Bur*ing Man jumps the shark
Hard to imagine but yes. From the
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Snatching Rights On the Playa
In a few weeks, tens of thousands of creative people will make their yearly pilgrimage to Nevada�s Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom. Most have the entirely reasonable expectation that they will own and control what is likely the largest number of creative works generated on the Playa: the photos they take to document their creations and experiences.
That�s because they haven�t read the Burning Man Terms and Conditions.
Those Terms and Conditions include a remarkable bit of legal sleight-of-hand: as soon as �any third party displays or disseminates� your photos or videos in a manner that the Burning Man Organization (BMO) doesn�t like, those photos or videos become the property of the BMO. This �we automatically own all your stuff� magic appears to be creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined �notice and takedown� process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet.
The BMO also limits your own rights to use your own photos and videos on any public websites, (1) obliging you to take down any photos to which BMO objects, for any reason; and (2) forbidding you from allowing anyone else to reuse your photos (i.e., no licensing your work no matter what is depicted, including Creative Commons licensing, and no option to donate your work to the public domain).
Moreover, the Burning Man Terms and Conditions also strip attendees of their trademark fair use rights. The ticket terms forbid any use of Burning Man trademarks on any website, which means that ticket-holders can�t label their photos �Burning Man 2009� or even use the words �Burning Man� on their Facebook walls or Twitter updates.
A shame really. The fact that it is the EFF that is raising the stink may help to relax the Terms and Conditions -- I hope they do as the individual reports after the event are always a great read...
Posted by DaveH at August 13, 2009 7:44 PM