Privacy law on celebrity's private affairs

Us Weekly, OK! Magazine, Star Magazine, in Touch....



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These are the familiar names of magazine for the readers from the Western countries. 

For the Malaysian readers, I am sure that you have heard of Galaxie magazine.

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These magazines put celebrity news as a focus and most of it deal with celebrity's personal life. Publishing contents regarding celebrity personal life may attract a lot of readers but this kind of publishing material may invade their privacy rights. Photographers tried their best to capture photographs and create sensational news from those images to the extent that they hide and use super lenses to capture the celebrity's personal life in their private home and on vacation.

For instance, some French magazines such as Closer and Chi  had published images of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge topless when she was on a private vacation with Prince William (Schmidt 2012). This news had created a huge debate over the issue on the privacy laws and privacy rights of individuals.

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According to Linter (2007, p.172), "violating privacy is still wrong unless outweighed by some vastly compelling public right to know". In this case, Kate Middleton is on her private vacation with her husband and she has the right to keep her private matters from the public. Also, a celebrity's private affairs does not have a compelling public right to know matters.

The actions made by those publications has broken the French privacy law. According to Fraser (2012), "France has a strict privacy law that makes it a criminal offence to publish information on a person's private life without the express permission of the person concerned". Therefore, it is an offence to publish images of celebrity's private without their consent as what those French publications did to Kate Middleton.

Privacy law in Malaysia

Here, in Malaysia; we do have our own privacy laws. According to the recent Federal Court case of Sivarasa Rasiah v Badan Peguam Malaysia & Anor [2010] 3 CLJ 507 at 519. Article 5(1) of the Constitution provides that “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty save in accordance with law" (cited in Foong 2011). Therefore, we have our own rights for our own privacy.

As we Malaysians are more conservative in nature, such cases of publication of private life of  a celebrity do not happen here. Most of our magazines publish news about celebrity on their current and future productions and even where there is news about their private life, the news are mostly derived from the celebrity's own public announcement.








Reference:
Foong, CL 2011, Right to privacy in Malaysia: Do we have it?, Malaysian Insider, viewed 1 November 2012, http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/breakingviews/article/right-to-privacy-in-malaysia-do-we-have-it-foong-cheng-leong-loyarburok.com.

Fraser, C 2012, Analysis: Are French privacy laws really strict?, BBC News, viewed 1 November 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19595796.

Linter, K 2007, Global Regulatory Issues for the Cosmetics Industry, Elsevier Inc, United States of America.

Schmidt, RH 2012, Royal Exposure: How much privacy should Kate and Harry expect?, Examiner.com, viewed 1 November 2012, <http://www.examiner.com/article/royal-exposure-how-much-privacy-should-kate-and-harry-expect>.

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