Legal Protection Of Privacy Rights Conflict

Personal privacy refers to those personal matters that have nothing to do with public interests and that people would choose to keep by themselves. It includes people's private life, private information and other private areas. The concept of right to personal privacy, first appearing at the end of the 19th century in the United States, has been heatedly debated and constantly modified for the past century. However, there is one major point all scholars, home and abroad, hold as truth, that is, personal privacy is not to be exposed to others without the permission of the subject himself.The right to personal privacy, as one part of personal rights, is characteristic of being independent, restricted and expansionary. Its independence is reflected by its relationship with the other personal rights: there are connections and differences between the right to personal privacy and the right to name, the right to portrait and the right to reputation. Its restriction refers to the restriction to the subject himself and his private areas. Its expansion refers to the constant enlargement of the subject's right to personal privacy and the development of the legal protection of the right to personal privacy.Civil rights refer to the rights enjoyed by the citizens to realize their interests within the permission of law. Both the defining and the enforcement of civil rights are the combination of the subjective and objective results. The conflicts of rights appear when different legitimate civil rights fail to reach an agreement. With the development of Chinese legal construction and the improvement of people's legal consciousness, more and more people know how to use the law to safeguard one's own legitimate rights and interests. However, the right conflict phenomena in social life emerge in a large amount as well. Hence the basic way to solve the problem lies in restricting the rights, or preventing people from abusing their rights. The restriction on rights is done through two approaches, namely legislation and balancing of interests.Spouse right refers to the special rights enjoyed by the spouses only. The rights enjoyed by husband and wife are not to be abused by a third party. The conflicts between spouse right and the right to personal privacy tend to emerge when the personal privacy of the third party in the marriage is in conflict with the spouse right of the faultless spouse. Balancing the interests of the two sides might be the right way to solve this problem. However, owing to the complexity of such cases, specific consideration and treatment is needed in each case.The freedom of the press includes the freedom of news gathering and news reporting.The conflicts of the freedom of the press and the right to personal privacy lie in two aspects: the public's interests and the reportee's right to personal privacy; the economic benefits of the news agency and the reportee's right to personal privacy. To resolve this problem, people's right to personal privacy should be considered first.The content of the right to know is very extensive, including the right to know politics, social matters and personal information etc. While the legislative purpose of the right to personal privacy is to provide citizens with the right to conceal, safeguard one's private life and gives them legal protection, the basic goal of the right to know lies in ensuring the rights of citizens to know, namely citizens have the right to know and obtain information. Therefore the conflicts between the above two rights are unavoidable. The conflicts of the right to know and the right to personal privacy are most obviously and easily observed in the course of enforcing the right to know social matters. Under such circumstances, the right to personal privacy enjoyed by common people should be considered first.