Welcome to Digital Rights: Debates in the Dust
[Rosalie Fay Barnes is a consultant for the Burning Man Project, facilitating the review of current media documentation and legal policies. She also consults with Black Rock Solar, helping to develop k-12 educational materials around climate change, environmental law, and disaster responses. Rosalie earned a double Masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education focusing on technology and cognitive development, where she worked extensively with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a digital rights think tank. To contact her and/or to inquire about blogging for the Digital Rights Series, email cameratales [Email address: cameratales #AT# burningman.com - replace #AT# with @ ].]
The Media Takes Aim at Larry Harvey, 1998
As you may have read in the blogosphere, the Burning Man Project has been undergoing a review of legal terms related to media documentation at the event (for media references, see the link list below). And while the goal of this effort is to determine the specific legal language on the ticket and Burning Man’s Terms and Conditions, it’s really about accurately reflecting the culture and community of the Burning Man event.
Should certain on-playa activities (such as the Critical Tits Ride, for instance) be camera-free events? Should photographers be able to make a profit by selling their Burning Man photographs? If so, how much? What framework best facilitates every participant’s right to enjoy “radical self-expression” on playa in this regard? These questions are just the start of the conversation, and it’s certainly true we’ve seen quite a diversity of impassioned opinions being expressed around this highly complex, nuanced issue. (And it’s no wonder: one needn’t extrapolate too far to see how these considerations have resonance in the real world, as the dynamics of digital media are evolving quickly with advancements in technology, cyberlaw, and socio-cultural norms.)
Browsing the Free Photography Zone Gallery, 2006
Over the coming months, we will continue to dialogue with photographers, theme camps, artists, interested participant groups, Creative Commons and the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) in order to improve our policies for the present and for the future. We will be talking (if not facilitating public discussions) about this process at the Burning Man event, at the Open Video Conference in New York City (Oct 1-2, 2010), and other locations to be announced.
At the same time, we want to engage in an ongoing public dialog — a Debate in the Dust, if you will — through this blog series, featuring a diversity of representative voices sharing their perspectives on various aspects of this multifaceted issue. It should be noted that the perspectives expressed in these posts don’t necessarily reflect those of the Burning Man Project. Instead, we intend this Digital Rights blog series to be an arena for a thoughtful discussion within our community and beyond. We invite all readers’ commentary, and request that comments be constructive in nature while adhering to our Comment Policy. Thank you for contributing to the ongoing evolution of the Burning Man project!
Wired Article: Burning Man Rethinks Its Legal Ownership of Your Photos
Burning Blog Post in Response to EFF Critiques, by Andie Grace
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Tell Burning Man To Respect Your Digital Rights
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Snatching Rights on the Playa
Boing Boing Commentary
Burning Blog Post by John Curley
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Tags: Digital Rights, media, photography
July 15th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Although at first i was against the Burning Man legalities involving photography and video recording, the more i’ve been hearing about it, the more i’ve been thinking about, and i’m completely fine with the rules how they are now. Consider this situation:
You were photographed at Burning Man without your consent, and you’re caught either topless, naked, in a suggestive pose, or otherwise. You have no knowledge that your photo had been taken. Then one day, while at the book store, you find a book of Burning Man photography, and there you are, in all your Burning Man glory, on the front cover. You’ll no doubt be p/o’d. You tell them to remove the book from the shelf. they refuse. You call the publishing company. 2 million copies are already on book shelves coast to coast. You decide to take legal action. Who are the courts gonna take more serious? a single person complaining about a single photo, or a multi national organization with the legal rights to every photo in the book. Even if you did manage to get half of the people photographed in the book, the courts will probably do nothing more than award little more than chicken scratch to shut you up. Or say the book hasn’t been printed yet. Which is gonna stop the presses faster? one person with a minor lawsuit, or a class action lawsuit with a cease and desist order?
Burning Man has a team of lawyers behind it that you never could. Shut up, hand over the rights to your photos to Burning Man, and enjoy the event. You wouldn’t want a picture of yourself grinding against a guy in a pink speedo, and neither would any of the people you took pictures of, spread coast to coast in a book, calendar, newspaper, or worldwide on a website. Leave it how it is, and move on to more important issues… like who used the last of the toilet paper in the porta-crappers?
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July 16th, 2010 at 5:06 am
I’ve been thinking about this for years; more intensely recently in light of debates. I had suggested “participation” is performance ergo copyrightable, but that’s not so. I continue to feel this is a solid grounds related to physical art that is photographed.
However, that led me to a new facet of my issue with photography: commodification of people. One of the 10 Principles is Decommodification. It’s not an easy concept to get your head around: if it were “no commerce”, it would be “Decommercialization”. But it’s about not making people into a commodity.
Consider all the ways we are treated as product. Corporate staffs don’t deal with individuals but interchangeable “human resources.” Your Facebook posts are treated less as sparks of creativity but more as data to be aggregated and distilled to ascertain target groups. How you earn money is treated as if that is what you _are_.
“Decommodification” turns all this upside-down, and once I was immersed in Burning Man for a while, I felt free and real in that unique way for the first time in my life. It has, however, made me much more sensitive to such things all the time. It’s still rather new and I have a hard time articulating it — and worse, most people I have met not only can’t begin to comprehend this alternative, things like targeted marketing make them feel wanted, special, and _more_ unique.
So let me divide up photography at Burning Man into several broad categories:
1. In UK English parlance, “vacation snaps”: people taking pictures of their friends and acquaintances as a record of their time at Burning Man — an innocent use of photography where the image is not the centerpiece, but simply the personal desire for a record.
2. Photographing the physical environment of the event: photographing the material art and such — which can be covered in terms of copyrighted artwork, yada yada.
3. Photographing the people of the event as part of the art: this values the person as an individual far more than the value of the image itself.
4. Photographing the people of the event as a product: this emphasizes the value of the image over the value of the individual.
To me, the entire debate revolves around the reason for photographing people. The black-and-white cases are easy: someone taking an artistic picture of two naked women dancing and sharing it with everyone as a record of Burning Man versus someone taking a high-resolution flash photograph of the same moment and selling it in a collection of pornography. The first case tries to capture the individuality and the moment, the second case commodifies it.
But even if one could find a way to make a rule as to what is too much commodification, there is no way to determine that when the photograph is taken. Worst of all, not even the photographer can ascertain it at that moment.
A bizarre way to think of it is that taking a photograph brings a piece of the future default world into Burning Man — just as walking around with a KFC bucket brings the past default world. Since it’s the future, it isn’t written or known yet, but it definitely drags default-world ideas into the event. On a personal level, I think the ideal reaction is, “don’t worry about it”. When immersed in Burning Man, one does not worry about the future default-world events (be it bills to be paid or New Year’s Eve plans), and I think I’ll try to treat photography the same way.
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July 17th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
the pictures i take are free for anyone to use. i don’t take critical tits pics anymore once was enough and insight the other. to each is own . If you can find some sucker who will pay for stupis shit go for it hugh hefner made gazillions the sheep are there and it aint a biggie squiggy
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July 19th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Zhust got it right with “don’t worry about it”. Unless you’re in the porn business, it’s not likely to affect what you can do what your pictures. Yes, the rules say that you can’t do anything with them, but as a practical matter you can do almost anything: post them on your facebook account, your web page, even publish a paper book (as if anyone can afford to do that anymore).
The annoying part is that this was not clear to me until after I spent many hours over several years parsing legalese and opinions on this issue. I figured there are so few rules at Burning Man, that I should really follow the rules they have, like no photography without permits. This unnecessarily kept me feeling uptight and like I was doing something vaguely distasteful whenever I took a photograph at Burning Man, even though I was fully in compliance with the spirit of the rules, and was in no jeopardy of punishment. These rules penalize people who pay attention to rules.
So keep whatever minimum amount of legalese is necessary, but add a statement above the legalese that says essentially “This only applies to pornographers, so spread your creativity far and wide, burners!”.
It would be really cool if Creative Commons could come up with a way to handle this in a transparent, standard way, ideally with decentralized community policing instead of centralized censorship, but if not then we’ve got to work with the default legal system.
I still don’t see why anyone is concerned about corporate use of images. Corporations have to play by very strict rules, getting model releases and permission to use recognizable pieces of art in any advertising. So they have zero legal ability to “rip off” creativity from the playa without permission. What if an artist who needs to make a living in the default world sells rights to their playa artwork to a corporation? I say live and let live. Getting good art into corporate advertising is a benefit to society; the idea of staying “pure” is for art school students who have parents to pay their bills, not people who create their own reality. Most advertising these days is photoshopped; corporations can today get around the burning man legalese by compositing a piece of art they want to showcase with stock photos of the non-burningman playa, and if need be composite in a few background models dressed in freaky outfits. It’ll look just like burningman and be legal. To my knowledge all the actual cases of corporate use of burningman artwork have been of this form: composited pictures not taken at Burning Man, so not covered by the ticket legalese.
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July 20th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Facts:
-We’re well underway in the digital age.
-Everyone acts differently when others are recording them (they let their hair down less).
-I have a right to privacy.
My opinion:
-People who rely on capturing their experience with cameras don’t act like humans in the moment.
-Burning Man has become more image conscious as photos have come to the playa in front of free expression.
-Someone holding a camera OFFERS NEXT TO NOTHING to the playa experience; I have no use for their retrospectives! I don’t want them in my face.
-It’s a violation of the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution.
Summary:
The more I think about it the more I realize there is nothing we can do to stop people from taking pictures; who wants to see people being ticketed for taking a snapshot? And yet we have to give privacy to critical tits and anyone who came to the playa hoping to feel freedom.
And I’ve seen tons of pervy men on the playa. The irksome creepy types who grimace and don’t contribute a good vibe but rather live off of it like alienated vampires.
For what burning man offers me, and indeed gives us all the relief we look forward too year after year, I think we should make it official policy to ban camera use. I don’t think it should be strongly enforced by the authorities, but it will empower someone who is having trouble with a stranger taking their photo.
My first year someone took a photo of me naked by the carcass wash. I still regret not speaking up and I hope that photo isn’t on the internet somewhere, god knows where.
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