"A public Troy New York ice skating rink has decided that photography should not be allowed unless approved by their Executive Director. At least one parent says she’s being arbitrarily discriminated against and not being allowed to film her own kid at the public rink."
James V. Franco writes in the Troy Record:
Jean Hetman, who has a 13-year-old daughter who practices figure skating at the arena, said she has been video taping and photographing her daughter’s routines for about six years, but now she is being told she cannot, and even had the police called on her twice.
"I am more than willing to show my ID and go through whatever mechanism they want to use to determine who is a pedophile and who is not," she said "When it gets right down to it, I can take a photo of whoever I feel like taking a picture of. When you are in a public place you have no right of privacy."
The city maintains the new policy is to protect children from pedophiles.
Melanie Trimble, NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] executive director, said the rink is a public place and Hetman is within her rights to photograph children skating. Furthermore, she said the policy, although unnecessary and probably illegal, is not being applied fairly because Recreation Director George Rogers twice denied Hetman permission while granting other parents permission to do the same thing…
Again: WTF??!? I’m no lawyer, but in the US, public place = right to photograph. As Ms. Hetman said, "When it gets right down to it, I can take a photo of whoever I feel like taking a picture of. When you are in a public place you have no right of privacy." End of story. Hetman is bending over backwards to meet on middle ground as it is: she’s willing to show identification to exercise a legal right! This bogus policy needs to end and Rogers needs to be fired immediately.
This is outrageous, whether you care about photography or not. You don’t get to go around just making up laws because you feel like it. As far as I’m concerned, this is actually worse than somebody arbitrarily declaring wearing-jeans-is-a-felony-Mondays because the courts have explicitly and repeatedly upheld the right to photograph in public places, whereas they haven’t, as far as I know, the right to wear jeans.
I’m curious about what happend when the police were called. Some random clown trying to legislate from the rink is bad enough, but it’s far worse if the police are actually enforcing it.
If you take photos in the US—yes, even you with the camera phone—have a look at attorney Bert P. Krages‘ downloadable flyer, The Photographer’s Right – Your Rights When You Are Stopped or Confronted for Photography. And don’t believe the hype: there’s nothing at all about photography in the original (HR3162, 2001) or reauthorized (HR3199, 2005) versions of the Patriot Act.
For the UK, get the downloadable UK Photographers Rights Guide; for Oz, grab NSW Photographer’s Rights. (If anyone knows of similar sheets for other countries, please let me know!)
Coverage:
Read article at troyrecord.com
Video of local WNYT news coverage (WMV)
Thomas Hawk’s commentary
Bill Pytlovany’s commentary
Via Digg