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EFF Says Burning Man Usurps Digital Rights
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.'"
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
BY PURCHASING TICKETS ONLINE, VIA PHONE OR MAIL ORDER FROM BURNING MAN, I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE READ THIS WAIVER AND RELEASE OF LIABILITY AND I FULLY UNDERSTAND ITS TERMS, AND I UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE GIVEN UP SUBSTANTIAL RIGHTS, AND I DO SO KNOWINGLY AND VOLUNTARILY WITHOUT ANY INDUCEMENT OR DURESS.
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.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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, 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 (PDF), open to photographer to take photographs from as they see fit, without restrictions.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Whats the matter, did the BMO organizers ban you from carrying your handguns and wearing your white supremacist t-shirt again?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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.
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)
"My assumption is that they ask/force people to take down images and videos that show extremely reckless illegal activity..." Agreed, for the most part. IANA lawyer, but I did just read the T&C's here: http://tickets2.burningman.com/info.php?i=2386 They make it pretty clear that pics/video you take (and even post) for PERSONAL use is all well and good. They don't seem interested at all. It's the NON-personal ($$$) stuff they're getting uptight about. In other words, "don't make money using our name without letting us know so we can wet our beak too." And the third party stuff reads like this: "If you put your stuff on YouTube, and someone grabs it and puts it in a documentary, we're going to sue those people." I dunno...maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but I don't have much of a problem with any of it...?
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Burning Man implements a Temporary Autonomous Zone (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.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Agreed--having a restrictive and enforceable media policy protects the self-expression inherent in Burning Man--even if it's not enforced all that often, if I find an online picture of me that captures a moment I would prefer live only in my memory, I can ask BM to ask for it to be taken down. I like that protection. Also, the media restriction is in the spirit of Burning Man--encouraging people to participate, to live in the moment, rather than recording the moment for some later moment. At Burning Man, it's better to dance than to take pictures! And if someone is serious about recording Burning Man, they can make special arrangements with the organizers--AND they have to follow some basic rules of politeness, which many of the default world media-lites seem to have abandoned.