Tim Dick writes:
No Demi Moore in an Australian witness box this week – damn those settlements on the courthouse steps – which means no possibility for another clue of what the judiciary thinks about this idea of being able to sue for a breach of privacy.
But while celebrity litigants might take their settlements and run, without due regard for law reform in other countries, privacy is a vacuum and other more serious folk will seek to fill it.
[…]
And there’s a more fundamental problem with privacy actions: what is private and what is not? As former Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said in the High Court case, ABC v Lenah Game Meats: “There is no bright line which can be drawn between what is private and what is not. Use of the term ‘public’ is often a convenient method of contrast, but there is a large area in between what is necessarily public and what is necessarily private. An activity is not private simply because it is not done in public. It does not suffice to make an act private that, because it occurs on private property.”
Read more in the Brisbane Times.