Germany's not much different from Italy
Germany's not much different from Italy
We are not allowed to publish pictures taken to other people, even if they were in a public area; this in order to protect people's privacy..
No cop will prevent you from taking pictures but you have to keep your pictures for you, otherwise you can be sued by the picture's subject..
For the record, the situiation is very similar in Germany. You are allowed to take pictures of crowds, or of people that are "subjects of contemporary history" (meaning people that play a role in a sports event or in other public, newsworthy events). Anything else, you may take a picture, but you may not publish.
Interestingly, there is practically no German photo forum left that allows showing street photography pictures for fear of vulture lawyers who make a fast Euro threatening photographers and forum operators with lawsuits.
Another relevant point is that there is a lot of legal uncertainty as German laws are quite fuzzy in their definition as to what is clearly illegal and what isn't. On the other hand, judges in German courts are notorious for their lack of understanding of how the internet works, and thus have produced a number of rulings that are devoid of any technical logic (see the case against Flickr which led Yahoo to impose certain measures for German users that look a lot like the censorship imposed to "protect" Chinese internet users), but will remain in force until challenged by someone who has enough dedication, money and time to do so.
But again, the law is parrochial, and if I host my pictures outside of Germany, the case for German lawyers becomes complicated and uncertain.
Then there's public opinion: I have been doing street photography for many years, but it's fairly obvious that the current hysteria about terrorism and child abuse is forging the public's opinion about photographers. Harrassment of photographers by self-appointed anti-photographer vigilantes has increased substantially in the past two years, and IMHO is a much bigger problem than police action in Germany.
So - yes, we shoud fight back. But I think this is a situation that does not just call for each photographer's individual determination. This is also a political question - one that calls for a public campaign to protect photography as an art form.
I better stop now, as this could develop into a lengthy rant ...