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

No sir, I don't like it

[yttrstein]

I liked Burning Man a lot more when it was called "touring with the dead". Precisely the same amount of drugs, spectacle and enlightenment, except for about 300 bucks less per person.

Re:No sir, I don't like it

[impaledsunset]

But, but, but we are doing it for your privacy! We ask you to give us rights to your works, and give some of them up, _solely_ for your own good, don't you get it? We're thinking 'bout you! How can you acuse us like that?

And, no, we're not lying, no... No, really!

Re:No sir, I don't like it

[martyros]

You forgot, "Just look at our record; we've been doing this for a long time and never abused our rights. Furthermore, the minute we do, next years' attendance drops significantly, so we have a financial incentive not to abuse our power."

Public Event

[b4upoo]

Just how the heck can they claim privacy concerns for a public event in a public space? If people wish to do something in private I suggest that they do it alone in a place where only they can go.

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.

Re:Public Event

[cmdahler]

It's always fun on slashdot to see the IANAL-but-I-KNOW-I'm-right crowd come out of the woodwork on articles like this. No, he's not a moron - you are. BM is held on property that is leased for the event. That makes it private, you can't get in without a ticket, which does indeed hold you under a binding contract while you are on that property. The only way you could get around this legally would be to find a location that is not on the leased property from which you could view BM, and then take pictures there. Now, go back under your rock.

Re:Public Event

[fooslacker]

The first time I heard about the Burning Man, they were saying everywhere "come at your own risk ! We don't provide water or health services ! If you want to be safe, either bring an hospital or stay home !" At the beginning, it was supposed that there were no spectators, only participants. They sounded like they would be ready to leave you dead on the sand. Now what ? They want to protect the privacy ? What kind of sissy participant is unable to come unrecognizable if s/he does not wish to be ?

It's not about privacy. Burning Man is no longer what you described. It's now a corporate money machine and like all things that explode with success the raiders descend and now they try to control the environment so that the golden goose continues to lay eggs for as long as possible. Their goal is to no longer have Burning Man grow but instead to have it generate a low risk income for as long as possible before their suffocating grip slowly kills it. This is not new by any means, companies behave in the same way in any industry.

Entrepreneur begets, risky business, begets client base, begets minor success, begets corporate buyout/rapid growth, begets a need to ensure future profits, begets restrictions on customer base, begets slow decline begets litigation, begets bankruptcy begets another cycle.

Re:Public Event

[wickerprints]

You don't need to buy a ticket to drive along public roads and photograph what you can see with the naked eye...although of course, if you violate traffic laws you might "purchase" a ticket against your will....

Look, I'm a photographer and I know what is and is not allowed in terms of image capture, copyright, and publication rights in the US. If you are standing on public property, you have the right to photograph just about anything you can see with your unaided vision (i.e., no long telephoto lenses or binoculars to peer into houses). The key is whether the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy from where they are located and the context in which they are situated at that location. Buying a ticket from an event organizer who has leased the land for that event turns that land into private property for that event's duration, and therefore ALL activities fall under the purview of the organizers. You become their guest, which is why they can eject you from the event should you violate the terms of the contract you agreed to by purchasing the ticket in the first place.

So to compare Google's Street View against Burning Man photo policy is comparing apples and oranges. One is about photos taken from public land, whereas the other is about photos taken at a private event. The organizer's policy is designed to prevent commercial use, which is absolutely their right to do. They could even have the right to prevent you from taking pictures at all while on their property, just like a shopping mall can say "No Photography Permitted."

I'm not concerned about the legal issues surrounding photography @ Burning Man. I'm far more concerned about the issues surrounding photography of public landmarks from public property that is now being prevented by law enforcement under the guise of "anti-terror measures." That's right, photographers (basically anyone with a professional-looking camera) are being told they will be arrested and their equipment confiscated if they take photos of, say, the Sears Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge. WTF is that? And much of the time, if you do a bit of digging, the real reason why this is happening is because the advent of high-quality digital imaging has now made it possible for amateurs to create artistically compelling images that compete with the "official" landmark images that are for sale. Why buy a poster or print if you can shoot your own? It's just another piece of security theater and illegal restriction under the guise of "protecting us from terror." That is something to be worried about.

There's tickets?

[savanik]

Since when did you have to buy tickets for Burning Man? I thought it was a counter-culture, anti-corporate, neo-society experiment out in the middle of nowhere that sounded like a really cool idea. Now they're saying that they're trying to 'keep it real' and prevent crass commercialism by... putting a highly restrictive EULA on the tickets they're selling for the event at anywhere from $280 to $450?

For that matter, now they're saying they're building a community/city out in the desert. Since when do you get charged a fee for walking into a city?

I was actually thinking about going to Burning Man this year. It sounds like I already missed the good years.

Re:There's tickets?

[CRCulver]

I was actually thinking about going to Burning Man this year. It sounds like I already missed the good years.

There are other festivals that are similar to Burning Man--out in the middle of nowhere and dedicated to radical free expression--but which are still quite unknown. I'm obviously not going to name any, but if you are the sort who is into that sort of thing, you probably have friends who are also into that sort of thing and who know some cool places to attend. Just ask around, enjoy yourself there, and live in the moment without thinking all the time about how you missed Burning Man at its prime.

Re:There's tickets?

[Distan]

I'm not going to correct all the errors in your post, but the key error is falling into the "we need permits" trap that the Burning Man organizers have set up for you.

Anybody can camp on BLM land. No permit required. In the early years, we all used the "spontaneous gathering" excuse (the same as rainbow gatherings still use today). If a group has no leader, there is nobody for the government to demand a permit from. If 20,000 people spontaneously all decide to individually camp at the same place at the same time, no permits are required because the gathering is not organizing.

By setting themselves up as the "leaders", Larry Harvey and company were able to exert further control over an event that was originally all about spontaneity and lack of control.

Re:There's tickets?

[Bigjeff5]

Real life is free; it's humans who add a cover charge.

That really depends on what you consider "free". In real life we evolved ways to free up people from the task of hunting/gathering for their own personal needs. Smaller and smaller groups of people were needed to supply food and materials for the entire community, which meant everybody else was free to do something to make their slice of the world better for the community. Thus, the modern world was born, and eventually grew into what it is today.

That things may have gotten out of hand a little bit does not suggest in any way that devolving culture by 10,000 years is going to make life better. In fact, if you ever listen to archaeologists or read books about what things were like back then, it really sucked. Life was hard, most people died early. Convenience was a piece of flint chipped to the shape of a spear, which meant you might actually get that buffalo this time and be able to feed your family for the month.

But in real life, apart from landlords and capitalists, food actually, literally, grows on trees. As does fuel for cooking and heating, and a wonderful building material called "wood". The sun shines for free; the photosynthesis that makes the oxygen you breathe is provided free of charge.

You've got an odd idea of what living in nature is like, have you ever actually tried it? I know people who have, and it's no walk in the park, as you seem to suggest. Why the hell do you think we developed away from it?

The fact is, all of you people who claim life would be better if we all just "got back to nature" are nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites. You could do it now, as you say everything is free, so all you have to do is leave, find some place secluded, and live. But nobody from Burning Man, or any of these other "freedom" parties ever does, because nobody wants to give up the luxuries the modern world provides. It's really nothing more than an excuse to have a raucous party.

Your idealism is faked.

Time to have the funeral

[Sir_Kurt]

I have followed Burning Man for many years. I have not attended myself, so maybe I am not qualified to comment, but in the best Slashdot tradition......

I have enjoyed hearing tales of Burning Man from my friends, and I find the images a videos facinating. However it is now clear that the organizers are interested in money, and by attempting to prevent others from capitalizing on the event, are positioning themselves to do the same.

Like the famous funeral held in Haight-Ashbury in 1967 to protest commercialization of the movement, Burning Man should recognize that their creative cycle has come to the point where the appropriate thing to do is bring it all home and walk away.

Burning Man, we knew ye well.

Kurt

Re:Time to have the funeral

[Shadow of Eternity]

Or alternatively everyone could just show up like normal but without buying a ticket. How do you stop THAT many people in the middle of a desert?

Re:Time to have the funeral

[Hal_Porter]

Burning Man corp is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Halliburton / Umbrella Corporation. They have a zombie army.

Make it clear in writing.

[GrantRobertson]

If you have a rule written in a way that allows for broad range of interpretation, yet you claim that you only enforce within a narrow range, then it is incumbent on you to rewrite the rule to only cover that narrow range. Otherwise that rule or law can be selectively enforced or more harshly enforced later.

Never trust a vague or partially enforced rule or law. They are quite often used against the citizenry or "community" later.

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.

Re:The real reason

[Hal_Porter]

It doesn't seem to be working too well

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&sa=1&q=Girls+of+Burning+Man&btnG=Search+images

Nor would you expect it too quite frankly.

How I read it

[AFresh1]

What I got from reading TFA was that Burning Man's lawer (who used to be head lawer at the EFF) has found this to be the most reasonable way to accomplish their goals. They looked at many other ways, but the choices they have are limited by the law. They continue to have discussions on how to not take too much away, but their lawers haven't figured it out yet.
More transparency would be nice. This blog post was a good start, although something formal describing what they are attempting and why they chose the option they did would be even better IMO.

Ah privacy ...

[Lemming Mark]

Seems like "Privacy" is the new go-to excuse for people who want to make unreasonable / unusual demands about photographs. We care about our attendees' privacy so much that we want to own pictures of them! Even if we didn't take them, we want to own the pictures of them - for their own protection! It's for your own good, move along now. I'm seeing a vague and ironic similarity with the shopping malls who CCTV your every move but claim personal photography is forbidden to protect their customers' privacy. Sure, we want to own pictures of everyone - but you can trust us! Somewhat unlike the shopping malls, I can believe that this is probably true of the Burning Man organisers - they may very well be trying to protect their attendees and have no ill intent.

They may very well have good intentions. They want to restrict your freedom of expression but only in good ways! As creative people, though, if they want to prevent abuse of imagery from their event maybe they ought to have thought twice before giving themselves easily-abusable powers. Maybe they believe themselves pure enough and hard enough to corrupt from an organisational standpoint that this isn't a risk. They may also have a point in believing that a strength of the event is being somewhat "disconnected" from the usual freedom to take and display photographs. Maybe this is sufficient to justify these restrictions.

At the end of the day though, their attendees are creative people and should, hopefully, be able to just Burning Man by their actions - what their policy is *and* how they choose to enforce it. I don't think they're being entirely reasonable but then I won't be going anyhow ;-)

Re:Ah privacy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been going to burningman a long time. While I disagree with the heavy-handed rule, but you also have to understand the community and how it developed. Back in the day where the BLM and the state did not force their regulations on Burningman (which is why the tickets, etc are now required), cameras were basically banned. You did not take pictures of other people or their stuff without their permission, and even that was rare. If you did it would be the equivalent of going into a biker bar and spitting on someone, i.e. it likely would not be pretty. Now that the event is fairly well known, about half of the population are first timers every year. Cameras are still not allowed without registration, and then you're still supposed to ask permission to take pictures of individuals. With nearly 50,000 people, this is obviously unenforceable and the population doesn't care as much as when it was a tighter community and it was enforceable.

The Burningman Organization is owned by 5 people who are credited with making the event what it is (some arguments about certain people who think they should control a piece). One of their key rules is no commerce. That means no advertising, no money, no selling. When you're at the event, everything is free and no one is trying to pitch their business to you. That really changes the way people interact. Think of how you'd react to someone at your door if you know they weren't trying to pitch their religion or a home security device, but probably giving you a free pizza or icecream on a hot day.

The burningman organizations role in enforcing this is two-fold. Protecting people who do not want pictures of them naked running through the desert publicly posted, and to keep people from using photographs of other people or their work used to make money. I don't like the wording they use, and I don't trust them 100% but I understand why the rule is in place and I trust them enough that I'd rather have it there than completely eliminated, but I'm also one of those people in favor of the "no cameras at Burningman in the first place" rule. So that is why the community has support for a crappy clause.

get a clue, slashdot

[Aurisor]

I know. EULAs are evil. But, this is not your garden-variety EULA. This is an EULA expressly designed so chicks can feel comfortable *running around topless.*

Can we just take a deep breath and stow the nerd-rage on this one?

Well hell, I'll name one

[Civil_Disobedient]

I'm obviously not going to name any

Why not? Don't want to "ruin" a good thing? Bah, says I! I'll name one, then. kaZantip is a somewhat hedonistic music festival held on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine. It's becoming a lot more commercial now (aren't they all?) but it's still a lot of fun if you're into the scene.

Also, it's filled with beautiful Ukrainian & Russian women that really enjoy their sunbathing.
Check out the photo gallery for more.

/. 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.

Transfer of Copyright

[bmo]

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

"(a) A 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."

SCO has been trying to get around this since 2003. The APA contains no such language that the Unix copyrights were ever transfered to SCO from Novell, much to SCO's dismay.

An EULA is not a contract. It is not a conveyance of copyright signed by the ticket holder/owner of the photographs. The BMO cannot own your photographs simply because you bought a ticket. The BMO (not me) is making nice, because I think someone told them they don't have a leg to stand on.

--
BMO

You Are Clueless

[Bob9113]

Wow, it amazes me how many comments start or end with "I don't go to Burning Man, but I know how that community should work." No, you don't. You don't have any idea what Burning Man is.

People keep saying it's a public event in a public space. No, it is not. It is a private event on leased land.

People keep saying these are their photographs in question. No, for the most part they are not. When you take a picture of a non-public figure on private property without consent where the subject matter is primarily that person, you do not have full exclusive rights to that photograph -- it is not "yours" in the legal or moral sense. When you take a picture where the subject is primarily someone else's work of art, particularly on private property, you do not have full exclusive rights to that photograph -- it is not "yours" in the legal or moral sense. When TIVO misappropriated the Linux kernel, where were all you screaming, "This is TIVO's software!" No, it wasn't.

People keep saying they've never been, but they think it sucks now and used to be better. WTF?!? What would you say to someone who said, "I've never read Slashdot, but it's just a bunch of teenagers talking about Miley Cyrus, so it sucks."

Nearly fifty thousand people will haul everything it takes to survive for a week in one of the most barren and hostile environments on the planet in two weeks. You don't know shit about why we do it, and what we have to attempt to make it work. The United States legal and cultural systems are completely fucked and make it incredibly hard for Burning Man to work. Yet we still try, and we get pretty goddamned close to what we are trying to achieve. So until you've been there, until you've been through a four hour dust storm, watched it destroy half your camp, and come out smiling because that dust storm means you are home (and your in-camp DJs didn't drop the beat the whole time) -- you don't know what you are talking about.