Amongst the pictures of Bude I've just added to the picture library is this one of canoeists on the River Neet. They're from the big building you can see behind - Adventure International - which takes groups of children and does all sorts of adventure stuff with them. If you look closely, you can see that this end of the building has been converted into a climbing wall. It's a bit of an eyesore but that's cancelled out by it being such a hive of activity.

I was taking this from a bridge overlooking the river and the group's leader (their teacher, not someone from the centre) shouted at me that I couldn't take pictures of the children, it was illegal. I get this a lot. People now believe that it's illegal to take pictures of people in public and doubly illegal to take pictures of children. Even the police believe it and have to be told time and time again that it's not true. So deeply has this urban myth and hysteria penetrated that I can be walking along a country lane with my camera and tripod and someone will shout "Paedophile!" from a passing car. The mere presence of a camera, it seems, is enough to mark me as a criminal pervert. 

Apart from terrorism laws (which are themselves greatly misused), there are only two laws regarding photographing anyone or anything: are you invading someone's privacy, or are you libelling someone? So firstly, is the person entitled to privacy because they're on private property or do they, for some other reason, have a reasonable expectation of privacy? If they're out and about in full view of everyone then they don't. Not that I would, but if I photographed a pretty girl on the street I could use that image for a multinational advertising campaign without her permission and without having to pay her anything. Of course, people don't, because of the trouble it would cause. The second law - libel - really only applies to a libellous caption of the photograph but could also apply if I took a photograph that gave a false impression of what the person was doing.