Italian magazine publishes topless Kate photos

A French court hearing an injunction request against a French magazine that printed pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the south of France said on Monday that it would rule on the British royal family’s request to ban further distribution of the pictures on Tuesday.

Lawyers acting for the royals and Closer magazine which sprang to international attention by printing the pictures left the hour-long hearing on the outskirts of Paris without making any comment.

In court, lawyers acting for the plaintiffs argued that the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton’s privacy was grossly violated by the pictures taken from a roadside one kilometre away from the terrace of a lodge the royal couple were staying in.

Since the scandal broke on Sept. 14, Chi, an Italian  magazine controlled by the same publishing house, has printed a longer set and the pictures have been spreading like wildfire over the internet.

The royal couple have also filed a criminal complaint which prosecutors must evaluate and decide whether to investigate. Christopher Mesnooh, a Franco-American lawyer said there was a good chance that bid would be successful too.

“For a criminal violation, the plaintiffs will have to establish that the photographer took the pictures in a private home without their consent and without any expectation that they were going to be photographed. That shouldn’t be too hard for the plaintiffs to prove, given the particular circumstances in question,” he told Reuters Television.
        
Maurizio Bellacosa, a Rome-based lawyer, agreed that establishing how the photographer snapped the photos was key to determining whether they invaded the Duchess of Cambridge’s privacy.

“On one side, as it is from the perspective of the editor of Chi magazine, these pictures can be considered very normal and we could say that the pictures were taken while the Duchess Kate was on a balcony not so far from a public road. On the other side we can demonstrate that maybe the situation is a little different so there is also a problem of proof. In other words, we need to understand, to know really how the pictures were shot and how the photographer took them,” he said.

But Bellacosa said similar cases in Italy had ended with the courts ruling in favour of the publishers.

The editor of Chi, Alfonso Signorini, defended his decision to publish the photographs on Monday, saying they were harmless and that the terrace where Catherine was relaxing was visible from a street.

“This is the crucial point of the question: are these pictures representing normal moments of the private life or something different? If someone would like a lawsuit against the  photographer and against the publisher, he has to demonstrate that the situation is different from a normal representation of a public person in a moment of his personal life, but he has to demonstrate that maybe in this case, there is an excessively voyeuristic reason behind the publishing of the pictures,” Bellacosa said.

The pictures have rekindled memories in Britain of the media pursuit of William’s mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.

Britain’s tabloid papers, fighting for their reputation after a series of scandals, have refrained from publishing the pictures, even though they are available on the Internet and in the pages of a tabloid in neighbouring Ireland.

The photos published by Chi were accompanied by what  amounted to an anatomical analysis of the Duchess’s breasts by a plastic surgeon.