The annual Burning Man event has a reputation for quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) anarchy, but this year the event organizers are attempting a quick legal coup:
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.
It’s not particularly anarchic to use one of the most restrictive pieces of post-modern fascism legislation to attempt to control the way event attendees use their photographs and video footage.
