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Comments: 439 +- News: EFF Says Burning Man Usurps Digital Rights on Thursday August 13 2009, @07:43AM
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Hugh Pickens writes "In a few weeks, tens of thousands of creative people will make their yearly pilgrimage to Nevada's Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom, but EFF reports that the event's Terms and Conditions include 'a remarkable bit of legal sleight-of-hand.' As soon as 'any third party displays or disseminates' your photos or videos in a manner that the Burning Man Organization (BMO) doesn't like, those photos or videos become the property of the BMO. BMO's Terms and Conditions also limits your own rights to use your own photos and videos on any public websites obliging you to take down any photos to which BMO objects, for any reason; and forbidding you from allowing anyone else to reuse your photos. This 'we automatically own all your stuff' magic appears to be creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined 'notice and takedown' process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet giving BMO the power of fast and easy online censorship. 'Burning Man strives to celebrate our individuality, creativity and free spirit,' writes Corynne McSherry. 'Unfortunately, the fine print on the tickets doesn't live up to that aspiration.'"
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the BMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the BMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah - BM does not need your puny advertising.
Media control makes sure that Black Rock City does not turn into a venue for the "girls gone wild" film crews. It's also part of the framework that allows BM Org to function on behalf of people when private footage ends up being used in such a manner.
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Think about this for a sec (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, if someone takes pictures which could "let the word out" this enables the organizers to take down those pictures and control the information, so the cops aren't up everyone's ass every year. This has worked for the last five years, and as a result it's fine and encouraged to smoke pot and drop acid all weekend long, even in front of event security (they do it too). I don't know if this is the same reason Burning Man does this, but it would make a LOT of sense.
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Don't like it? Don't go to Burning Man (Score:5, Informative)
Burning Man implements a Temporary Autonomous Zone [wikipedia.org] (TAZ):
One of the essential supports for a TAZ is to ensure participants that their temporary experience - which can greatly differ from normal life - be temporary, rather than permanent. People do all sorts of crazy stuff at Burning Man. That self-expression is easier because they know that photographs and videos of their experience will be handled in a particular manner - for example, not taken and turned into a motion picture.
If you don't agree with BMO's photo and video terms, then you don't understand the concept of a TAZ.
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Re:Don't like it? Don't go to Burning Man (Score:5, Insightful)
Very well put. Wish I had mod points for you because this is the most important point.
The biggest irony here is that the EFF talks about protecting privacy.. and BMO's policy here is to protect the privacy of participants.. not to stifle creativity.
Out of all the things the EFF could be focusing on, this is the least important 'threat' to anyone's digital rights that I can imagine.
Can I get my donation for this year back?
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Re:the BMO (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the BMO (Score:5, Funny)
Burning Man, indeed.
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Re:the BMO (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you do digg searches on BM photos, you'll see they hardly ever exercise discretion.
There are many BM participants that plainly don't want the world to see them nude, or having what's a potentially lascivious time. That's their right and a good protection to have fun without the PTA burning you at the stake. Here, the EFF has crossed the line. Imagine all the people in the Human Carcass Wash being exposed for the world to see. That's not what BM is about: outing behavior that's otherwise 'just fine' at the event.
People have more freedom at BM than the 'default world' and should have the right to protection, and the event should be able to control it. Privacy trumps someone's right to masturbate or express other moral outrage to pictures of strange things at BM.
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Re:the BMO (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Burning Man: Ren Faire for Anarchist Wannabes (Score:5, Informative)
It's not FEDERAL LAND. It's leased from the BLM.
It's not walking around the desert naked-- it's private leased property.
The land underneath is BLM. The area is leased and is private.
Ridiculous is fine when you're with people that have consented to whatever. But you're incorrect in comparing BM to RenFests. They can do whatever they want, just like it were a nudist camp--- because the lease provides nexus of control to the BM organization. Even the Pershing County sheriffs will walk by, gawk, then walk on-- unless someone's obviously in trouble or violating the law by doing illegal drugs, etc.
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Re:Burning Man: Ren Faire for Anarchist Wannabes (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, no. Saying the argument holds no water doesn't make it so.
It's private property for purposes of the event. You must buy or be granted a ticket and comply with the terms. Go on, pay some money and ask a real lawyer. I lease my office. It's the same as if I own it. You get to come in if I say it's ok-- otherwise you're trespassing.
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Re:the BMO (Score:4, Informative)
Except, of course, the fact that it is not a public event. You have to buy a ticket to go, which makes a private event on land that is leased from the government.
Furthermore, one of the conditions of use by the BLM is that the entire event establishes a perimeter fence and controls access.
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Likely to protect the Event Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Likely to protect the Event Itself (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Likely to protect the Event Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
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Burning Man is about creativity? (Score:4, Funny)
Protest (Score:5, Funny)
Protest by setting fire to something. People will notice then.
Re:Protest (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago an old-time participant set fire to "the man" a couple of days early. The organizers decried it as criminal vandalism and reported it to law enforcement.
The hypocrisy was thick.
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Who owns the property this event is on? (Score:3, Informative)
IANAL, but....
In the Nevada desert? State owned property? Then I doubt they have a legal leg to stand on. However, if it's on private property, then they can probably stipulate what gets done with the photos. Stupid? Yes. Legal? Maybe.
Photographers, print this out and carry it with you at all times: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm [krages.com]. It was written by lawyers who do actually know a thing or two about photography and the law.
-S
Re:Who owns the property this event is on? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no. It's a leased space for the time of the event. Their legal basis is court-tested in Nevada and California courts. The ticket is key; it's a contract just like the one you get when you park your car in a garage.
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Bah, It's been that way for aa few years now. (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped going to burning man years ago when it became a commercialized corporate mess.
Burning man today is not what it was 10 years ago.
today it's a brand to be protected, an event to sponsor.
Bleh.
Re:Bah, It's been that way for aa few years now. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, I'll get off your lawn now.
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Is it even valid? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you know you've agreed to the waiver if you haven't read the waiver? Surely if you buy tickets over the phone, (unless they explicitly ask you whether you agree to the waiver) neither party can reasonably expect that you've read the waiver.
And that's assuming this clause is even valid, which I think seems unlikely.
In the spirit of individuality (Score:4, Insightful)
Burning Man isn't a sacred rite. It's a bunch of people who get together and decide to be goofs for a week. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same. I might even join you.
copyright, patents, intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
is less about rewarding creators and more about corporate control of OUR culture
at this point, i am leaning towards "fuck you" to creators, as long as our legal system has an inability to differentiate between corporate distribution channels and actual creators
creators: i'm sorry your grandchildren can't live off your one hit wonder. i'm sorry you won't be a billionaire for "inventing" shamwow. but you can still get a great job as a respected engineer and you can still get great money from touring. sorry, thems the breaks: get to work like the rest of us dumb shlubs
the original idea that guided the creation of the notion of intellectual property: rewarding creators, has been completely corrupted as a way to reward distributors. the legal goon squads make sure actual creators get less $, and consumers fork over more $. in a preinternet world, distributors were necessary, but this is a scenario the internet has destroyed. now distributors are just unnecessary parasites. its called disruptive technology for a reason. it has disrupted the technological grounds upon which the rewarding of distributors works. all that remains is pushing the stake into the vampire's heart
intellectual property has betrayed its philosophical underpinnings, and we, the people, who are supposed to be the ones in charge, now have a duty to do our best to ignore, and/ or detroy intellectual property, since the legal system, which is supposed to serve us, serves corporate masters beholden to nothing but more cash for less reason
intellectual property law is still effective across the land because of legal goon squads, but philosophically, it is defunct, and you should ignore it... at the peril of the legal goon squads, but not at the peril of your conscience. it is at the peril of your conscience that you continue to believe in intellectual property
Not enforceable in/from a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst there are probably a dozen practical and legal reasons why this probably isn't enforceable, the one that immediately springs to my mind is that Burning Man is taking place in a Black Rock Desert [wikipedia.org], which is government-owned and criss-crossed with historic trails open to the public. There are likely to be large areas of Burning Man which are visible from these public areas, and thus, according to Kantor's Legal Rights of Photographers [kantor.com] (PDF), open to photographer to take photographs from as they see fit, without restrictions.
Re:Not enforceable in/from a public place (Score:4, Informative)
Nope.
The area is leased to the organization. As a leaseholder, they can encumber you by the terms of the ticket. Your argument doesn't hold water in this controlled-access event. There's a perimeter fence that would thwart even really cool telephoto lenses. There are even NOTAMs for flyers that would like to buzz by.
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Good Luck Enforcing That (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, BMO. Any pictures that I take are mine. You can get stuffed if you don't like them.
They really _can't_ do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Buy tickets by phone
Step 2: Take pictures they don't like
Step 2a: Publish them
Step 3: When they complain, bring up 17 USC 204a: "transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent. "
(once again, no profit)
!story (Score:4, Interesting)
Good Reason For It (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a good reason for it. Burning Man permits all sorts of non-standard behavior, including nudity. For people to feel comfortable in such an environment, photography has to be limited. For the most part this is not a problem -- real Burners ask before taking a person's picture. But there is a bad element that goes to Burning Man; the tourists. They generally arrive on Thursday or Friday, camera in hand, and start snapping pictures.
Those pictures do two bad things: They inhibit people from acting freely, and they present the wrong image of Burning Man. It is not about nudity, but the daffy ducks with their cameras would make it look like it is; as they walk right past some of the most inspiring art in the world to snap a picture of a person who chose not to wear clothes that day. Keeping those pictures -- which misrepresent the event and are widely reviled by Burners -- off the Internet is a good thing.
I am a hard-core supporter of the EFF, but this time they are wrong to judge. Burning Man is a community with certain standards. Making sure Black Rock City remains free -- in both the legal and the psychological sense -- is one of them. Much like the GPL or anti-trust laws, sometimes freedom is best served by restricting behavior that inhibits freedom.
Re:then the tourists aren't a problem to you eithe (Score:4, Interesting)
don't like that? then don't get nude.
Do you not see the inhibition to freedom implicit in that statement?
Nope. Freedom doesn't mean "I get to do whatever the hell I want and bugger the consequences." It means "I get to make the choice to do it or not."
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Burning Man jumped the shark when... (Score:5, Insightful)
[ ] Inherently over the shark right from the start--every counterculture is doomed to devolve into authoritarianism.
[ ] left Bay Area
[X] charging admission
[ ] mentioned on Malcolm in the Middle
[ ] guy burned the man prematurely and got in legal trouble for it
Re:So go and just don't do anything (Score:5, Funny)
How about having everyone wear a V mask [wikipedia.org] as a sign of protest?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
America needs you, Lawrence Welk [wikipedia.org], now more than ever!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Horrible" is maybe too strong a word in this case, no? What's the matter are you opposed to the goatse man's right to self-expression?
Well let me tell you something, Mr. Man, you may not realize this, but at Burning Man 2004 the entire event's grand finale was every attendee striking that very pose.
At least I think that's what happened. To be fair, I had dropped some of the brown acid, which I later heard may have been ...(wait for it...) tainted.
[G
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you're gonna call Stalin 'Joe' - you should call Corynne 'Cory' and Benito 'Ben' :P
Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Funny)
Whats the matter, did the BMO organizers ban you from carrying your handguns and wearing your white supremacist t-shirt again?
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:4, Funny)
You don't really understand Godwin's law, do you?
You Godwin's Law Nazi!
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Funny)
Like most liberal fantasies, it rapidly devolved into an authoritarian group usurping natural ownership and dictating rules galore.
Unlike most conservative fantasies, which start that way.
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between Liberals and Conservatives ....
Liberals pretend there are no rules, but make lots of rules to cover shit they don't like.
Conservatives makes lots of rules, and pretend to not have any rules.
See, they are different!
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
I could point out that the phenomenon your referring to isn't a feature of a liberal system, it occurs despite of your political lean, but...
It always amazes me how people throw things into one of two buckets "liberal" and "conservative". One of the buckets is good and one is bad, depending on the person. How about instead of using inconsistent terms like that we get right to the point, call the categories "us" and "them". Remember you don't have to think about it too much, ignorance is a plus when putting "them" down.
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Heh, heh, heh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go back about a century and "conservatives" were setting up the national park system and "liberals" were all for industrialization and free enterprise.
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Re:Heh, heh, heh... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
You would have been better off just saying "Power corrupts"
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most liberal fantasies, it rapidly devolved into an authoritarian group usurping natural ownership and dictating rules galore.
"We automatically own all your stuff" isn't the only BMO rule totally contrary to the events original spirit.
More specifically, I'd say it is about "freedom", and when people are free to be themselves, you end up with the group devolving or evolving to whatever the average person in the group is really like at heart. So if you say to a bunch of nuns, "be free!", they'll probably spend the day in prayer. But if you say it to a bunch of people who believe "the system is bad", then often you get social drop-outs who couldn't organise anything more complicated than just... well they become a gang of thugs who wanna just live impulsively. And if there's some proportion of people like that who go to BM, then that's what it will devolve to.
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Are There Sharks in the Desert to Jump? (Score:5, Insightful)
...because my impression was that Burning Man had become a parody of itself (and, by extension, the whole Mondo 2000 era) years ago. Like, Turn-of-the-Century years ago. These aren't "creative people" making an annual pilgrimage, these are Marketing Execs and guys who view the pre-bubble dot-com era the way today's high school pop music fans view 80's synth-pop bands and narrow ties.
"Burning Man" ?!? Christ, why does that even get any ink here?
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Re:Another liberal dream goes totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism started out as an absolute do-whatever-you-want-just-don't-share-with-anyone free-for-all.
Like most conservative fantasies, it rapidly devolved into an authoritarian group usurping natural ownership and dictating rules galore.
"We automatically own all your stuff" isn't the only feudalistic rule totally contrary to the system's original spirit.
That was fun!
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