I'd estimate that for most participants, the point of being nude was to feel free. I mean this was students drinking, swimming, and playing beach games for relaxation, not some political rally.

In either case, most just want an ephemeral experience, and don’t want permanent recordings.

I like to be nude swimming at the lake, but I don’t have a lake on my property.

There’s a whole culture of this in Eastern Germany, where I currently live.

Done it cca twice if I don't count swimming during night, second time got sting on the shoulder from medusa that left burn scar for years and hurt like hell back then. The idea of getting something similar on my johnson makes me shudder even now.

I didn't say "swim shorts", I said underwear, which tend to be tight fitting and not baggy. And there really isn't a "huge difference."

Not everything has to be making a point against society. In places where being nude is normal, it isn't considered a weird thing.

How can you not comprehend there are stages between "complete and total privacy with one person for a moment" and "film this and display it for all time to everyone"?

There is clearly a definition of "public" that involves a limited, semi-unrestricted number of like-minded people in a safe setting without tools to record behavior for eternal and unlimited rebroadcast. You do not acknowledge this; you are talking in binary.

I can tell you haven't been backpacking.

Not everything "in public" is a statement made with the consent to be recorded, shared over the internet by bystanders, exploited by corporations and archived for eternity. A public nude beach, and take note that this thread is actually about a private nude beach but let's argue the weaker point, is a place for people to be nude, not a place to be exploited to make porn. The fact that it is physically possibly to exploit a nude beach for softcore porn does not mean it is acceptable. In the same way that being nude at a shopping mall is physically possible, but socially not acceptable and mostly also not legal. Please note that nudism and exhibitionism are not the same.

For most participants Nudism is about freedom of self and a return to nature, it is about oneself, not about society or making statements, and not about pushing ones own nudity into other peoples faces. That would be exhibitionism. Many nudists are quite shy and not interested in becoming someone else wank material, or an actor on national television, or instahub. They do not wish to be recorded. They just want to be nude at the beach, there is no larger meaning or implied consent. Let me repeat that: being nude at a nude beach does not automatically imply consent to be filmed by anyone for any purpose. And we can argue this finer detail of "privacy" as being different from "privatly/publicly" and how it hinges on consent, without looking at nudism in particular:

Imagine every time you leave the house a national television crew follows you around. It doesn't actually matter what you do, they will cut and manipulate the footage to fit their narrative. You are not getting paid and are not consenting, and you have no influence on what the show is about. But it is going to be degrading, let's call it "americans most stupid". You should have stayed inside if you don't want to be exploited like that. This is the american idea of privacy: once you step outside, you have none. The usa does not differentiate between "being seen on the street, at a bar, at a beach" and "being published on national television, on instagram, on pornhub". If you want to use the former, you must accept to be exploited by the later and their endless supply of unpaid content creators. The european interpretation says that these people are not content creators, but creeps that are violating your human right to privacy and self determination by recording and publishing your activities without your consent.

The public is facing the tragedy of the commons as "public spaces" have become freely and easily exploitable by corporations in the age of surveillance capitalism and social media.

Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws. This is the case in the thread starter. For the law it is the exploitation of the material, turning personal data of unwilling subjects into commodities without their consent, which is illegal. This is a detail most people at nude beaches do not like: they find the act of filming itself to be as creepy as a wanker sitting in the bushes.

> Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws.

This would be reasonably clear-cut if images were being published on a professional pornography site or whatever, but what happens when the voyeur changes their mind and sends a pic to a friend who never re-shares it?

There are two possibilities here: either the law is unenforceable in cases like these and acts more like a security blanket than any sort of protection to be relied upon, baiting people into a false sense of privacy where they're open for exploitation by creeps - or you've got mandatory on-device image scanning / no E2E / etc, as compromising private communications is required in cases where the material would never hit public services.

Btw, I don't even really see this as a US vs. EU philosophy-of-law thing - the US has plenty of dumb unenforceable laws that do more harm than good as well, but imo does at least get the privacy in public issue roughly correct.

e: downthread, this is at least anecdotally a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32673402

My uncharitable take is that this is the result of this style of privacy protection's unenforceability problems. If it works so well, why the decline in participation / increase in electronic voyeurism?

Let's meet in the middle, at "freedoms end where rights begin". For most interactions this balance is kept not by a government agency, but by the people respecting each others rights. The censor that decide if it is appropriate in real time is not part of some government agency, it is the little voice of moral and reason in your head that says "don't punch him in the face" and, if you get my drift, "don't film at a nude beach". The government steps in after people sue.

I bring the european understanding of a human right to privacy based on consent into this discussion, as a consideration about limiting the right to film, as a counterpoint to your "even creepers have a right to be there and film.", which you made as the devils advocate and which is true, but ignores the creepers disrespect for the right to privacy of those they film. The american interpretation is that humans have no right to privacy in public spaces, at all, that the creepers freedom to film is unrestricted in such a situation because privacy only exists behind closed doors and drawn curtains. This further means the creepers right to sell the content to distributors is unrestricted and their right to edit and frame this material is unrestricted, without any consent of he people filmed, because in an american public space their human right to privacy is non-existent. In the post I answered to, you reinforced this by claiming a person going to a public space makes a statement, implying consent. I reject that. There is a fundamental difference between using the commons and consenting to be exploited. I think the american threshold of where one sides freedom ends and the others sides rights begin in this matter is unfit for postmodern times where cameras have become cheap and omnipresent and publishing of the filmed material turned into a big market.

The american understanding of privacy comes from a time when the discussion was about being seen by neighbors, not about being filmed and published on the internet for millions to gawk at. Had the founding fathers bathing nude in a public lake not only implied that some fellow people present there could see them, but that pictures and videos were being made available on the world wide web, the concept of privacy in the bill of rights may be very different. Times have changed, technology changes possibilities and the evaluation of the freedom to do whatever you want in respect to other peoples rights to not be subject to whatever someone else wants must change with that as well.

As a moral and constitutional framework, i prefer consent based privacy above curtain based privacy.

Destigmatizing doesn't mean people are free to stare or film you. It's the same if someone were filming on a regular beach because they find people's bodies in bikinis attractive (or to have a wank, as admitted by that old creep). You probably wouldn't like that very much.

Still, free or not, I can approach the guy with the camera and complain, like OP did with the nudist beach creep.

I'm in Europe, not sure how this works to be honest.

But yes, people are also free to complain to the person and make them feel uncomfortable for the scumbag behavior.

That's the thing about going about in public, you have accept that others will be there and tolerate what they do even if you don't like it.

Try go acting the clown in public and see if people won't stare and record you.

Start with the context https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32673550

I don't know what you're having trouble understanding.

> It feels like you're bringing in NAP or something without actually saying it.

I don't know what NAP is or how that might address what I wrote.

Because the law allows them and prevents you stopping them.

> Are there people who are going to make me?

Police officers perhaps. Depending what you mean by not accepting it.

> If so, then they have some justification to do so - what is it?

Who and what? I don't really follow. People are free to look at what they like in public. I feel I'm repeating myself, I don't quite know what the difficulty is with this.

And what is NAP?

NAP is the non-aggression principle[1]. I brought it up, not because I agree or disagree with it, but to jump to that part of the dialog were that your basis for framework.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

But people are free to be in public and look at things that are in public view. This is not a statement of my beliefs or principles it's just a matter of fact. If you disagree, can you provide evidence?

Generally people are permitted to do something unless it is prohibited, so as I see it the burden is on you to prove your claim.

Or I could recommend reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap... instead.

I never said anything about what people can or cannot do in public or in private, I only pointed out that "just looking" is not an ironclad defense.

Harassment is better defined in terms of both side intent, personal effects, and reasonable expectations, especially when anonymity and safety can be at risk.

Context matters. The act itself can be destigmatizing (doesn't have to be the goal), but recording it and displaying it out of context usually causes more stigmatization.