WHEN Jennifer Aniston shops at the Lisa Kline boutique in West Hollywood, a motorised drape called a “paparazzi curtain” darkens the windows to shield the actress from photographers camped outside, writes John Harlow.

Such devices, and other stratagems such as deploying “ringers” as decoys, may soon be a thing of the past, however, under a tough new anti-paparazzi law that comes into force in California today. The state law triples damages that can be claimed from photographers accused of assaults — which can be as minor as jostling on the pavement — and for the first time forces magazines to surrender profits from “snatched” photographs.

The clampdown is being pushed through by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor turned politician, who was roughly handled by photographers before becoming governor of California in 2003.

The law will be tested at shops such as the Kline boutique, which is at the heart of Robertson Boulevard, a once obscure street now on the tourist map following a series of clashes between celebrities and the extreme photographers they call “stalkarazzi”.

This half-mile cluster of cafes and clubs is where starlet Lindsay Lohan was involved in two car crashes and the actress twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen phoned the police for help when spotted by photographers slipping out the back door of a clothes shop “dressed like bag ladies”, according to one recent report.

Tensions have rippled beyond Robertson Boulevard: last August the actress Scarlett Johansson said she pranged another car while being chased into Disneyland by paparazzi. In September Reese Witherspoon told police a photographer knocked her five-year-old daughter out of the way to snap her inside Disneyland.

Celebrities around the world have been clamouring for more protection from photographers since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997: in recent films such as the violent thriller Paparazzi they have replaced stalkers as a physical threat.

A new breed of paparazzi, including former Los Angeles gang members in rented vans willing to terrify celebrities to get a reaction shot known as an “ugly”, has been forged by the rise of highly popular celebrity magazines.

The rewards are high: last week Brad Pitt’s lawyers warned media against buying photographs taken at his Malibu home. But the price for a first snap of Pitt kissing Angelina Jolie is now estimated at a record $1m.

“It’s everyone for yourself,” Marc Rylewski, a Los Angeles photographer, said of his colleagues. “They race each other, block each other on the road. They treat rivals far more ruthlessly than they would ever treat Lindsay Lohan.”

Los Angeles police are stepping up patrols around celebrity watering holes at key times such as 2.30am, when many clubs empty. “We hope tensions ease before someone gets seriously hurt,” said one officer. “Hotheads provoke each other but no one wants High Noon remade on Robertson.”

Some feel the laws must be tougher. Paul Bloch, Tom Cruise’s spokesman, has said stars should be entitled to “privacy zones” wherever they go and wants photographers who go too far to be sent to jail.

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