Event claims photo, video copyright

RENO -- Burning Man organizers are clamping down on how photos and video taken at the annual festival can be used on the Internet.

New rules are meant to allow the festival to hold the copyright for images that attendees post on social networking sites or other pages operated by third parties. That would give organizers the ability to force a Web site like Facebook to remove images they don't approve of.

The new policy is meant to protect the privacy rights of those who attend the event, which begins today in the Black Rock Desert, and may not want their image posted on the Internet, organizers said.

The policy says those who post photos from the event on a Web site controlled by a third party must agree to give organizers the copyright "so that Burning Man can enforce against the third party any restrictions concerning use of the images."

"Our main concern in enacting the policy was to be able to create this weeklong cultural bubble where people can express themselves without worrying about their image being plastered all over the Internet," said Andie Grace, a spokeswoman for the festival.

In previous years, Burning Man photos of naked women have shown up on porn sites, she said. Organizers want to be able to remove those images if the poster refuses.

"This protects the schoolteacher from Iowa who doesn't want to appear on a porn site," she said.

She said though the copyright law is a heavy-handed way of handling the problem, it's the only tool they have right now.

One critic says the new rule is censorship and an attempt to limit free speech at an event that's supposed to celebrate free expression.

"This just doesn't square with some of the principles that Burning Man aspires to," said Fred Von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that focuses on free speech and civil liberties on the Web. "The policy allows them to exercise the censorship powers that copyright-owners enjoy."

The policy is based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 federal law designed to protect intellectual property on the Internet, said Steven Zink, vice president of Information Technology at the University of Nevada, Reno.

He said the Burning Man policy uses a portion of the act that allows the holder of a copyright to demand the removal of material from a Web site if it constitutes copyright infringement.