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major_clangerMy evening outing today was to a seminar organised by IP advocacy group Own-It and the British Press Photography Association, devoted to addressing the issues surrounding the increasingly fraught activity of public photography.
As was noted repeatedly there is no law against photography in public, or indeed photographing someone per se. However, there are other laws which can and have been used to inhibit photography.
Firstly, there are the legal restrictions on what you can do with pictures. For celebrities and especially their children there are privacy concerns, whilst where there is an exclusive contract for photography (as happened in Douglas v Hello) then unofficial photographs may be deemed invasive. In some countries, but not the UK, there may be limits on photographing buildings or public sculpture - France is particularly bad - whilst there has been a worrying trend for organisations like the Premier League to seek to control photographs on the basis that they include their logos.
The second sort of control is aimed at actual photography, with the latest and most disturbing example being the powers given under the recent Terrorism Acts. Apparently, many police forces view use of an SLR and telephoto lens as 'suspicious activity' and will stop and search accordingly. The most worrying thing though, according to several of the photographers present, was the growing public acceptance of the idea that photography is somehow an activity you have to be specifically authorised to do. This seems to be an instance of a wider attitudinal change towards thinking that the public are only allowed to do such activities as the law provides a specific named right to - the utter antithesis of the traditional Diceyan approach in English law that only that which the law prohibited was subject to legal control.
I hope I was able to persuade a few people with my argument that forced deletion of photographs is an offence against s.3 of the Computer Misuse Act - whether this will deter a grumpy policeman is another matter, mind you. Looking forward, I would like to think that photographers would have common cause with many cyberliberties activists, but unfortunately I suspect that the two groups will be strongly divided on the issue of copyright, which most professional photographers are strongly in favour of - as freelancers, licensing their work is what puts food on their plate. Meanwhile, we're left with the situation described by an experienced press photographer:
"When people asked what I did for a living and I said that I was a photographer, they used to say 'gosh, you must see some really interesting things'. Now they look at me as if I'm a child molester."
Unless we can reverse such attitudes and reclaim the streets as a safe venue for cameras, we'll end up looking back at the slow death of real-life photography. Another photographer noted how more and more events had to be staged rather than photographed naturalistically, as it was the only way to satisfy all parties. Is this how we want to remember our times, as nothing but posed tableaux instead of candid snaps?
As was noted repeatedly there is no law against photography in public, or indeed photographing someone per se. However, there are other laws which can and have been used to inhibit photography.
Firstly, there are the legal restrictions on what you can do with pictures. For celebrities and especially their children there are privacy concerns, whilst where there is an exclusive contract for photography (as happened in Douglas v Hello) then unofficial photographs may be deemed invasive. In some countries, but not the UK, there may be limits on photographing buildings or public sculpture - France is particularly bad - whilst there has been a worrying trend for organisations like the Premier League to seek to control photographs on the basis that they include their logos.
The second sort of control is aimed at actual photography, with the latest and most disturbing example being the powers given under the recent Terrorism Acts. Apparently, many police forces view use of an SLR and telephoto lens as 'suspicious activity' and will stop and search accordingly. The most worrying thing though, according to several of the photographers present, was the growing public acceptance of the idea that photography is somehow an activity you have to be specifically authorised to do. This seems to be an instance of a wider attitudinal change towards thinking that the public are only allowed to do such activities as the law provides a specific named right to - the utter antithesis of the traditional Diceyan approach in English law that only that which the law prohibited was subject to legal control.
I hope I was able to persuade a few people with my argument that forced deletion of photographs is an offence against s.3 of the Computer Misuse Act - whether this will deter a grumpy policeman is another matter, mind you. Looking forward, I would like to think that photographers would have common cause with many cyberliberties activists, but unfortunately I suspect that the two groups will be strongly divided on the issue of copyright, which most professional photographers are strongly in favour of - as freelancers, licensing their work is what puts food on their plate. Meanwhile, we're left with the situation described by an experienced press photographer:
"When people asked what I did for a living and I said that I was a photographer, they used to say 'gosh, you must see some really interesting things'. Now they look at me as if I'm a child molester."
Unless we can reverse such attitudes and reclaim the streets as a safe venue for cameras, we'll end up looking back at the slow death of real-life photography. Another photographer noted how more and more events had to be staged rather than photographed naturalistically, as it was the only way to satisfy all parties. Is this how we want to remember our times, as nothing but posed tableaux instead of candid snaps?
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:07 am (UTC)I agree. This isn't just a UK problem, but one worldwide, or at least in the English-speaking world. We're facing it more and more in the Machinima world, with judgements like the recent "WoW Glider" situation (I still haven't gotten my head around that legally) narrowing down the range of legal options to the permitted rather than anything which is not excluded.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 09:53 am (UTC)Isn't that because of the appalling behaviour of many paparazzi rather than because of photography per se? Dimwit Q Celebrity may have to accept being photographed in their bath as the price of celebrity but having someone bury themselves in a hole outside your honeymoon hotel to snap you? Did you watch Dirt at all? It was interesting that I was content to be following the story and speculating about the lives of fictional celebrities but would never feel justified (or, indeed, want) to do that with 'real people'. And there may be an element of MRDA, but Courtney Cox said she had based all the incidents in the first season on intrusive things paparazzi has done to her friends. And yes, US vs UK behaviour but perceptions cross borders.
It seems to me that in many areas of UK behaviour and custom there are unspoken contracts to behave reasonably rather than to go all out to the limit of the law, and that these contracts have changed generation by generation. That's not a golden age rant of any kind, or bemoaning the fall of society, and the restraint may have been artificial and chafing, but there seem to be tensions between expectations of restraint and full pursuit of rights behind some changing attitudes.
staged vs natural. I watch so few ads on tv that this may not be new, but this year I've noticed as new to me that shampoo ads now have a hard to read line saying that the model's hair has been style with hair extensions - don't expect real people's hair to look like our glossy advertising... ads are always staged, but something is compelling them to give the stage directions.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:27 pm (UTC)Not to make any great claims for it, but I took this yesterday:
then I looked around at the street furniture and paving slabs and bollards and tried to work out if I was on public or private land. Would being a few metres back make the building any safer from terrorists?
(Tourist. Terrorist. In some accents it's the same word.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-17 08:57 am (UTC)Also worth mentioning the print out and keep UK Photographers Rights Guide that popped up a few years ago.