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john-h-kyesterday at 3:15 PM5 repliesview on HN

> knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of and publishes ... an individual’s name, photograph ... without the individual’s prior consent ... and being reckless as to whether or not harm is caused to, the other person.

> [harm occurs when someone] seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person

This seems very widely worded. A newspaper publishing the name/image of a suspected criminal is definitely "publishing an individuals name, photograph", without their consent, and can quite clearly cause alarm or distress.

Without some exemption clauses added, this bill seems to basically ban using anyone's name/photograph/likeness in ANY context that criticises them; it will almost certainly conflict with ECHR's Article 10 on freedom of expression. However(!!) with a few exemptions it can be made much better. Even tying it to AI generated photos/voice/etc would help - most _genuine_ criticism and reporting can go without the use of AI, but a lot of the intentional harm and sexual harassment did not occur before AI. If they don't want to do that, adding some form of "exemption if the information was used in a non-libellous context" could also work.


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allturtlesyesterday at 4:36 PM

AFAICT this is the actual bill: https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/11/eng/in...

Your selective quoting is extremely misleading. The first section about publishing a name/photograph only applies in the context of "for purposes of advertising products, events, political activities, merchandise, goods, or services or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandise, goods, or services or to influence elections or referenda." i.e. it's illegal to pretend someone is endorsing something they are not.

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sollewittyesterday at 3:37 PM

Your snipping is making it look broader than it is: you can’t misrepresent someone as being supportive of your product or cause, and you can’t distribute software that makes, or make yourself, likenesses of other people without their prior consent.

It doesn’t constrain what you do in contexts other than where you use someone’s likeness to misrepresent their position.

The harms are restricted to the scope above.

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sallveburrpiyesterday at 3:32 PM

> A newspaper publishing the name/image of a suspected criminal is definitely "publishing an individuals name, photograph", without their consent, and can quite clearly cause alarm or distress.

Cherrypicking your example: Newspapers shouldn’t publish names or images of suspects, so to me this specific example would be a very good thing. Not sure (IANAL) but I think in my country this is illegal already

Otherwise I agree that it’s very ambitious wording

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enragedcactiyesterday at 3:42 PM

Any time you are reading a law, especially one from another jurisdiction, you have to be very careful to consider that there may be terms with a legal or common law definition that you don't understand. In this case, "reckless" seems to be a well defined term with a fair amount of case law behind it. To my untrained eye it seems like a newspaper would be well within their rights to publish harmful information as long as they avoid "a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk".

https://www.studocu.com/en-ie/document/university-college-du...

orwinyesterday at 3:39 PM

A newspaper publishing the name/image of a suspected criminal is definitely "publishing an individuals name, photograph", without their consent, and can quite clearly cause alarm or distress

If the suspected criminal isn't a public figure, it's a good thing, isn't it?

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