On Wednesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a criticism of Burning Man’s ongoing efforts to protect the rights of our participants, and our efforts to forestall the creep of commercialism into the foundations of our culture.

Image by brillig, 2008

Burning Man deeply respects the efforts of the EFF, and frankly, would ourselves like to embrace their opinion – but we don’t think the issue is as simple as Corynne McSherry would have you believe. Just like the EFF, we honestly seek to think outside old paradigms and boxes of “creative property” in the digital age, but we view Black Rock City through a more complicated lens, and our view of issues facing creative ownership is not rendered in extremes of black and white. To us, the rights of the individual participant to privacy while in Black Rock City in this unique environment for free expression — and our philosophical desire to maintain it out of reach of those who would exploit that expression just to sell cars or soft drinks — happens to come first.

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.
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In a manner quite fitting to our year of Evolution, the Burning Blog team is happy to share some very exciting news, just in time for the hot summer planning season for Burners everywhere (100 days today – yep, check your calendar, it’s true!). The Burning Blog is evolving again – this time, with a chorus of new voices we hope you’ll enjoy more than ever.

image by Ron Halbert

The Burning Blog has its roots in 2001 when Danger Ranger’s Silver Seed Tour , and Feeding Tofu To Cowboys (reports from the DPW fray during setup) showed the world our first crack at this thing called “blogging” on Burningman.com. Since then, we’ve continued to nurture the blog concept and developed this space — a blogger was part of the setup crew for many years, and in 2007, we jumped in with both feet, creating four different content areas under one blog “roof” – still covering “Building Black Rock City”, but also documenting the Environmental efforts of the Green Man theme, sharing stories from “Black Rock City Yearround”, and reporting on the extensive activity around the Burning Man network as covered by our roving staff member, Bex, in the Regionals Blog. In 2008, talented writer/photographer John Curley told the story of Building BRC in glorious photos and words; that year the blog received more hits and comments than any year to date. (We still like to go back and look at that one.)

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Red Eye Diner, 2008; image by Nightshade

If you dropped off your Burning Man recycling at one of the free 24-hour drop off centers in Reno-Sparks, perhaps you’re wondering what happened to your cans and bottles? Here is a summary of the free drive-thru recycling project operated by Save Mart in the Reno~Sparks area for burners during and following the week of Burning Man.

The total amount of recyclable materials dropped off in ‘08 was about three times larger than in 2007.

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We’re thrilled (THRILLED, we tell ya!) that so many Burning Blog readers have taken the time to stop by and leave their thoughts on our posts so far, and we definitely want to encourage you to keep doing it. It’s been a great launch and we hope you’re enjoying it! At the same time, now that we have a little time under our blogging belts together, we wanted to focus on the Burning Blog Comments pages for a moment and share a few thoughts about how they are managed.

This is your brain on comments. "Warning" by Terry Pratt; photo by noise

First, if you haven’t yet, please read our Burning Blog Comments Policy. We run a relatively tight ship here, with some pretty firm standards for maintaining a civil and on-topic discussion, reserving the more free-form open conversation for the ePlaya. We really do want every reader to understand the Comment Policy and how we will uphold it, so we would encourage you to take a moment to look at it today.

We also wanted to point out a few more comments-related items: Read more »

On April 19, 2008, Burning Man’s Communications Manager, Andie Grace, received the email below from Mark Hinkley, a Burning Man acquaintance. Mark is the former Regional Contact for San Diego; he also organized both the Xara theme camp at Burning Man, and then later, in 2003, a Southern California art/music/creativity and mythology festival called Xara Dulzara, which grew from 200 people to 1100 in 2006.

In the years since, Mark has remained on the Regional Contacts discussion list as an emeritus member, and has kept in touch with Andie Grace about his latest projects. From time to time, he’d send an email to fill us in on his latest ideas about Burning Man or Xara. This April 19 email was titled “A spring update from Mark.”

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