Burning Man Rethinks Its Legal Ownership of Your Photos

[The Straight Story]

Burning Man Rethinks Its Legal Ownership of Your Photos

With the annual Burning Man celebration of art and self-expression four months away, its organizers are taking a second look at their Draconian photo and video policies.

As it is now, the Burning Man Organization requires ticket purchasers to assign to the group the legal rights of photos and video taken at the festival.

That grants the festival the legal standing to order the removal of images taken at the Black Rock City when they appear online. Burning Man’s organizers say this is so they can control how the content is used commercially. They also require commercial users to let the organization review and approve any photos or video in advance.

The group says the policy has two “essential” reasons: “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.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/burningman/#ixzz0koVF3RPu

[MineralMan]

1. Those restrictions are pretty funny, really...

Given the nature of Burning Man.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. There are some practical reasons for the restrictions, though.

There have been instances of people trying to sell videos or photo sets billed as something like "Girls Gone Wild at Burning Man," and this policy has enabled that kind of thing to be shut down. Generally the restrictions only apply to commercial use of the photos, so it's not as if Burning Man is going to come and demand that anyone take down their Facebook photo albums from the event.