Next thing you know, it’ll be illegal to open your eyes in a public place
Posted by: Rob Wall in culture of fear, life away from the computer, media messagesThomas Hawk, writer of the uber-great FlickrNation blog, puts it all in a nutshell - You’ve Got to Fight, For Your Right… to Take Photos of Your Own Kid at a Public Ice Skating Rink?
The sheer irony of a public skating rink disallowing photography in a public place while the push is on by governments of every level to cram cameras into every public place makes my bones ache. We are being asked to give up our rights to interact in public places based on a perceived threat that is undoubtedly far less than it is represented in the media. What’s next - we’ll need government approval to look and listen as we walk on a sidewalk?
OK - enough ranting. I’ll return back to my regular edu-geeking. Or maybe I’ll keep ranting. Yesterday, Stephen (announcing his official return from hiatus) said:
…we do not need great leaders. There will be no revolution, no rennaissance, until we change ourselves, until we ourselves become the embodiment of the caring and compassionate society we want to create. How hard that is! I return from my time away more aware than ever of how fallible, how ordinary, how human I am. Oh my yes, I have my apologies to give and my amends to make. Still, no matter how hard it is, we need to believe in ourselves, to believe we can make a difference, to believe we matter, to believe we can live freely. This, above all, must be our legacy.
Maybe what we need is a little more ranting, a little more critical dialogue, and a little less willingness to pass off the stuff we don’t like as someone else’s problem.
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May 9th, 2006 at 13:28
Rob,
When I read your post on this, I was totally in agreement, but then I clicked over to Thomas Hawk’s original post and changed my mind. From the sound of his piece, parents are allowed to take pictures of their own kids. They’re probably even allowed to take pictures of the kids their kids are playing with, but not of children (or adults) who they have no connection to.
No, I don’t think that there should be restriction on taking pictures of things like famous structures just because some indistiguishable people walk into the shot, but I don’t think that I want a stranger, not connected to the event I’m there for (such as a conference) taking my picture and using it for their own purposes. And when / if I actually become a parent I don’t want strangers taking pictures of my children. We should be able to enjoy public places without our images popping up on the flickr site of someone we don’t know.
Am I going to lose my membership in the open source club?
Heather
May 9th, 2006 at 15:53
No worries, Heather - your membership is for life!
The article that Hawk referred to, and I should have mentioned this in my post, is about a mother who is not being allowed to photograph or videotape her own child, due to an arbitrary application of a policy that is justified by the argument that the children are being protected from pedophiles. I think that this is a dubious claim at best, and as a premise it leads to unnecessary infringement on the rights of individuals to exist and participate in a public space.
May 10th, 2006 at 20:18
I liked your title Rob as it reminded me of something or read or heard (wish I knew where … and thus the irony in this comment) that we are nearing the technology when we can actually record everything we see through some sort of eye implants. Allright, technology aside, what does that do for copyright. intellectual property, etc. Once we have seen a movie … can we simply rewind our memories of it? I feel like the technology for this may just be supressed as much as the eco-friendly automobile. Hmmmmm.
May 11th, 2006 at 16:52
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