Going to Burning Man? Might want to read this.

[Set]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08/13 ... tal-Rights

[Terastas]

I thought this thing in the comments pretty well summed it up:

Media control makes sure that Black Rock City does not turn into a venue for the "girls gone wild" film crews. It's also part of the framework that allows BM Org to function on behalf of people when private footage ends up being used in such a manner.

The article calls it a legal sleight-of-hand, I call anti-exploitation insurance.

[RedEye]

Yeah, anti-exploitation insurance is one explanation, but there is another and simpler one.
Privacy Rights.
People go to Burning Man to express themselves and have fun. Maybe they don't want their naked picture being used as a "desktop" in the office where they're employed.
This way allows Burning Man to grant people some simple privacy outside of having to hide in their homes. I doubt that B.M. will do anything unless somebody complains to them about their image being used by people who don't have the granted right to do so. This allows them to at least make sure what happens at "the Man" stays there.
Maybe the people at slash/dot don't care for what they see as "censorship" and the "denial of freedom", but I wonder how they'd react to personal pictures of them being bandied about without their say so on the world wide web?
It strikes me that the writer (and maybe slash/dot) are simply dishing out sour grapes because someobody has told them "No".
Simple fact; if people respected each other, we wouldn't need three quarters of the laws we do have.
Simple fact II; We need those laws.
'nuff said.

[vrikasatma]

And being a 7-year Burning Man veteran, going back to before the anti-exploitation measures that Media put in place, I have to say — no complaints.

Confession time: I'm a big girl. I was a bigger girl back in '98 and '99. It took me a little nerve to go ahead and do like the Black Rock Romans did and lose the clothes. Once I did — good Goddess. It was like the whole world opened and brightened up. A little freedom to do something out of the ordinary, voluntarily taken, is incredibly good for the heart and soul (if not the body — I paid for my skycladness with alkali burnt and cracked soles).

Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, and I wouldn't want my fame to come from a video of rampant fatty-bashing that went viral and gave me a crowd of jeering mouth-breathers and stalkers. Media control of Burning Man, the requirement that all video cameras be registered with a name and contact information, and the requirement that anyone shooting video of any person to ask permission first, isn't censorship.

Burners are renowned for indulging in tricksterism, anarchy, rugged self-reliance, roughneck attitudes and technolibertarian cynicism, but so far I haven't heard of anyone complaining about the restrictions on video-taping. This is a nontroversy.

[Terastas]

It strikes me that the writer (and maybe slash/dot) are simply dishing out sour grapes because someobody has told them "No".

Yeah, the thought did occur to me after my initial post. And I'm willing to bet that slash/dot would be far from the first person to ever have a wet dream about selling an uncensored Burning Man DVD. The article tries to twist it to imply that all material of any medium is automatically owned by B.M., but the actual written statement only refers to photography and video. So yeah, the article is definitely a temper tantrum.

Considering what can actually happen at B.M., I'd actually say their restrictions are considerably few. The media restrictions at the average furry convention are going to be tighter than that.

[RedEye]

Considering that it's possible to make a decent Cam/recorder/battery system out of over the counter parts...
that could fit in a breath-spray bottle (like the little-bitty Listerine pump sprayers) with room left over,

I'd say it was a necessity.

Mainstream publishers can be sued.
Some Jirkoff who vids Burning Man and then sends it out as a viral usually can't even be traced let alone prosecuted.
Making Burning Man visual items a controllable commodity only makes sense.
And, since Burning Man is "of interest to the public at large", the people who participate in the festival become legally "Notorious" and have a lot fewer rights to public privacy than the average joe or jane (while participating).
So, yeah: those restrictions are right on.