Sorry for being Devil's Advocate (again), but I haven't managed to read through the several thousand threads on the basketball/split thing.

1. Did they know before they chose the order for the challenge that the first 5 to succeed would be in the rich house?
2. If not, the ones who didn't get a chance in the challenge could have a claim under the Human Rights Act for being subjected to inhuman treatment. I think you can waive your rights to privacy, but not to provision of basic human rights (and I think in living quarters that are provided to people, an indoor toilet is a requisite feature now). A challenge such as this would cause major problems for C4.
3. It could also be classed as mental torture as glass is used to seperate the two halves.

I presume they did get legal advice on this, but they do appear to be on rocky ground with it.

I think when signing up for BB3 they will have waivered there rights. I cannot see a television company like ch4 leaving themselves open to any lawsuits.

It is just a game

Yes they did know that it would be the first 5 to get a basket would go to the rich side.

I can't think any Human Rights legislation would apply as the housemates are free to leave if they don't like their conditions.

A requirement which could be held to be a breach of Article 17:
"Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in the Convention."

In any event the production company have a duty of care in respect of the housemates mental and physical wellbeing.

As they are there of their own free will and free to leave at any time there is no human rights issue here.

Or at least I would think that to be the case.

Iain

In the preliminary selection process would the prospective housemates have been warned of a tougher regime?

I also believe that the housemates' contracts would reflect this notion.

Also, agree with what everyone says in respect that the HMs are free to leave whenever...

It would be better for people to stick to general discussions about the HMs and their situation. Commenting on the Human Rights Act and International Law is pointless and rather embarrassing when the commentators clearly don't understand anything about the law.

There is no Human Rights issue involved here. The worst that could happen would be if one of the HMs were to be injured in which case BB would be liable in tort, under statute and probably contractually as well. BB would also be liable in tort for any mental health problems that arose through their negligence.

Without meaning to sound pedantic; the opportunity for commentators freely exists in order to allow individuals to try to get to the point, on any point.

Regarding the Human Rights issue; thanks for clearing that up then.

To reiterate, no offence meant.

That's why I raised it as a question, rather than as a statement of fact.

Commenting on things when the commentators clearly don't understand could apply to almost anything in this forum - who here knows what is going on in the HMs mind if they don't actually say it out loud. Most of the posts on here are either conjecture or a point-of-view, and that is why it is a discussion forum.

Do Humam Rights apply to Lee, Adele, Sophie and Sandy? Cos I sure as hell have never met any "humans" like those 4.
Maybe I should get out more?

Well I think you maybe mistaken, the BBC has been indicted 4 times in the last 5 years, the most recent was in respect their program "Survivor", Granada TV twice, LWT 3 times, each have made out of court settlements.

And will ppl stop stating that "its just a gameshow", because its a lot more than that!

its only a gameshow .......................
and a branding exercise ( how to buy those lovely things in the BB house as shown on the BB website)
and an advertising opportunity to grab the ' right demographic'
and a sales booster for the tabloids-including the Daily Mirror !!)
and an illustration of the power of the media to shape and manipulate peoples aspirations
and .............well, you add to the list !!

But that's exactly what it is...

It's a chance to win £70k.

It's not a grand 'social experiment' or a 'test of society's perceptions' or anything else... it's purely mass entertainment.

It is undoubtedly interesting from a socio-psychological perspective - we all wonder how we would react in the House, but it's all rather silly to equate the lack of a gas cooker or an indoor loo to human rights violations.

If the Housemates were prisoners and were forced to share an outside toilet with three other people then their human rights would be an issue - but the point has been made a million times already that they are free to leave at any time, so it's just not revelvent.

Yes, Channel 4 / Endemol have a duty of care to the participants in the game but not knowing the rules to the basketball game surely wouldn't be included under this...?

ps. Are there any copies of the contracts the contestants signed in BB1, BB2 or BB3 available online?

That is the worrying thing about the whole BB scenario. The various media forms covering BB make it out to be the biggest thing since sliced bread and people are sucked into believing it to be so.

Apart from the 70,000 if you win and the promotion to Z-List celeb for a couple of hours and having your private life mentioned in the tabloids non-stop what else is there to aspire to by appearing on Big Brother.

The fact that more people applied to appear on BB3 than apply to become nurses/teachers every year is very worrying.

Human rights could come into it.

If BB were to have said "whites first" then there would be legal issues, even if it is just a game show (which is what it is). As well as several anti-descrimination laws it would also come under the Human rights legislation.

However I do not think the task was discremetary (can't be bothered with a spell check)

People at heathrow protesting that there human right to get a good nights sleep is broken by the planes.

I live in London and constantly have police cars, ambulances and big ass subwoofers disturbing my sleep.

Also the other day some children started playing in the garden before 8 am and woke me up. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS

sorry for that unrelated rant

BB rocks

You do not get whole communities & websites discussing the actions of "Sale of the Century", "Stars in their Eyes", even the "Fear Factor"

The issue with BB3 is have the reasonable expectations of the contestants been exceeded, it would be just as poor if the BB3 Experience failed to live upto its expectations.

As a possible silly example "if you bought yourself a new Porche 911 only to find that its maximum speed was 100mph, even though the law says 70mph is legal limit, your expectations of what you purchased have not been met, you are therefore entitled to your money back.

hehe - never underestimate wot people will discuss in online communities

I bet there's an entire message-board dedicated to Dale Winton somewhere out there...

I take your point about BB3 not living up to expectations - I've not paid for the E4 or internet stream, so I'm not fussed if it's not as good as last year, but I can see that those who've shelled out the dollars for the increased access might feel hard-done-by with all the shots of the chicken coops...

How reasonable is it to expect the contestants to live up to the standard set in previous years? Is it specifically C4's fault (through lack of tasks etc) that things are so dull this year, or is it more a function of an unfortunate selection of Housemates...?

Well this thread is about the "Human Rights" Issue, so lets get back to that.....

I am not sure about Human Rights, but I do think that there are some real legal issues, which Channel4/Endemol will have tried to tie up in the contracts with the contestants.

But any legal issues that contestants may make against the Producers will have to be fully investigated, and terms such as "Reasonable, forementioned, incited" and "Probable Cause"

The contestants must have reasonable grounds to expect that the conditions to which will be subject to can be justified by the information which should be provided by the producers and.or previous knowledge from a recognised source.

The Producers have stated that the contestants have "No Idea" whats in store for them, therefore the reasonable knowledge of the conditions will be from previous series of the production, I personally could have signed up for the BB2 type experience but would never even consider the BB3 show.

I wonder how many Celebs are going to appear this year after seeing this shambles.

When signing the Big Brother contract housemates agree to "allow the producers of big brother total control of their lives whilst inside the house" however they are free to leave whenever.
Therefore there is no human rights issue here!

Ok this is my first post but I've been viewing this forum since the start of BB3 and I've got to say some of you seem to be taking this much too seriously. TONY do you really think that anyone in that house has even come close to having their human rights violated because if you do I suggest you look further than a house/studio set pupose built in Elstree if you're really concerned about human rights.
ROEBUCK I've read a quite a few of your posts now and you seem to me to be taking BB completey the wrong way, after having watched BB1+BB2 150,000 people applied to be in this gameshow and make no mistake because that is exactly what it is. Do you really think that any of these contestants will be taking C4 or any of tis producers to court because they had to have a cold shower or use an outside toilet or eat pasta?
I always understood BB was about putting 10/12 people in a house, cut them off from the outside world and see how they react under the stress and pressure of it all, of course people are going to be two faced, backstabbing, lying and generally bullsh*ting each other after all it's survival of fittest /smartest and they all go in knowing they have to get the others out if they want that £70k. No one ever said they had to be nice to each other and as for these four indictments what were they for I know there was an issue with some guy on Castaway which was settled out of court but I don't recall any gameshow contestants taking the beeb to task , please remind me.

The phrase Devil's Advocate as I used meant I was throwing in a question to see what the answer was. I'm not a human rights lawyer, but just wanted to see if anybody could answer that question.

To be perfectly honest there are many more worthy breaches of human rights that need sorting out than a bunch of 12 wannabes in a house. I am tempted to claim for mental cruelty imposed by C4, E4, the tabloids, etc... for constantly ramming this stuff down our necks

to be perfectly honest I do not think that any of the current contestants WILL even consider taking legal action, but the fact remains that in my personal view ' the producers are going too far to obtain ratings ', but they may have increased the awareness of BigBrother, but the consensus of opinion seems to be that the complete change of format of the programme & the situation for the housemates, is not what could be termed as successful, the housemates signed up for BB3 using previous series a benchmark, they were told that BB3 would be tougher and would enforce the rules much more strictly, but I do not think that anyone was aware of the radical changes that had been put place of a highly successful programme to begin with, I have stopped watching it after last friday's farce when Davina revealed the closeness of the voting, by the BigBrother's own figures a minimum of 28500 votes were recieved to change the result in 3 minutes, William Hill & Coral Bookmakers were very unhappy about the situation.

First thing what's 'too far' their job is to pull in as many viewrs as possible.Second you must realise that C4 and the powers that be already have a format to follow don't forget it's all been done before so I'm pretty sure that they have a good idea what will and what will not work. Are you honestly saying that you will not watch BB in the next 6 1/2week because I'm willing to bet that you will ( if the bookies will take my bet ) because like the rest of use you're hooked. Like Lenny Kravits said "It's not over till it's over" lets see what the next 64 days brings before you start saying its a flop.