Advertising on unauthorized photos is no joke

KFC has made an advertisement that dwells on scenarios where people, often girls, wrongly assume that a stranger is taking their photograph without their permission.

This is how the conversation unfolds in the advertisement: "Sir, are you trying to take my photograph without my permission?" "Move aside, girl! Standing there, you are blocking the KFC Crazy Thursday QR code that I want to scan!"

Many quarrels have recently ensued after women suspected that a stranger was taking a photograph of them without their permission. Some, like in the case of a Sichuan University student on a subway in Guangzhou who made a video of a squatting migrant worker who was fiddling with his phone and posted it on social networking sites alleging that he was filming her, have, turned out to be false alarms.

The Sichuan University student had to apologize for posting the man's video following an online furor as it was established that there was no photograph or video of her on the migrant's phone.

However, the KFC advertisement tends to trivialize the issue of men taking photographs of women without their permission.

This is a serious topic, and not one that should be trivialized in an advertisement, as it could lead to more women being targeted, while also making it even more difficult for them to protect their rights in the future. Just as men should not be wrongly accused of filming women, the legal rights of women, too, need to be protected.

If KFC really cares about the issue, it can do more to address the rights of everyone in public places, instead of turning it into a topic of amusement.