Ban on NYC street photography, pending

pitu

I've been out of town, so I missed this . . .
there's a public comment period open on these regs until Aug 3, so send a letter already!

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/07/03/2007-07-03_lights_camera_inaction.html

Lights, camera, inaction
Posted Tuesday, July 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM

Picture this: A tourist with a minicam waiting on line at the Empire State Building passes the time videotaping family members in front of the landmark - and gets a summons for filming without a permit. If some of City Hall's lesser lights have their way, scenes like that could be coming soon to a sidewalk near you.

The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, headed by Katherine Oliver, has promulgated rules that would require anyone who is in a group of people and uses a camera in public for, basically, anything more than a quick shot here or there to get advance permission and to carry $1 million in liability insurance.

The regulations, drawn up with the complicity of the Law Department, are, in a word, nuts. They address a nonexistent threat to the public weal. They were written as if small bands of rogue photographers were running amok. And they won't withstand court challenge unless the cops come down equally on everyone taking pictures, including mom and dad filming junior and pals at the playground.

The reason for this nonsense is that in May 2005, a few overzealous cops stopped a documentary filmmaker who was videotaping taxis near the MetLife Building. They detained him, confiscated his camera and told him, among other things, that he needed a permit. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit and discovered that nowhere among all the materials promoting New York as filmmaker heaven did Oliver's office define who needed a permit and who didn't.

So the bureaucrats wrote rules, and beginning in September two or more people with a camera in one area for a half-hour, or five or more people with a camera and - gasp! - a tripod in one place for more than 10 minutes will have to have a permit for their "photo shoot." And don't forget that $1 million insurance policy.

Herewith a startling statement: Our friends at the NYCLU, with whom we disagree so frequently, are right. (Hell doth freeze over.) The regs are boneheaded. The police already have the power to stop people, with or without cameras, from blocking sidewalks and streets. And even city lawyers say upfront that the rules will be selectively enforced. Tourists with camcorders will get a pass, and those unable to afford $1 million in insurance will be granted waivers.

The film police need supervision by an adult, someone like Mayor Bloomberg.

pitu

Say Cheese

New York Sun Staff Editorial
July 2, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/57680

Suddenly a new problem confronts visitors to New York, aside from the filthiness of the subways and the fact that they have to sneak outside of a bar to enjoy a cigarette. Now they will have to worry that when they whip our their camcorders to take some pictures for grandma back home, Mayor Bloomberg is going to have them ticketed. They can guard against that fate by hiring not only a tour guide but a couple of dozen First Amendment lawyers to traipse around town and tell them under which rules they'll be allowed to take out their cameras.

Forgive the sardony, but that's what arises from the proposed rules, first reported in Friday's New York Times, being mooted by the mayor's office in the wake of a lawsuit filed a year or so ago by the geniuses at the New York Civil Liberties Union. The Union jumped into court when the police, using the common sense that has been the hallmark of the Kelly years at One Police Plaza, briefly detained a documentary film-maker, Rakesh Sharma, who was filming in mid-town with a hand-held camera.

From the kerfuffle that followed come proposed rules that would require even small groups who film in one location for more than 10 minutes with a tripod or half an hour without one to obtain a permit. Such a rule would appear to apply to the father who filmed his children as they all waited in line to gain entry to the Empire State Building, a point suggested by a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, Christopher Dunn, in a letter to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting, which is considering the rules.

It was the civil liberties union that asked for a formal set of rules in the first place. Our inclination is that the better situation would be not to have rules at all but to rely on the judgment of the rank and file police officers who patrol our streets. This is the opposite of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has reached a point where it seems to view each officer as an enemy of freedom. The fact is that in several instances accused terrorist plotters have been discovered to have filmed casing videos of landmarks in American cities.

In New York alone, on three separate occasions since 2002, federal authorities have asked Iranians connected to that country's diplomatic mission to the United Nations to leave America after they were found filming landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the subway system. No municipal permitting scheme — such as the one proposed by the mayor's office — is needed to give the federal government the authority to send suspicious diplomats back to their home country.

The key to preventing terrorists from snooping around our city is to have a vigilant citizenry and tireless law enforcement officials who are focused on the threat. Regulating one more aspect of life in this city is beside the point. Vacation is already heavy on paperwork. It's bad enough Americans have to obtain a license to drop a line in a stream or build a campfire. It would be a sad day if New York became a place where a family has to get a permit before making a home video.

July 2, 2007 Edition

pitu

send a letter to the film office, and cc it to your city council person . . .

Commissioner Katherine Oliver
Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting
1697 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10019

pitu

http://www.pictureny.org/

sign the ePetition, make a YouTube video, go to a rally
send a comment to the mayor's office
to roll back some really stupid regulations about where you can stand and for how long if you are holding a camera

pitu

I think this is a seriously under-reported and very wrong-headed bit of regulation going on . . .
Check out the awesome list of names on this petition
http://www.pictureny.org/petition/index.php
(and sign it yourself of course)

Subject: City aims to regulate photo/film: Sign Petition!

PICTURE NEW YORK
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY - please excuse duplicate postings!

You can make a movie on a cell phone, but what if you want to use a tripod, or stay in the same spot for more than 30 minutes? New regulations from the Mayor's Office on Film set absurd restrictions that would require even casual photographers and filmmakers to have a permit, and a million dollar insurance policy. No doubt it would be selectively enforced, AND who needs that kind of law on the books in the first place?

Not you, not us, not anyone that wants to take some pictures at any random time. We bet not even the Mayor's Film Office actually wants to process thousands of requests from shutterbug tourists, wedding photographers, and school groups.

Yes, the rules are written THAT broadly. A film school grad standing on a corner with a camcorder, a friend and a dream will now have to pay as much as HBO or Fox to make anything that takes two people and lasts half an hour. The new Bernice Abbott or Diane Arbus or WeeGee might not 'get the shot', because they were forced to move along, or were arrested for refusing to leave until the light was just right.

That's nuts. A love affair with New York City happens in pictures. The history of the city - its summer hydrants, its rainbow children, its aching splendor - is etched in our minds by images so vivid we no longer know whether they're photographs or our own memories - or perhaps they're our own memories of photographs.

The Daily News and The NY Sun have both written editorials ridiculing the new regulations. You can read the eleven page brick of regulations here.

We need to fight back. With enough public outcry we can stop these regulations from becoming law. There’s a recent precedent: a ban on photography in the subways was successfully fought off in 2004-2005.

The all-too-brief period for public comment ends Aug 3. Please make your voice heard now:

1) Click here to sign our petition.
http://www.pictureny.org/petition/index.php

2) Go to the www.picturenewyork.org site to email comments to the Mayor's Film Office and the City Council committee that oversees them.

3) Make a Video or Photo Public Comment.

Post videos or photos commenting on this issue to YouTube or Flickr.

+ Tag the video or stills “"PictureNewYork”" and "“CameraWars”".

+ Send the links to [email protected] and to us at [email protected]

Spoken word artist Juliana Luecking has already posted her response to the proposed rules. http://www.pictureny.org/?p=14

Picture New York is an ad hoc group of working artists, photographers and filmmakers joined together to fight these dumb rules.

http://www.picturenewyork.org

Picture New York.
Picture New York WITHOUT pictures of New York.
Picture New York without the pictures YOU make of New York!

carnivore

Amazing footage of NYPD violating New Yorkers' rights and abusing their authority:

http://glassbeadcollective.blip.tv/file/784711/