bedroom, with curtains drawn.
The renting of nearby rooms can't possibly be wrong unless the renter facilitated the invasion of privacy. If you are a motel owner and I ask for the room next to a celeb that's available, what's wrong with me asking or you renting it to me? Even if I tell you I intend to try to catch the celeb in some salacious poses, still nothing wrong. If you tell me there are peep holes or you knowingly let me make alterations, that arguably crosses the line.
Very confusing. There is no "freedom to invade privacy", not even in libertarian concepts, that I'm aware of.
Since when does "ownership" matter? You also don't own "electrons", but I'll bet you aren't on board with someone intercepting your electronic communications, right?
In this situation you are advising a person not to be naked in a hotel that you have paid for the right to be alone in and be protected from the outside ... not a person standing naked at a subway terminal.
Harm vs. remedy? Weird that you somehow modify it with "celebrity", why should a celebrity have any different status? Why would peeping on Jane Seymour in her bedroom be any different than peeping on WWJD in his? What is the harm? I'm still not sure where you are serious. The protection of privacy is one of the highest priorities that I believe we have. So much so that we are a people hell-bent on ownership of individual property in order to protect that privacy. We are not a shared-culture like some others. If there is no harm in a celebrities private pictures, there is no harm in ANY privacy case, not medical records, not academic records, not voting records, nothing. They are literally laid bare for all to see.
Of course the renting of the nearby rooms isn't wrong nor is there any reasonable allegation that it is. That is the strangest of straw men I've seen you throw out. It is evidence of intent, but nothing more.
I'm still not sure why you think peep holes, or altering peepholes is only "arguably" crossing the line. Also, I'm not sure why you'd even approve of heat imaging of a person in privacy, or anything of the like. For a person that complains about the NSA/CIA/government surveillance, this is an extraordinary position to take, that the government can't do something that you, apparently, readily believe the general public should be allowed to.
To make comparison:
This would be outlawing searches by government under the 4th Amendment, yet affirmatively allowing private citizens to enter other people's property whenever they wish, because they can't "own" space. I don't think you can reasonably restrict the government from doing something you believe everyone can do otherwise. That wasn't why the 4th was adopted, it was because we didn't want the government to do things we couldn't do ourselves, a legitimate fear when discussing government.
