In California, crowshots are regulated under the adult film industry laws. Very strict consent requirements.
crowshots are regulated
I thought that only applied to crow necrophilia.
it's a situation in which expectations of privacy collide with First Amendment rights to shoot photos in public places without permission
No it's not. The entire point of doing this as a street fair is to make it as public as possible. Well then you lose a lot of control over what you can dictate as to others behavior. Go rent a warehouse.
Separately, why anyone would want any event on the streets of San Fran anymore is puzzling. It's a sea of tents and syringes and human feces.
5: Of all the birds, cranes treasure their privacy the most.
How do you find a warehouse with feces?
Haven't been to SF in awhile, but I think gswift might be a bit too bleak in his description in 4.last. (I love San Francisco. I've only been twice, and I think it might be the best place I've ever been.)
But gswift is dead-on about the photo issue. The poster makes an argument that could easily, with equal validity, be turned against the street fair folks themselves: "I am offended by various types of public display; I am in a public place being subjected to this without my consent. You should seek my consent before you forcibly subject me to this."
The proper response to both arguments is: Your elected representatives have structured the law to permit this activity and have provided the only kind of consent that can possibly be meaningful in this situation.
Anyway, I think equating photographing someone on a public street with touching them is wrong and counterproductive.
Yes. It clearly equates to stealing their soul via sympathetic magic. Totally different set of problems.
10.1: I don't go often but I've still have some cousins out there. It's markedly worse in the last ten years.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html
To OP.last, given that the event is BDSM-centered, I'm a little dubious about hand-waving away the connection to sexual assault. The PSA uses sexual assault phrasing in a highly sexualized context, which is why I think it's weasely to say:
When asked whether his non-profit organization was equating photography without consent with sexual assault, Finger replied: "No, we are not trying to convey that message. Again, this is a matter of respect."Own it or argue otherwise, but don't just act like you weren't trying to make a connection, and that the connection is purely in the minds of others.
Actually, looking at the poster again, it says "Ask first before photographing or touching someone." Um, that's directly equating assault (laying your hands on someone without consent) and taking pictures. The touching part of the poster is referring to illegal behavior, while the photographing part refers to something legal that (some) people wish wouldn't happen.
Well, that very last bit - "while the photographing part refers to something legal that (some) people wish wouldn't happen" - is what I'm unsure of. Isn't it illegal in some places to post photos of people without their consent? I swear I remember hearing that it's a PITA to shoot video on the streets of LA because of the chasing-people-down-with-consent-forms thing.
What I was going to say before I reread the poster was that the same message could be conveyed without using sexual assault language by actually using the word "respect" that the organizers fall back on when confronted about their poster. Maybe that's been done before, and it doesn't work. Maybe, in the Instagram era, asking people not to take pictures of anything is fruitless.
Like I say, I really don't know about the underlying issue. But I don't think Finger is being straight with his interlocutor.
Actually, looking at the poster again, it says "Ask first before photographing or touching someone." Um, that's directly equating assault (laying your hands on someone without consent) and taking pictures.
I didn't read this as equating. I read it as two separate but related instructions, a la "Please don't litter and don't remove any artifacts you may find in the park."
But I don't think Finger is being straight with his interlocutor.
With a name like that, he's going to be touchy.
I personally am very happy about people taking photos of me without permission. Even when I'm not in my leather.
15: Well, the article quotes a photojournalist who freelances for the Chronicle; I'm assuming he knows what he's talking about when he says, "Most older photographers know our rights."
ISTM likely that the consent form thing you're remembering is about film, not still. I don't have a coherent theory of why the rules would be different*, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
*although it could certainly be rooted in the pre-TV distinction between stills, which are potentially part of the press, and motion, which is probably entertainment.
12: I really dislike the structure of my own argument in 10. First, it's an analogy and therefore inherently dubious. Second, it reeks of a kind of false equivalence that should properly arouse suspicion.
And MC, sarcastically, raises an objection to my point that I think it entirely legit: Photography really does have a bit of sorcery in it. I don't find the objections of the (apocryphal?) primitives to be ridiculous.
I wanted to make a Eurocentrism joke but couldn't make it happen.
ISTM likely that the consent form thing you're remembering is about film, not still. I don't have a coherent theory of why the rules would be different*, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
If it's not illegal, then I'm not defending the PSA anymore. Then the onus isn't on the photographers, and so the organizers should be much friendlier about it because they're asking a favor out of goodwill.
17:I didn't read this as equating.
Let's reproduce the poster here so we can have it in front of us:
GEAR IS NOT CONSENT
NUDITY IS NOT CONSENT
ASK FIRST BEFORE
PHOTOGRAPHING OR
TOUCHING SOMEONE.
NO MEANS NO.
This is unambiguously equating photography with unwanted physical contact. It says they both require consent, and they require consent for the same reason: No means no. (A phrase that, itself, is tied inextricably to the concept of sexual assault.)
And hey, maybe there is some validity in this, as I concede in 21.last.
But the message is clear and it doesn't speak well of the executive director that he isn't willing to own up to it.
If it's not illegal, then I'm not defending the PSA anymore.
The next question is: Should it be illegal? I say that it should not.
24: Rhetorically, maybe, but I'm with 17. You need a license to own a dog, you need a license to export uranium enrichment centrifuges. Clearly not equivalent crimes though.
It's the same license in Pennsylvania.
And you make rockets for fun, right? Better hope NSA isn't listening.
I do prefer it if people ask permission before taking pictures of my dog in his bondage gear.
30: You're thinking of togolosh. My rockets are for serious.
28: That's funny. 19 surprised me, and made me wonder if I had gotten your personality very wrong.
I'm with anyone taking the position that if you're standing in a public place, it's all right for anyone to take a picture of you.
There is a general weirdness about current privacy discourse -- people keep on talking about 'privacy' as if it's self-evidently applicable to things they're doing in public places. Sometimes I can see reasons for wanting new legal controls over information that's collectible from public behavior -- like, if you buy something from a store, they know you bought it, and you wouldn't historically have had a privacy right to keep them from telling anyone else what you bought unless you had an agreement with them that they wouldn't. But new regulations on what businesses can do with customer information are often going to be a good thing. They're just establishing new rights rather than enforcing old ones.
ISTM likely that the consent form thing you're remembering is about film, not still. I don't have a coherent theory of why the rules would be different*, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Others around here (unlike me) will actually know what they're talking about here but I believe that w/r/t consent forms, the distinction isn't about film vs. still, it's about commercial use: you generally have a "right to publicity", i.e. a right to control the commercial use of your likeness. So if I end up in your movie (or, in the still image case, if I end up in your print ad) and you didn't get my consent, I may be able to sue you for unauthorized commercial exploitation of my likeness. But the filming/photographing people in public w/o their consent is itself generally not unlawful.
35: But what if the photo winds up in a newspaper that is sold for profit?
Anyway, I very much doubt that the primary beneficiary of a general expectation that photographs in public places require consent will be your more timid bondage enthusiasts.
By equating physical assault with photography, the poster also encourages a physical response. After all, if someone intrudes on my bodily autonomy without my consent, I'm certainly within my rights to slap their hand, or their camera, away.
This is offhand, but I think that the 'right to publicity' doesn't cover news photography. If it's newsworthy (which basically just means that it's being published as editorial content rather than an ad), 'right to publicity' isn't an issue. But don't rely on me, I don't do this for a living and didn't look it up.
36: Again, I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I imagine the First Amendment is a constraint on the scope of publicity rights that would cover that situation. Or the publicity right itself, which will vary from state to state, won't extend to use by the press in the first place.
Think about paparazzi. If annoying celebrities by taking pictures of them were illegal, all those photographers would be under arrest (or being sued into oblivion) all the time. But they're taking photos for editorial use, so it's okay so long as they don't break any other laws.
I've seen signs in Manhattan to the effect of: By walking in this space in this period of time, you are consenting to being filmed. My assumption is that these signs don't involve documentaries, and I feel quite certain that LB and potchkeh are right about the distinction between journalism and other uses of photography. But I wonder how that's written into the law.
34: It used to be that doing things in a public space (in a city, anyway) was anonymous and unrecorded. Today, a photograph creates a permanent record, controlled by a private actor, which can be attached directly to you, also by private actors. To my mind, that means public photography needs to be regulated. As in your customer-data example, the technology creates a need for new rights.
According to Wikipedia, publicity rights are state by state, and do only cover commercial usage (and are far from absolute -- it looks to me like if you're Joe Random and you're in the background of a crowd scene, even in footage used in an ad, you don't have much in the way of rights): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_States
I think 'consent to being filmed' like the sign political football is talking about is probably more about keeping people from making a fuss and getting upset than about getting consent that's really legally necessary.
It used to be that doing things in a public space (in a city, anyway) was anonymous and unrecorded.
The parenthetical there is something I find very interesting. That is, the conception of 'privacy' that a lot of people are working with is that idea of public anonymity, but that's historically unusual. I noticed this in the Peace Corps, living in a very small, very tightly networked, very gossipy country -- I would get fresh gossip about acquaintances on the other side of the country all the time: anything you did in public would be noted and repeated. And that's normal in a world-historical sense, but weird in a late-20th/early-21st century American sense (at least for the part of the country that didn't live in a gossipy small town).
That kind of anonymity may be valuable enough to protect, but it's not a long-standing human universal.
Let me tell you about growing up in a small town.
45: All true. I think though that modern urban anonymity is a major advance in human freedom, and well worth preserving. I think all of us here are at least wary of social media lynch mobs and the unearthing of long-past actions; are those things essentially different from the pre-modern closed-community experience? (Not a rhetorical question.)
43: Photography -- even on a mass scale -- has been around for quite awhile now, and there has been plenty of time for the law to develop.
48:
1. The law isn't known for it's super-duper up-to-the-minuteness.
2. Automated face recognition hasn't been around long at all; storage cheap enough to hold images indefinitely not much longer.
re: 43
Photography of people in public places has been a thing for about 150 years.*
Henri-Cartier Bresson, Brassai, et al became famous for doing it.
* earliest instance:
https://mashable.com/2014/11/05/first-photograph-of-a-human/?europe=true#AwNl8OYDZgqU
so, 180 years.
_2. Automated face recognition hasn't been around long at all; storage cheap enough to hold images indefinitely not much longer._
And these two things do make a huge difference.
I will note that even living in 'the greatest city in the world', I do occasionally unexpectedly run into friends in public places. I was on a date a couple of months ago walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, and a jogger ran up to me and hugged me -- a woman I used to work with who I hadn't seen for a couple of years. If I'd been relying on anonymity rather than just sort of casually expecting to be anonymous, I would have been dismayed.
(As it was, I was still dismayed, but only because she was super sweaty. Impulsively affectionate joggers -- take a moment to consider!)
I return to my "get an eruv!" solution.
I can hardly go anywhere without seeing people I know. I had to throw away all my shirts with gravy stains because I'm always seen by somebody. Yesterday, I went to get a 🌯 at a Chipotle I'd never been to and two people I knew were there.
(By which I basically mean make it a private event if you don't want photos.)
Why do you need to go to a physical place to buy emojis?
They don't sell the good ones online.
You can see where the street fair people are coming from, but it's part of a much larger conversation. What used to be a freak-friendly local-ish celebration has become something of a tourist spectacle. But that's part of a larger transformation in SF, and trying to apply private rules to public spaces can't be the answer.
And maybe the FSF has changed since I last wandered through it ten or so years ago, but it's mostly hairy middle-aged dudes. Go spectate elsewhere, spectators.
Won't somebody think of the hairy middle aged dudes?
I think that's a job for the twinks.
San Francisco is starting to sound like the weirdest place in the world.
According to people outside the Bay Area: nobody can get within a mile of San Francisco without making $200,000 plus stock options
According to people in the Bay Area: San Francisco consists of vagrants throwing feces and needles at each other and maybe a few other people
And at the same time they still do all the weird things from when it was a city of weird artsy gay people. Do the weird artsy gay people come in from hundreds of miles around for this fair now?
Did everyone read Carpenter v. US when it came out? If not, do it now.
I've told the story here before about emerging nekkid in a public place from a very cold mountain stream, to find three young women, one of whom I knew but hadn't seen in a few years, looking at me. Evident mirth. I'm not sorry that this took place before the video-everything era.
61: I bet most people with stock options are including the cost of new shoes in their estimates.
Hello!
I have some experience with being camera-stalked at Pride - not because I am running around in BDSM gear (probably running around in BDSM gear would render me basically invisible, because people would be so desperate to look away and forget what they'd seen) but because I'm gender non-conforming. I've had people take pictures of me like I'm a zoo animal. I've had total strangers - straight gawkers - ask to take pictures by saying "I've never seen someone who looks like you". It's gross, and I didn't go to Pride this year.
Now, I'm not dressing funny or performing, I'm not in the parade, I don't have dyed hair, my clothes are very ordinary clothes you can buy at the mall - I'm just gender-indeterminate-looking in a place which attracts a lot of straight gawkers/stalkers.
And yeah, it's not illegal to take photos at Pride, I'm not being sexually assaulted....but holy crap, I wish Pride were able to do some PSAs like "dear straight people, don't treat us like an exhibit, you can probably assume that random Pride attendees don't want to be photographed, don't be an asshole".
Seriously, I don't think I look that weird or eye-catching - this is totally an artifact of being in a provincial city at an event which attracts a lot of people from the hinterlands. But it is really crummy to turn around and realize that there's a group of straight randos with their phones out because I look so weird to them.
So anyway, my feeling about this PSA is that:
1. It's not an attempt to remove people's "right" to take creepshots - which is basically what this is about. No one is going to call the cops or throw you out. It's just an attempt to establish a norm around not being gross and creepy and ruining people's experience of the event.
2. If something really newsworthy - say the mayor shoots a participant in cold blood, or a Soviet spy parachutes into the event, or someone introduces, like, an entirely new perversion - no one will be upset that you photographed it. People aren't getting mad because some photographer took a picture of the Vegans For Flogging With Vinyl booth; they're getting mad because some photographer is, like, trying to take close-ups of random attendees' bits.
3. Such a PSA makes total sense to me as a queer person who frequents queer spaces, because creepy people feel comfortable being creepy and intrusive to queer people in ways that they don't with straight people.
4. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Police officers have often made a similar argument: "You cant video us in public bc the bad guys will know who we are."
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/photographers-rights/filming-and-photographing-police
Yes, that is what I was thinking of in 37.
My comments were not meant as a disagreement with 65. I agree with almost all of what Frowner said.
But are you frowning while you do so?
Or of people demanding no pictures at white supremacist marches.
To gswift: Oh please, dude. There's an N-by-M block area of downtown, that's as you describe. It's also the area into which all the homeless people appear to be herded by the police. Two thoughts:
(1) these people are our fellow citizens. many are mentally ill. They're our fellow citizens.
(2) the city (and from what I've read, many West Coast cities) don't spend nearly enough on housing these people safely. Certainly not compared to East Coast cities. And for a place as rich as the Bay Area, that's a crime.
But I return again to: dude, if it was such a cesspool of filth, why would everybody and his kid sister wanna move here? Why would rents be so high? Why would they move to SF (and suffer the commute -- painful even on the "luxury" tech buses) instead of the Valley (where most of the jobs still are)? Do you not believe in the law of suppy & demand?
Cryptic ned: Maybe the Bay Area residents to whom you refer are the rich ones? The new arrivals? B/c the rest of us still find this to be Paradise. And we just wish fewer people thought that, so that the rents might come down.
65: All of this is reasonable -- I didn't mean to suggest that it wasn't rude to obtrusively take pictures of strangers.
why would everybody and his kid sister wanna move here?
It's not everybody, just people like you. Less than 40 percent of the city was even born in CA. There's been a huge influx of domestic and foreign wealthy people and at the same time the city has the highest per capita number of homeless of any major American city. If that's your paradise you're welcome to it.
Here in Missoula, the fact that less than 40% of the population was born in California is considered a plus.
61.4: Many members of the local LGBTQ+ community make the 3 hour drive to participate in the parade and associated festivities. So a qualified yes.
I didn't find this odd because Mr. Robot and I spend a lot of time at Comic Cons where there is a very strong norm that you ask people before you take pictures (and there is a lot of picture taking). That's not the same thing as saying that unwanted pictures are assault, but nonetheless the norm is quite strong, and I feel like it would be seen as super creepy to violate it.
They're filming a movie in the neighborhood where I'm currently staying. Weirdly(?), it's not a closed set, so I keep finding myself wandering through it. So far I don't think I've been in any camera shots, but the other day the caterer mistook me for a crew member and offered me some bottled water. So basically, in another life, I'm a very well-hydrated gaffer.
77: I think a Con might be like an eruv. On the other hand, I'm in an eruv eating a cheeseburger right now.
I guess my point is that an eruv lets you get around your own rules, but it doesn't do anything for getting outsiders to follow you rules.
A few weeks ago I decided to circumambulate the eruv. Not a smart thing to do in July. Massive respect to the people who verify it each week. (I assume mostly by car, but not all of the boundary follows roads.)
And an eruv is like a Con in that people dress in non-standard clothing to express tribal membership.
81: You could suggest they get one of these.
Weirdly(?), it's not a closed set,
This is the same thing I've been saying about this math problem.
Strikes me that the _point_ of Pride type events is to be as public as possible about personal choices / orientations, thereby building acceptance and support. This likely means being photographed; an extension of being seen.
That said, I'm sure some people are dicks in the way they take photos. Courtesy considerations apply.
World Naked Bike Rides are similar. Tend to provoke tourists into gawping. Not that I've been on one. Yet.
You can't just get on a tourist without asking.
People aren't getting mad because some photographer took a picture of the Vegans For Flogging With Vinyl booth; they're getting mad because some photographer is, like, trying to take close-ups of random attendees' bits.
Seconding J that this correlates pretty well with geek cons. If someone's performing, or in a cosplay contest or a furry parade, sure, take pictures. But if somebody's just wandering around doing their thing in costume, ask first, don't be a creep. (I suppose crowd shots are a bit of a gray zone. Still: respect should be what you start with.)
the city has the highest per capita number of homeless of any major American city.
I did some lazy googling, and to my surprise this might not be true. It looks like the homeless populations in DC and Boston are higher per capita, yet alone NYC(!), Honolulu and Springfield MA (???). DC's probably the best comparison, since its municipal boundaries are similar to SF's relative to the rest of their metros. DC does a better job of hiding its homeless, although I can't assume that correlates with care.
A homeless guy kicked my dad when we were in DC.
And for that to have happened, considering how rare Nebraskans are in DC, homeless people must be ubiquitous there.
Or particularly annoying to local homeless folks.
My dad wondered if he wasn't a former colleague.
I would be unsurprised if homeless folk bothered homeless folk more than anyone else did.
Dad thought the guy looked like a disbarred lawyer he once knew.
I mean, I bet your dad destroyed his life and condemned him to homeless penury for a reason.
My dad has a story about being out on a work lunch with clients in the mid-eighties, everyone in their suits and power ties and whatever, and walking past a doorway in midtown to be greeted with "Howie? Howie [Breath]! How ya doin'!" by a shoeless guy slumped against the wall. It was a guy he'd known as a teenager from his old neighborhood, and he had a desperately embarrassing little social conversation ("Not so bad, Billy. How are things with you?" "Oh, you know me Howie, I can't complain.") with the clients waiting to continue walking to the expensive midtown restaurant where they were having lunch.
The following people have revealed or confirmed themselves to be idiots:
- gswift (the technical legality of taking photos of people on a street isn't the same as its not making you an asshole, especially if someone has specifically asked you not to or requested that you ask before taking photos; even if it's true that the point of the fair is to be "as public as possible", that can coherently mean: during and only during the temporal and physical limits of the fair itself, not for a photographer's private delectation later);
- jroth (asking "ask before doing X or Y" doesn't mean you think X and Y are the same kind of thing, you self-righteous prig);
- politicalfootball (same as jroth; "you need consent to do X or Y and if someone says no to either, don't do the one(s) said no to" is obviously not equating X and Y except in this one respect, that you should get consent and listen to the response, which seems ... true? Like I think it's also true that you should ask before taking food off of someone's plate and if they say no, you shouldn't do it--holy shit did I just say that sampling someone else's food is physical assault?!?!?!)
- lizardbreath (utterly characteristic confusion of legal norms with all other norms)
Along with anyone else whose position is basically "asking me not to do something doesn't make it illegal". Yeah. But it might dissuade you, or at least carry some weight toward dissuading you, from doing something, because you might not be a dick. Hard to say! There are plenty of people who attend the FSF who don't particularly want their attendance, or their faces in attendance, publicized, and it seems neither crazy nor extreme (in the manner of equating photography with assault, which, I mean, even a specious argument is supposed to have superficial plausibility, you dolts) to publicize that fact and ask people to be considerate. Even if being inconsiderate is legal!
Like I think it's also true that you should ask before taking food off of someone's plate and if they say no, you shouldn't do it--holy shit did I just say that sampling someone else's food is physical assault?!?!?!
Better said than I could have! (I remember thinking this conflation was bait for you...)
There are probably more, and more categories, of you who have revealed or confirmed etc. but I didn't read the thread all that closely because it's so bad, people. So, so bad. The smugness is a choking fog.
A comment:
people keep on talking about 'privacy' as if it's self-evidently applicable to things they're doing in public places
It's almost as if in the actually existing world, people expect a quantum of privacy even when they're on, say, a public sidewalk, because, after all, "privacy" is not first and foremost, let alone only, a legal concept. It's pretty weird that the law's view of this is: "listen, actually, almost everyone is unreasonable on this point." (It's not impossible for almost everyone to be unreasonable. But it calls for some reflection if that's your verdict (so to speak).) Of course in the ever-changing world in which we're living in, it constantly becomes possible to gather more and more information about what's happening in public (and, for that matter, in private). One response to that is: so, in view of this fact, it's less and less reasonable to think that you'll have any privacy. Another is: therefore, those information-gathering techniques and technologies should be curtailed in view of the preëxisting reasonable expectation of (some quantum of!) privacy. (According to this for instance still and silent images are ok but in some states you can't record the spoken content of a conversation without permission even in public; that's something I hadn't heard of before. So it's not just a free-for-all.)
The smugness is a choking fog.
How ironic.
I'm out after this, but remember how everyone thought it was a real dick move, worthy of censure, when some wingnut published Fontana Labs' university affiliation or whatever it precisely was? It wasn't illegal--this is the public internet--but as I recall pretty much everyone thought that was a bad thing to have done. And later on someone alluded to the Goneril's real name, in what seemed like a weird sort of power play, just letting us know, I guess, that he could publicize it? And the sort of group agreement that formerly held very strongly, when she was in rehab, not to even hint at Alameida's identity? We would probably have taken it pretty amiss if someone had gone around publicizing it. But it wouldn't have been illegal. Such a person would have been within their rights, and one can easily imagine them mounting the argument that after all although Al had asked for privacy she had no real right to or expectation of it.
peep: thank you for your more than usually thoughtful contribution.
102.2: Thanks! For those of you that didn't get it -- it's ironic because this blog is called "Unfogged".
Shit. I thought I was on Crooked Timber.
Frowner and nosflow are right. Legality is not the point.
I think what LizardBreath says in 34 is instructive. We've established new privacy laws around consumer information because changes in technology and society have made us aware of the need for new laws. But where new laws are not feasible for legal or practical reasons, we have to depend on norms, social mores, and shaming people into not being assholes. Sure, FSF is a public event. It used to be that a few people would have cameras, they'd take a handful of fuzzy photos of the crowd which no one would see but them, their friends, and the developer at One Hour Photo. Now literally every single person has a high-quality camera in their pocket, and every photo is freely, immediately, and infinitely reproducible and distributable. Not just by e-mail and facebook, but places like reddit, which is like 50% dedicated to mocking, commenting on and deliberately misinterpreting photos and videos of internet strangers. Sure, the FSF has no cognizable legal claim against photographers. But what kind of asshole would dispute that they nonetheless have grounds for wanting to protect the privacy of their participants?
If we continue on our current merry path toward panopticon surveillance, maybe we come out the other end with a standard like "cameras are all programmed to fuzz human images, unless they wear a special beacon". Like the privacy fog in Glasshouse.
I don't want anything to be like anything in Glassshouse.
106: You're not thinking big enough. What we really need to develop are AI camera's that can make their own judgments about whether a photograph should be edited for content or not.
What we really need are AIs capable of traveling backward through time and eliminating sufficient misuses of apostrophes to prevent the affliction from ever having spread.
Such an AI would/will/has at some point eliminate yours truly, as I too have been infected. I will die gladly.
Yay nosflow, well said. BTW better half went to & super enjoyed the west end pelleas, will be going to the other 2 productions, have you been, are you going???
109: And an AI to go back and kill Sarah Connor while we're at it.
110: The first martyr for the cause of proper apostrophe usage. Would it be appropriate to have a giant apostrophe on your tomb?
lizardbreath (utterly characteristic confusion of legal norms with all other norms)
I take exception to this. (Unsurprisingly. I mean, maybe that confusion is characteristic, but I meant to do something more by my statements in this thread.)
I brought up legalities because people, here, and in general, are confused about them -- there's a fairly common belief that there's a legal bar on photographing someone without their consent, and this is untrue.
But my fundamental point (not that I'd said it in these words yet) is that there is a distinction between public and private, and expecting privacy in relation to public acts is kind of incoherent. The clothes (lack of clothes, bondage gear) one wears on a public street are a matter open for public attention, and while there are reasons one might wish not to have ones public acts recorded and further publicized, thinking about that as a question of whether one's privacy interests have been intruded upon seems like the wrong way to phrase it.
People who want to wander around nude doing weird shit in front of a select audience of their friends and acquaintances, with no potential for later repercussions, join the Bohemian Grove, and do that sort of thing in a private space. People who dress up for the Folsom Street Fair, are dressing up to go out in public. That's not a reason for people to be jerks to them, but it is unreasonable to expect everyone who interacts with them in public to lose the right members of the public normally have to see and learn and record information and perceptions about what occurs in public space.
expecting privacy in relation to public acts is kind of incoherent
Not sure I agree, because. Privacy versus publicity is not a binary. The ability to walk down a public highway without being hassled is not 100% guaranteed for anyone, but it is valued where it exists, and it sure seems to get a lot more likely the whiter, maler, and normier one is. And our existing body of privacy laws and expectations have grown up out that social norm, that works better for the privileged than for others. So I see the festival's attempt to promote new norms as essentially an attempt to extend this comfort-in-public privilege more broadly. Call it something other than privacy if you want, but it's a palpable Thing.
102: And this seems to me to be getting broad issues of privacy muddled with the concept of secret-keeping. All of those pseudonym issues you brought up, are about people attempting to keep information about their identities secret except from a select group of people they trust. And in each of those cases, they did it kind of badly -- the information about who they really are isn't hard to unearth, and isn't closely held among a tight group of trusted people.
I obviously can't judge anyone for this, I'm in precisely the same boat in terms of being very weakly pseudonymous. But the idea of keeping a secret is that you don't share information because of the risk that someone will do you (or someone else) harm with it. If you've acted in a way that someone can, without doing anything wrong, learn that information (as I have with respect to my own identity), while it would still be wrong for anyone to do you harm with the information, mostly what's happened is that you've been bad at keeping the secret.
The ability to walk down a public highway without being hassled is not 100% guaranteed for anyone, but it is valued where it exists, and it sure seems to get a lot more likely the whiter, maler, and normier one is. And our existing body of privacy laws and expectations have grown up out that social norm, that works better for the privileged than for others.
Without offence, can I say that this still seems incoherent to me? Or at least your second sentence seems flatly untrue. I don't think anything about privacy norms and expectations has grown out of the norm that one should be able to be present in public without being hassled.
In fact, I think there are people who should be hassled for being present in public -- e.g., people wearing Nazi paraphernalia -- and it would be wrong for them to appeal to a 'privacy' norm as an argument why they shouldn't be. The difference between someone dressed up as a Nazi at a white supremacist rally and someone dressed in bondage gear at the FSF isn't that one is entitled to an expectation of privacy and the other isn't. They're both doing public things in public. The difference is that the Nazi is doing something bad and wrong, and the guy in bondage gear isn't.
I think lb & others are missing issues i care about quite a lot that are being raised by frowner & minivet but do not have sufficient oomph re this place at mo to phone type so eh will only say this actually wasn't the fsf so far as i can tell (fsf is in September), i saw sign when out and about that weekend & it seemed in situ like a perfectly reasonable proposal, history of fsf v interesting & gave rise to one of pelosi's best ever public statements.
Along with anyone else whose position is basically "asking me not to do something doesn't make it illegal". Yeah. But it might dissuade you, or at least carry some weight toward dissuading you, from doing something, because you might not be a dick.
I haven't been following the thread closely, but I took the consensus position of the people you names to be, approximately, "a social norm of politeness is good, and it is appropriate that for some events the salience of being polite about photographing people is increased. The question is whether the event organizers are presenting that norm in a way which is either (a) rude or (b) confuses the issue of politeness vs legality."
Perhaps I am just trying to invent a consensus which matches my own take-away from the thread, but that's how I read it.
There are at least three different things in question.
1. "Privacy" - one's right to control dissemination of information about oneself: for instance, one's predilection for BDSM or Nazism; one's presence at a BDSM or Nazi carnival.
2. Something else, I'll call it "personal integrity" - one's right to control the uses to which one is put: one's right not to have one's body or image used, without consent, for the profit or enjoyment of others.
3. "Entitlement" - one's right to experience with greater frequency the application of sick burns by nosflow.
My own experience of unwanted street photography happened when I was with a group of non-Japanese friends and our very young, photogenic, half-Japanese children having a picnic in an Osaka park. We were noticed by a photography club out to photograph the plum blossoms. They surrounded us, in some cases pushing physically past the mothers to shove telephoto lenses right into the kids' faces despite our protests. Just as Frowner says, it felt as if we were animals in a zoo.
I got into a vehement argument online later with some American English teachers who insisted that by going into a public space with the children I was consenting to their being photographed. Um, no. Discreet long-distance shots, perhaps. In-your-face close-ups? No way. If you want a cute haafu child for your camera club, hire a model.
Ironically, NW and I were in the same park earlier this year, when it was full of Japanese kindergarten classes on excursions. Almost every class was accompanied by a teacher or two holding a large placard with a pictogram of a crossed-out camera, to discourage photos by foreign tourists.
That's why you have to buy physical emoji, not just the unicode kind.
Discreet long-distance shots, perhaps. In-your-face close-ups? No way. If you want a cute haafu child for your camera club, hire a model.
I think that difference is a big part of what's going on -- that the rudeness/injury is much less the photography than it is the unwanted interaction. Like, Frowner's story: the way I'd read it is that the photographers were kind of jerks for thinking Frowner was remarkable enough to be worth photographing, and were definitely jerks for bothering them with the request. But the existence of the pictures of them out there somewhere in the world doesn't seem like a meaningful injury to me.
I think J, Robot at 77 pointed to a good norm. Which also boggles my mind a bit, imagine a good social norm coming from a Comic Con.
Almost every class was accompanied by a teacher or two holding a large placard with a pictogram of a crossed-out camera, to discourage photos by foreign tourists.
Why were they particular targets of foreign targets? Were they all kimonoed up for heritage-style hanami?
That is a good norm for Comic Con, but I will note that it's a norm among people who have bought tickets to a private space agreeing to comply with the rules of the private space.
Without offence, can I say that this still seems incoherent to me?
Definitely!
Or at least your second sentence seems flatly untrue. I don't think anything about privacy norms and expectations has grown out of the norm that one should be able to be present in public without being hassled.
To try to be more specific, I think absence of historical norms/laws around how you treat people in public (whether privacy or other laws) is partially attributable to white men being used to being happy and unhassled in public. Whether it's catcalling or police-calling or fatshaming or aggressive photography, there is a lot of intersectional discomfort and harm people get from being out in public that our laws are mostly silent on, and that's why privacy is a limiting concept for this conversation.
Why were they particular targets of foreign targets? Were they all kimonoed up for heritage-style hanami?
No, but they were very cute: pairs of five- and six-year-olds lined up in kindergarten uniform, each pair obediently holding hands. Or sitting on the grass eating their obento, each on their own individual little mat. This sort of thing.
127 I think it is a good norm to try to instill at such events as the FSF. And I think whoever pointed out above that you're confusing what is legal with what is considered (or should be considered) polite and considerate human behavior.
Also, plenty of societies make exceptions for when the rules of normal polite public behavior are temporarily suspended. The FSF looks a lot like one of those occasions and I'd say that it goes (or should go) both ways. Let those who will let it all hang out and those who attend and observe not be assholes about it.
They have hats! Thank god that hasn't caught on here, that crap would get underfoot all the time.
One problem is that old norms of security by obscurity no longer work in the internet age. Property records have always been "public" but they haven't always been in searchable databases viewable from home! I can now in a minute look up what homes any random person whose name I know owns, and that's a genuine problem. It was less of a problem when you had to go to an office and interact with a person who could call the police if the person was raising red flags. There used to be a realm of things that were news, a realm of things that were "public" but not easily known, and a realm of things that are private. The internet has collapsed the first two categories in a way that's dangerous and scary.
The other problem is that the law around photography and sex is in all ways outdated and incoherent, and needs to be rethought from the ground up. In particular, we need to rethink what should be criminal in terms of what you can do with nude photographs of other people without their permission, and how bad the punishments are depending on the scenario. The regime right now of underage sexting being a serious felony, but revenge porn largely being legal is batshit crazy. It's not obvious to me whether a properly crafted revenge porn law should make sharing photos of attendees at FSF without their permission illegal, but I'm pretty open to the idea that it should.
An interesting related phenomenon is the end of formerly topless enlightened Europe due to the availability of camera phones and social media. Yes beaches are public, but I don't think posting photos of strangers at beaches without their permission should necessarily be legal.
that crap would get underfoot all the time
Oh, god, the sheer amount of kindergarten crap there was. The uniform, the hat, the rucksack, the PE uniform, the PE uniform bag, the indoor shoes, the indoor shoes bag, the book bag, the bento box, the chopsticks, the bento box bag, the notebook for writing daily messages to/from the teacher, the name badge ... have I forgotten anything? Probably. I usually did when dropping off the children.
have I forgotten anything?
...the drinks bottle, the PE hat, the umbrella ...
A large metal water bottle (bag optional) to be dropped clangorously at random but frequent intervals?
...the end of formerly topless enlightened Europe...
Now see how we all lose? This is worth fighting for.
I was in Turkey in the early 90s and there were topless beaches. I imagine that's all gone now, though for quite different reasons.
But the existence of the pictures of them out there somewhere in the world doesn't seem like a meaningful injury to me.
Oh yeah, I also disagree with this. Sometimes it's the personal hassle, sometimes it's what people out on the internet are doing with your photo, it can be both, but the latter can definitely be an issue on its own.
140: I heard once, nth-hand, that there are nude beaches in KSA (if you're rich/foreign enough). Any truth to that?
142 Everyone is nude under their clothes, Mossy. Even if those clothes are abayas or thobes.
One problem is that old norms of security by obscurity no longer work in the internet age. Property records have always been "public" but they haven't always been in searchable databases viewable from home! I can now in a minute look up what homes any random person whose name I know owns, and that's a genuine problem. It was less of a problem when you had to go to an office and interact with a person who could call the police if the person was raising red flags. There used to be a realm of things that were news, a realm of things that were "public" but not easily known, and a realm of things that are private. The internet has collapsed the first two categories in a way that's dangerous and scary.
This seems sort of true to me, but also sort of like a reversion to historical baseline (before big-city anonymity), where any 'public' facts were also easily known to the community. But of course that historical baseline is fundamentally changed by the vast change in the size of the relevant community.
Seriously though, I don't believe it for a second.
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Reindl-Kiel, H., 'Power and Submission: Gifting at Royal Circumcision Festivals in the Ottoman Empire (16th-18th Centuries)', Turcica, 41 (2009), 37-88.|>
If I'm arguing for anything here, it's that you can't say 'don't photograph people doing public things in public' as an appeal to a pre-existing coherent rule or norm. It's an attempt to create a new norm -- not brand new, there's some consensus here and elsewhere that something's necessary along these lines, but it's not broadly accepted or clearly defined.
And where there's this sort of new norm creation going on, I think it's important to be thoughtful about what exactly it should be. Like, I think "Don't photograph people in public without their consent" isn't great, generally, because it precludes a lot of art, and a lot of news/documentary work, and amateur documentation of people doing genuinely wrong things. I wouldn't have any objection to whatever organization is running this fair (on reading, it's on Folsom Street, and is affiliated with but is not the same as the big FSF) putting up signs saying "Participants in this fair generally do not wish to be photographed without their consent. Please be respectful of their wishes," which would be setting a social norm for this particular event.
For a broader, society-wide norm, while I see the reasons for wanting one, I'm not sure exactly what it should be in detail to both protect photographic subjects and allow photography where I think it's valuable. I'm not saying it's impossible to set a good norm, I just think the details of how it should work need to be explicitly hashed out.
I wouldn't have any objection to whatever organization is running this fair (on reading, it's on Folsom Street, and is affiliated with but is not the same as the big FSF) putting up signs saying "Participants in this fair generally do not wish to be photographed without their consent. Please be respectful of their wishes," which would be setting a social norm for this particular event.
I think this is putting it the right way. The sign that inspired this post looks like it's saying "Photographers Will Be Prosecuted". And as such it is inspiring the backlash of people saying "Ahem, please point to the law that we're violating here," and the defensiveness of people saying "As someone sensitive to assault and consent, I am alarmed to see that me taking a picture is being equated with assault". It's just not the right approach.
From Frowner's 65 I've had total strangers - straight gawkers - ask to take pictures by saying "I've never seen someone who looks like you".
Because I am so unusually thoughtful today, it just occurred to me that these people are apparently following the rule of requesting consent before taking a picture. And yet they are being assholes. To complicate things further, I can imagine there may have been people photographing the march that took pictures of Frowner along with the other marchers without requesting consent. I don't think they did anything wrong.
OK, so we have two lines of argument. (Also, I have now seen photos from the FSF ...)
One takes the view that people participating in "the world's largest leather event" are wrong to call for no photography without permission, since this is to treat a public space as if it were a private club where there is minimal danger of being seen by straight-laced colleagues, bosses, etc., and if they were seen by such, it would be on terms of equal participation. (The taking of photographs, on the other hand, creates a situation where participants might be seen by anyone, present or not.) Further, the call for privacy even risks incoherence, since the event could be seen as having the intent of normalising sexual fetishes through being open about them.
The other takes the view that public acts aren't what they used to be, modern photography being what it is, and because of the internet, so the call for limited publicity is reasonable.
Viz a viz this second norm, however, I think you have to ask: what is special about the FSF that requires such a norm to be applied there but not elsewhere? It looks like a norm to be applied generally.
149: Exactly, with another facet being discomfort with the privatization of public space: "Who gave the Folsom Street Association the right to set rules for behavior on the public streets? I never joined their Homeowners' Association."
NEITHER DID I. THEY'RE REAL ASSHOLES.
My way around this, as a photographer, is to use a 77mm lens that doesn't look as if it is remotely telephoto-ish, so I can take candid shots in a public place without it being at all obvious that I am doing so. I don't feel in the least bit guilty about doing that in markets, for example, but then I don't use the results for mockery.
I'm just interested in faces.
As in, I think there are two ways in which people could reasonably object to having their photographs taken in a public space: one is the kind of physical harassment described by Ume and perhaps Frowner; the second is the expectation that the pictures will be used for mockery. I think I am innocent of both.
There is also the unreasonable but widely shared emotional feeling of intrusion that comes from knowing that anyone is watching you closely, as photographers tend to do. That's something one can work around, either by stealth (pancake lenses) or straight up asking permission in a way that establishes human contact.
120 is correct, and the smug one's prickishness in denigrating those whose point he so neatly missed is impressive.
Perhaps the best way to request a stranger to be polite and deferential is not to imply that their behavior is equivalent to assault?
And perhaps only an ass doesn't recognize that, when you pair two unlike things, there is, in fact, an implication of, if not equivalence, then comparability. "This website features many assholes and UC grads." Nobody familiar with English would take seriously a claim that such a statement isn't intended as, at the least, a light dig at the latter.
I laughed at "People of Walmart" because I didn't shop at Walmart. When "People of Whole Foods" happens, I might laugh at that too.
Basically OT, but NW just reminded me of this: Friday I was in the local fish market (the big, colorful one with big trout tanks and lots to photograph) with my dad and daughter, and these three women came in with a photographer. The women were young-ish, but tbh looked a little old to be doing what they were doing, which was:
I'm not entirely sure. If I had to commit to something, I'd say it was a shoot for an album cover or whatever. The three of them were dressed out of the ordinary, and posing in band-like ways. OK, so far, so normal (if not ordinary). BUT. What they were wearing kind of broke my brain. I was very sad that neither AB nor HG was there, because I couldn't understand what they were wearing, I finally came up with: they wore clothes that looked like they were made by someone who had heard '80s styles described to them by someone who was there, but not especially fashion-centric. Like, there was bleached and sand-washed denim, and there were bright, colorful patches, and the jackets were kind of big and maybe shoulder-padded? But nothing they were wearing was anything I recognized as being actually from the '80s.
Anyway, this was all so strange that I tried to surreptitiously take a camera pic, but they decided to move to the meat department just as I did so, and I didn't really capture anything they were wearing. Despite their being in a public place for the purpose of having their pictures taken, and despite making a minor spectacle of themselves, I still thought it would be rude to stand there taking a bunch of pics.
But if there were 50 of them there in a public place for the purpose of having their pictures taken, would you have still felt rude taking pics?
Out of interest: Country-specific requirements for consent to take, publish, or make commercial use of a photograph of an identifiable individual in a public place. Most countries have more restrictions than the US, particularly on commercial use.
Speaking of thinly-veiled anonymity, this really hits home for me.
It was brought to my attention that people are talking about Nazi conventions here as if they might provide an illuminating parallel. Hopefully someone has already pointed this out (I certainly don't propose to read any of the thread that intervened between my last comment and this one); if so, please take this reiteration as endorsement: they don't. The reason they don't is, of course, that we are under no obligation, when making requests of each other, to be pure formalists, and assert that what goes for the crop-and-collar fan goes as well for the synagogue-torcher who, at the moment, is in fact simply gathering with his peers in the outfit that best accords with his enthusiasm. When we assert that the former enthusiast's request for discretion and consideration be heeded or at least be given some weight, but that the latter enthusiast's similar request can be disregarded, we aren't limited to considering, as if it were the only salient fact, that each is in a particular spot with a group of comrades in public and would like not to be photographed. We can adduce such facts as: the identities of the former enthusiasts aren't of public interest, and those of the latter are; the former enthusiasm is morally innocuous, whereas the latter is morally noxious. (Of course, some people might assert that the former is of public interest because it's deviant or whatever but you know what? Those people we can simply deem wrong, because, not being purely formalist, we don't need to care particularly about the mere existence of a view.)
I can only assume that someone has already made substantially the same points, because they're so obvious, but I would also have assumed they'd be obvious to anyone commenting here (in this so thoughtful and distinguished crowd), which makes me wonder why anyone would have brought Nazis up at all.
(Of course we recognize that the law might feel the need to be super duper formal and disavow almost any substantive concerns, but as we have already established (vide nosflow supra), we are firmly distinguishing between legal and other norms … nicht wahr?)
I am firmly distinguishing between legal and other norms, but I'm not sure a sign that juxtaposes groping and photography should be assumed to hold to the same standard.
163: You seem to be repeating a number of points that have already been made. Is it possible that whatever process brought the contents of the thread to your attention was less effective than reading the prior comments?
I think the main attraction of San Francisco isn't being able to take pictures of butts. If I were them, I'd focus on the climate because the muggy summer is getting old.
163: this is just to say that it is OK to photograph people whose habits and activities are judged to be depraved. It doesn't say anything about why it might be right to uphold special privacy considerations for FSF-ers when one wouldn't do so for, say, people walking to and from a Star Trek convention.
On the privatisation of public space, I did spot that parents are discouraged from bringing children to the FSF, which suggests to me that the event is not fully a public event.
Remember the Whitewater juror who showed up for court every day wearing a Star Trek uniform? Doesn't seem real.
171: I don't have any recollection of this at all. But now I know it was an alternate juror and the judge dismissed her for talking to the media about her outfit.
170: It isn't fully public. The streets in the area of FSF aren't just blocked off to vehicular traffic - they have pedestrian barriers around most of it, with around 3-4 designated entrances/exits, where attendees are invited to make a voluntary contribution ($10 gets you a sticker that gives you a discount on drinks inside, most people go for it). IOW, pretty close to Heebie's suggestion of an eruv. You can get in without paying if you insist, but there's a definite awareness that you are entering a special area with special rules - it's not something that you would just wander into unawares.
ANYTHING GOES! AND THEY DO IT OPENLY IN THE STREETS AND FRIGHTEN THE HORSES!
On precise gradations of potential public photography: the unseen person flying a drone high above the popular fishing/boating spot on the river, possibly taking crowd shots, or doing stunts? Fine. Adds to the ambiance of people messing around outdoors. I might even wave to it.
The drone slowly following my wife's kayak as she's coming in, hovering just out of reach, for minutes? Creepy and unacceptable.
Testament, though, to the magnetic beauty of your wife.
Or her presence on certain intergovernmental watchlists.
The funny thing is that just because you have an INTERPOL notice for a crime you didn't commit doesn't mean you have enough action movie skills to use a paddle as an effective anti-aircraft device.
I bet she was faking. Preserving her cover.
C ned captures my view:
"As someone sensitive to assault and consent, I am alarmed to see that me taking a picture is being equated with assault"
LB further clarifies:
I wouldn't have any objection to ... putting up signs saying "Participants in this fair generally do not wish to be photographed without their consent. Please be respectful of their wishes,"
It was the explicit connection between photography and physical touch that I thought was inappropriate. That's why I reproduced the content of the poster in 24, for absolute clarity.
Neb, disagrees with me, saying that the sign is:
obviously not equating X and Y except in this one respect
That one respect being that both things -- touching and photography -- require consent.
In neb's reading, the sign obviously makes no attempt to explain why photography requires consent. It's just saying that it does. The sign circumvents the analogy ban by not being an analogy at all. It's just reporting two otherwise unconnected facts.
That reading is not available to me.
Have you checked your router?
I can imagine it as thoughtlessly creepy rather than intentionally creepy -- kid or idiot driving a camera drone around a lake that doesn't have a lot going on, sees a person and tracks the person as the only interesting thing to watch, forgetting that the drone is visible to the person. But yeah, creepy.
Did everyone else see the drone story from Venezuela last week? Only a matter of time...
Somebody tried to use exploding drones to kill the dictator. Or, false flag.
This was back last weekend. As Moby says, someone apparently flew a couple of explosive-carrying drones at President Maduro while he was giving a speech. A few injuries and a lot of panic. Maduro blames Colombia and Florida.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45161166
