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Permit May Be Required For Public Photography in NYC
G4Cube passed us a link to a New York Times article about a troubling development in public photography rights. New York City is considering requiring a permit for photographers, film-makers, and even possibly tourists who want to shoot imagery in the Big Apple. "New rules being considered by the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance. The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers. Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police."
Oh great. Just what we need are more incidents like this and this. Who gets to define "amateur"? Or how about what is really going to happen is simply giving the police more latitude in harassing photographers who are operating from open, public spaces already paid for in taxes by the taxpayer? From this text Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. I'd say that it looks like it. Also, from the article who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. Why a tripod? Does that make for a professional? If so, I must be a triple professional, because I have three tripods. ;-) Seriously though, this is the sort of law that sounds like it was put together over a drinking game by a couple of high school students, but in reality it has been assembled by a group of mid level government bureaucrats who obviously have not thought very far down the road as to the possible implications, legal or otherwise. For instance, The draft rules say the office could take up to 30 days to issue a permit, but Ms. Cho said she expected that most would be issued within 24 hours. leading me to wonder: Will the film student, of which there are many in NYC have to now go and apply for a permit and a $1 million dollar insurance policy for every single class assignment? What about the news agencies who might have to report on breaking stories? Will they be breaking the law covering the news?
This is simply absurd and as a photographer, I will *not* be traveling into NYC if this proposed policy becomes law.
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Last I checked, cities cannot override 1st Amendment rights. I believe this falls under the freedom of the press.
Not only is this idea completely unrealistic, doesn't it violate unalienable rights? I thought those were supposed to be protected...
Whats next? Arrested for gazing upon a copyrighted building design. Come on...
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Usually when you change the law, it's because something happened. I would like to know what failure the current laws have suffered and I didn't really find there to be a lot of comments from the New York City government on this issue, just civil liberties groups.
So as far as I can guess, there are two possible reason. The first is the ole' terrorism card where we can't have people that might be terrorists casing targets and what not. The second possible reason is that it is becoming easier and easier to garner thousands of viewers (like the article mentions) via sites like YouTube by posting your work online. Is the city targeting these people the same way it targets major Hollywood film companies?
I'm kind of disappointed this article didn't accurately reflect both sides of the issue. I can see several downsides to these laws but is there at least a reason for changing them in the first place? Not a lot of information here from NYC.
The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting seems to be concerned primarily with fining large companies. The free permit you can apply for online states: The permit we issue to your production is free of charge, and provides access to public locations and street parking for essential production vehicles throughout 300 square miles of public settings in the city's five boroughs, including 27,000 acres of city parks.
When your project is shooting at an exterior location which requires traffic control, or has a scene with prop firearms, weapons or actors in police uniforms, you must request that the NYPD Movie and TV Unit be assigned to your location. The police unit will assign its officers at no charge to you.
All decisions about what is permitted are made by the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting, working in close consultation with the NYPD Movie & TV Unit, and other key city agencies. We have the experience and resources to facilitate your production requests.
Filming in city parks, interiors of city buildings, bridges, subways or tunnels will require additional permissions from the controlling entities. Please contact our office to obtain specific contact information. Which seems fairly reasonable for one of the largest & most densely populated cities in the United States. With amatures having an easier means of publication, the laws could change to keep NYC's MOFTB informed of filming on a regular or extended basis.
Now, I'm well aware of the abuse that police & law enforcement could use this for against citizens, tourists & people of certain ethnicities, but I think the article already adequately reflected the concerns.
What was glossed over was the apparent good these laws would do: Mr. Dunn said most of the new rules were reasonable. Notably, someone using a hand-held video camera, as Mr. Sharma was doing, would no longer have to get a permit. So, am I to believe that there's a few laws that are questionable while other laws are going to protect people (as in Mr. Sharma's case) from being arrested? Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Still, it really causes one to wonder, what's the reason for the change in these laws?
My work here is dung.
I can see this if it actually is enacted. 1. I should take me Finepix S2 and run around NYC taking hundreds and hundreds of pictures of buidlings and things, maybe wearing somewhat shady clothing, and then when the NYPD stop me and want to see what I have on my camera, open it up to show that no memory card is installed (Yes, this camera can operate in test mode, basically shooting but not saving.). 2. And then when they arrest me for supposedly taking photographs, I can sue them for holding me without evidence. 3. PROFIT!
Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.
Does the law say this?
Is she aware that the police and the entire judiciary are obliged to enforce the law as written? A police officer would be obliged to arrest severy tourist who didn't have a permit. If it came to court, the "Julianne Cho said it was alright" defence isn't going to be a valid defence. The attitude of the courts is, and always has been "If that was their intent they would have said so", and the system is based around this prinipal.
The motivation for this proposal is the recent cases of people being arrested for filming the police. There is a serious danger that abusive officers of the Law will be caught on camera, and the best way of stopping this, is to have an excuse to confiscate the media for being potentially "unlicensed".
This was implemented very successfully in Soviet times. The excuse was "National Security", but, of course, no secrets will be revealed by taking a photograph of a random government building (and anyone with enough skill to cause trouble there will conceal his camera anyway). In fact, what was important was to hide the truth about what goes on, and you do that by only licensing people who reveal your version of the truth.
So much curtailing of liberty in the past 6 years, any thoughts I had that I might be paranoid about my government are now out of the window. It's obvious what's happening - and because the population is more educated and aware than 50 years ago, and because this time round it's going to be done peacefully, but with sufficient technology to make insurrection impossible, it'll just take a little longer to bring it about.
I can definitely see the danger in overzealous enforcement of this law, and as someone has already mentioned, there's a precedent for law enforcement to use any reason to curb photographic rights. If the law is properly limited, however, it could limit the nuisance caused by groups using tripods which can occupy busy public spaces for long periods of time. I can understand the motivation behind this law, even if it is a mere pretext to banning public photography in the long term.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Tourists and tour groups avoid New York. Also people should avoid parades and public events if they intend to take pictures. If they would like to restrict taking pictures in public places then there are friendlier cities people can frequent.
The IRS.
I hope that quadpods are not part of the law, I will make a killing selling these so you will never break the law.
Shh govt types who dont know what real work is.... i have a pentapod and sexapod and octapods ready too.
I have a proposal, sack 100% of all middle govt goons.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If it's to stop people blocking the sidewalk, doesn't the city already have adequate laws on that? They wouldn't have to refer to photography either.
A more plausible explanation is driving a wedge between professional and amateur journalism. With the chilling effect, there will be less recording of police misconduct, for example, and many of the 9.11 videos would not have been made.
Next we'll require permits to for free speech in public areas for anyone whose speaking to more then one person for over 30 minutes or five people at the same time for more then 10 minutes. Beggars will be exempt as no-one pays attention to them.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
He went on to say that mostly those speaking some form of Arabic would fall prey to selective enforcement. Upper and middle class white Americans needn't worry.
Because the government is a bastion of efficiency.
The man is a total control freak and a pathetic excuse for a Republican. Glad he's running for president on an independent ticket, since no one will vote for him.
I used to say that the difference between my country
and the United States was that here everything was
prohibited unless expressely allowed, while in the
US everything was allowed unless expressely prohibited.
I guess I will soon have to revise that saying.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
I am a photographer whose specialty is urban photography. A precedent like this would kill my favourite hobby, at least in the US. It certainly violates freedom of the press, thought they will argue "just get a permit and you're fine". I would suspect that some undesirable photographers|journalists|artists would be denied permits. Right now in many cities a permit is required for other types of "artistic" activity in the streets or public spaces (ie: busking). But really, photography? It doesn't hurt anyone. You can look at Google maps or Microsoft Live and get photos of streets. There are security cameras almost everywhere. Why can't joe photographer do it?
As has already been mentioned, the purpose of these laws is to generate revenue for the city and keep the sidewalk / pavement clear. The article mentions that two or more people who linger in a spot more than 30 minutes are subject to the new rules.
That doesn't sound terribly onerous - I recently took hundreds of photos in New York City and never once had a problem. I toted around an old Yashicamat 124G as well as a Hexar AF. Every so often someone would strike up a conversation about that "cool old camera", but I photographed traffic cops, people in the street, quietly inside shops, throughout museums without a fuss. The cameras are both fairly low-key and quiet.
I reckon if both my girlfriend and myself had lingered outside for more than 30 minutes and I was typically snapping photographs of strangers, THEN I would be in violation - but I think she'd smack me upside the head before the 30-minute mark would pass.
Now the issue about unflattering photographs of city police - that sounds more like something that requires clarification. It should never be illegal to expose abuse of power or malfeasance. And citizen journalism has provided vivid pictures of breaking news before the big news organisations can scramble their photographers.
There are rumblings of similar laws been enacted in Britain ... which always strikes me as a wicked irony when you consider the vast amount of CCTV cameras there are.
...need a kick in the face.
'Nuff said.
Strikes me that your lives have been so transformed by all this that in many ways they can already claim victory. Your nation is now so frightened of its own shadow that one by one your personal freedoms are being stripped away in the name of "security". And the sad thing is, you're doing it to yourselves.
In the United States today you need:
- A license to Drive (travel)
- A license to get married
- A license to broadcast radio
- A passport to leave the country
- A passport to enter the country (unless you're an illegal alien)
- Permits to run certain types of business
- Fee, Taxes, etc. on numerous many activities.
In Addition we have:
- A mammoth legal code (over ??? pages)
- A mammoth tax code (over 5,000 pages)
- Immense corruption in government
- More and more surveillance cameras going up in stores and in public places
And now some city wants me to have a permit to take a picture????
NO. I absolutely refuse!!! I'm gonna photograph my middle finger and
mail it to them.
Wake up people and realize that we are living in a Candyland version
of the soviet union already.
Don't let our government turn your rights into privileges, licenses and permits.
They've take too much already and we've let them.
This proposal only applies to situations where cameras are in use for more than a half hour. This means that nearly all situations people have brought up as potential conflicts are unrelated to this proposal.
Anyone who has spent much time trying to actually live or do business in NYC knows that sidewalks are often blocked either partially or fully for photography sessions. Most often this is done by advertising agencies in order to be use NYC and its crowds as a backdrop. Essentially they are making use of a public resource in order to produce private products, so this proposed regulation is yet another attempt to avoid the worst of an ongoing tragedy of the commons.
The way this is getting blown up into a massive homeland security basic rights breach is an unfortunate demonstration of the stupid and reactive nature of the masses. Slashdot is supposed to have people actually using their heads, yet hardly anyone has actually read the proposal that stirred this up or seriously attempted to interpret what it might mean.
The gold standard for opposition to an idea is to present a better one. Significant numbers of photographic sessions are to take place on some of the most busy streets in NYC. What is your proposal for avoiding chaos? Is asking for official notification in this way a bad way of mediating this conflict? Then what is a good way?
Yeah, and Jaywalking is illegal, too. Just another law on the books that will be ignored hundreds of thousands of times a day in New York.
Dekker Dreyer
Maybe this law is to be clear: this is what you can do, and what you cannot do; while allowing the preliminary decision to the enforcing officer? Therefore by drawing a line, the arresting officer, (and any subsequent courts in the legal process), can then-and-there decide whether 'the case' and resulting enforcement action is worth the effort. This makes for much efficiency all-'round.
Did you know in Amsterdam marijuana is illegal, yet its sale is commonplace? The word going around is 'tolerated', but what does that mean? It means you're being an asshole at any time in public involved with a bunch of grass, any officer has the right to persecute you for being an asshole; because clearly you've broken the law.
Aside from such persecution, the momentary matter is let up to the immediate officer to sort out. This is a tool that allows the officer to do their work efficiently and at relatively low-cost to the overall public. Such an enforcement model exists elsewhere too.
Maybe as in LA, there's too many blokes obstructing traffic with cameras, and they needed some sort of law on the books to provide beat-cops a tool with which to make the city a nice place to live in?
- - - -
Free Paris! Oh wait... God Bless Paris.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
So I can't set up a tripod and take a long-exposure shot at night, but Google's CreepyTruck can drive around and take pictures for Google Street View? They're not in any one spot for more than a few seconds. Lordy.
Here in Chicago, we have a park right downtown called Millennium Park. It was completed, ironically enough, in 2004. In it is something most Chicagoans call "The Bean" -- it's actually called Cloud Gate, and it's a big reflective kidney-bean-shaped thing that reflects everything around it. The piece was underwritten by some big corporation (Ameritech, maybe?). In the past couple of years, the artist has gotten all pissy about people taking pictures of it, because it's a copyrighted work. The sponsor got involved, leaned on the city, and now the police will often stop people from taking pictures of it without written permission from the artist. (As you might imagine, this also spawned a huge number of posted photographs of it all over the Web.)
In other words, they can plant a bigass bean in the middle of my city, but if I take a picture of it, I'm in the wrong. And while I stand there griping about it, Google can drive by and take my picture. My personal feeling is that the architects of the buildings surrounding the bean should go after the artist for reflecting images of their buildings without written permission. But that just increases the number of people being chowderheads, I suppose.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
My primary video camera is a Sony A1U, usually mounted on a Manfrotto tripod with fluid head. This is obviously "professional" gear. If I whip that sucker out, with or without tripod, nearby cops in big cities tend to freak.
If I haul out my little Panasonic "grandpa and the grandkids" handheld camcorder, nobody ever says a word to me.
My next cam purchase will probably be a Canon HV20 -- it does HD and gives pretty good quality in any rational amount of light, but is small enough not to alarm The Nosies. The only problem is going to be audio.... even a shortie shotgun mic suddenly makes a cam look "professional" enough to cause suspicion.
I recently taped some short takes at JFK airport in NYC -- not of security or anything -- and some Delta employees totally freaked out and called airport security, who told me not to take shots of security personnel but otherwise left me alone.
Luckily, I don't live in NYC, but in Bradenton, Florida. Here and in nearby Sarasota I *routinely* tape commercial video on the streets and beaches, often with a tripod and boom mic, and nearly as often with 3 - 5 people in cast/crew, and nobody bothers me at all. Cops just ask, "Oh what are you filming?" out of ordinary curiosity, then maybe stand around to watch if they're not busy.
Yeah, you're supposed to have a permit for most "professional film activity" here, but I've never gotten one, and I've never been hassled about permitting. Around here, even small-time professional video production is rare enough that people want to watch you do it, not keep you *from* doing it.
- Robin
I think the key, though, is that groups of five or more people have only 10 minutes. The proposed law, as written, does not even require that pictures are being actively taken, only that the group is visibly in possession of one or more cameras. So here you have a situation where tour groups would undoubtedly require permits with the law as written, despite that being "unintended", which I think is debatable. It is clear they made no effort to ensure this does not apply to amateur photographers and tourists, and expect people to take them on their word that this will not be used against them.
I assume NYC has laws prohibiting obstruction of sidewalks and traffic. Why not enforce those instead?
You ask, "What does this have to do with terrorism?" If you belive these new rules are for some other reason, please explain.
You say these "permits" have been required long before 9-11 happened. I agree with you on that point, movie studios and other commercial filmers shouild require some type of permit.
You say the old rules were very vague and the new rules much more specific with even the NYCLU admiting that. The following quote from the linked article seems to disagree with your statement. "Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules." As interpeted by Mr. Dunn of the NYCLU, the new rules are vague and could "apply to a huge range of casual photography and filming, including tourists taking snapshots and people making short videos for YouTube."
Terrorism accomplishs different goals for different groups of people. For the American Government, terrorism lets them (try to) make many new laws to rule the citizens with.
"This has nothing to do with someone walking around and filming or taking pictures in a public area without interfering with anyone else's use of the public space, which is what the government has recently started meddling in under the guise of 'terrorism prevention'."
Under the old guidelines, the activity which you described would need a permit. The new guidelines mentioned by this article are intended to clarify them so the guy you speak of would not need a permit. The controversy is that while the new guidelines are certainly better than the old ones (camcorders or hand held video cameras are fine, small parties (under 5 people) are fine, short recording times (under 10 minutes) are fine, etc), some are concerned there are still a few loopholes (like in any law) that could conceivably allow the cops to charge someone like a member of a large tour group who is filming with a tripod while waiting in line for something.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Whatever the real reason for doing this is I am confident that it has absolutely nothing to do with the dozens of independent documentaries, the tens of thousands of independent video posts, or millions of photographs posted to independent blogs pointing out the holes in the official 9/11 story.
"Of course. That would be a Conspiracy Theory and all conspiracy theories are crazy. Of course..." - Robert Anton Wilson