MARiA's Divorce Triggers Public Scrutiny: Lawyer's Interpretation of Privacy and Reputation Rights Protection for Public Figures
Lead
After Japanese famous singer MARiA announced her divorce on social media, public opinion on the Chinese-language internet quickly shifted from “blessings” to “digging up dirt.” Her past romantic history, private chat records, and even information about family members were extensively unearthed, spliced together, and circulated. A marital change that should have belonged to the private sphere of personal life turned into an information carnival watched by the entire internet. From a lawyer’s perspective, the core of this incident is no longer “celebrity divorce” itself, but the boundary between public figures’ rights to privacy and reputation and online freedom of speech—when “gossiping” crosses the legal red line, those who spread it may face civil damages or even criminal liability.
1. Should the privacy rights of public figures be “discounted”?
Article 1032 of the Civil Code expressly provides that natural persons enjoy the right to privacy, and that no organization or individual may infringe upon the right to privacy of others by prying, intruding, leaking, publicizing, or other means. Privacy includes the tranquility of private life and the private space, private activities, and private information that one does not wish to be known by others. This Article does not make an exception for public figures.
In judicial practice, courts generally recognize that the privacy rights of public figures should be subject to certain restrictions, but the scope of such restrictions is limited to areas related to the public interest, such as public officials’ assets and entrepreneurs’ business conduct. Marital status, romantic history, and internal family conflicts are in principle purely private matters unrelated to the public interest, and they do not lose protection merely because the individual concerned is a celebrity. In multiple cases involving entertainers’ privacy rights, the Beijing Internet Court has consistently pointed out that public figures bear a higher duty of tolerance toward public opinion supervision, but the duty of tolerance does not amount to an unlimited waiver of privacy.
In the divorce incident involving MARiA, most of the exposed chat records, old photos taken together, and family members’ information are entirely unrelated to the public interest. Disclosing such information without authorization may constitute a direct infringement of the right to privacy.
II. What laws may be violated by digging up personal backgrounds in public opinion reversals?
After the reversal of public opinion, a large number of accounts, in the name of leaks and hard evidence, published unverified information and even fabricated narratives to attract traffic. Such conduct may involve three levels of legal liability:
The first layer is civil liability. Article 1024 of the Civil Code provides that civil subjects enjoy the right to reputation, and no organization or individual may infringe upon another person’s right to reputation by insult, defamation, or other means. Fabricating facts and disseminating false information, thereby lowering another person’s social evaluation, constitutes infringement of the right to reputation. The infringed party may demand cessation of the infringement, deletion of the content, an apology, and compensation for losses, including compensation for mental distress.
The second layer is administrative liability. Under Article 42 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law, anyone who publicly insults another person or fabricates facts to defame another person may be detained for not more than five days or fined not more than 500 yuan; if the circumstances are relatively serious, the person shall be detained for not less than five days but not more than ten days, and may also be fined not more than 500 yuan. Cyberspace is not outside the law, and public security organs have a clear legal basis for enforcing the law against online insults and defamation.
The third tier is criminal liability. Article 246 of the Criminal Law provides that whoever publicly insults another person by violence or other methods, or fabricates facts to defame another person, shall, if the circumstances are serious, be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights. Where a person uses an information network to defame another person, if the same defamatory information has actually been clicked or viewed 5,000 times or more, or has been forwarded 500 times or more, it may be determined to be serious circumstances. Under a trending topic, the spread of a viral post often easily exceeds the above thresholds.
III. Boundaries of Responsibility Between Platforms and Influential Self-Media Accounts
Online platforms are not bystanders in such incidents. Article 1194 of the Civil Code provides that where a network user or network service provider uses the network to infringe upon the civil rights and interests of another, it shall bear tort liability. Article 1195 further establishes the "notice-and-takedown" rule: the rights holder has the right to notify the platform to take necessary measures such as deletion, blocking, and disconnecting links; where the platform, after receiving the notice, fails to take the necessary measures in a timely manner, it shall bear joint and several liability for the expanded portion of the damage.
This means that if MARiA or her team sends an infringement notice to the platform and the platform fails to act, the platform will bear joint and several liability for the subsequent aggravation of dissemination damage. For self-media accounts with a large number of followers, the duty of care is higher. If they continue to spread information while knowing it is false, or use insulting titles or malicious editing, courts will usually treat this as an aggravating factor when awarding damages.
Lawyers at Guangdong Zhiming Law Firm, in representing multiple online infringement cases, found that many self-media accounts attempt to avoid liability by claiming they are merely relaying netizens' tips, but judicial practice does not accept this blame-shifting logic—forwarders likewise bear a basic verification obligation, especially for content involving others' private morality, and cannot evade responsibility by claiming they are merely reposting.
IV. How can ordinary people protect their rights in accordance with the law when they encounter similar online doxxing?
As a public figure, MARiA has a team to help her handle such matters, while ordinary people who encounter cyberbullying and privacy leaks are often even more helpless. Lawyers recommend taking the following steps to preserve evidence and safeguard rights in accordance with the law:
Step 1: Preserve evidence promptly. Take complete screenshots or screen recordings of the infringing page, and retain the poster’s account information, posting time, number of views, number of reposts, and comment content. It is recommended to use blockchain-based evidence preservation or notarization to secure the evidence, so as to prevent it from becoming untraceable after the other party deletes the post.
Step two: send an infringement notice to the platform. Under Article 1195 of the Civil Code, notify the platform in writing to request removal of the infringing content, and retain records of the notice sent. If the platform fails to handle it promptly, it may be named as a co-defendant.
Step 3: Assess whether to report the matter to the police or file a lawsuit. If the information is clearly fabricated, has been widely disseminated, and is accompanied by insulting remarks, you may report it to the public security authority to pursue administrative or criminal liability; at the same time, you may file a lawsuit with the court for infringement of the rights to reputation and privacy, claiming compensation for mental distress.
Step four: avoid using violence to counter violence. Some victims, in emotional agitation, retaliate by exposing the other party's information, only to turn themselves from victims into infringers. Safeguarding one's rights must be carried out within the legal framework.
The end of a marriage should be a fresh start in one's private life, not the beginning of a trial by the entire internet. Whether public figures or ordinary citizens, personal dignity is equally protected by law. Online attention may have its boundaries, and freedom of speech has its legal limits. In the face of privacy leaks and reputational harm, promptly seeking help from a professional lawyer is the lowest-cost and most reliable path to protecting one's rights. Guangdong Zhiming Law Firm has long handled personality rights infringement, cyberbullying rights protection, and marriage and family disputes, and can provide clients with full-process legal support from evidence preservation to litigation enforcement.
