Burning Man Responds To EFF's Criticism of Policy

Briden writes "Earlier this week, we discussed the EFF's criticism of the Burning Man Photo Policy. Burning Man has now responded at length on their own blog. Here's an excerpt: 'In fact, there are but two essential reasons we maintain these increased controls on behalf of our community: to protect our participants so that images that violate their privacy are not displayed, and to prevent companies from using Burning Man to sell products. We don't remove images from pages just because they criticize us (I've never been involved in taking down an image from an editorial blog criticizing Burning Man, and it's certainly not because there haven't been any!). We're also not at all interested [in] preventing participants from sharing their personal imagery or impressions of the event on third party sharing sites in a noncommercial manner, so long as they observe the concerns about privacy and commercialism. We're delighted to see people sharing videos, stories, and pictures on our official Facebook page, and we know that it, along with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. are representative of the way many of us share personal imagery in the digital age.'"

Comments

Re:Public Event

[Hizonner]

1. The people who come to Burning Man are NOT the general public; they're a subculture with completely different attitudes. If your boss happens to actually be at Burning Man, it's pretty unlikely that your boss is the kind of person who will then turn around and decide to fire you for, say, being naked at Burning Man. Same for lots of other people who might give you grief for lots of other things. Yes, it could happen, but it's far, far less likely, and probabilities matter.
2. You can see who's around you at Burning Man (or in any public place, for that matter), and adjust your behavior accordingly. You can't see who might look at a photograph later.
3. If you don't happen to notice everybody who's around you in a public place, you expose your activities to the relatively limited number of people who are right there, right then. If you don't happen to notice that a photograph is being taken, that exposes your activities to an unlimited number of people, that number of people can grow in the future, and people can easily pass around a credible record of your activities, rather than just gossiping about them. Again, the probability of harm is much greater.
4. Burning Man isn't a completely public event, in that the attendees are supposed to agree to certain rules, including privacy rules, which do NOT apply in public places in general.

I don't necessarily like the BMO's picture policy, because I think it gives them too much arbitrary power. I'm not even sure it's reasonable to try to address these privacy concerns, or similar concerns in similar public or semi-public settings, at all, because it's damned hard to actually have a useful effect without giving somebody too much power. But it's bogus to pretend the concerns don't exist.

The real reason

[__david__]

I remember this coming up a number of years ago when they first put this clause in the ticket sale license. It was discussed to death back then and so it's kind of funny to me that it has suddenly come up again. The (possibly apocryphal) reason that my more in-the-know burner campmates told me way back when:

The year before a bunch of guys went around with a video camera and tried to release a "Girls of Burning Man" video in the style of "Girls Gone Wild". This was widely viewed as poor form. So the organizers put the clause in specifically to nip that kind of behavior in the bud. They didn't want people (women in particular) to have to worry about unwittingly becoming part of some cheesy softcore porn video.

/. Users - AKA The perpetually clue impared

[FlyingGuy]

Such typical responses...

First of all the photo policy is rarely, if ever used. When it is, it is because some asshole went to the event with primary intent of taking pictures of nude people so they can sell them. That we don't tolerate, period, end of discussion. You don't like it, don't by a ticket.

Ticket prices? Ever wonder it costs to pay for porta-potties for +-50,000 people and have them serviced twice a day? Go here and read the afterburn reports, they contain a full accounting of what it costs to put this event on. Give you a hint, it is over 1 million dollars just so people can take a shit.

And yes, I attended the even for 5 years running, and I worked for the event, so yes I know of what I speak.