intellectual property

A handy, downloadable flyer about your rights as a photographer in public areas.

"The right to take photographs is under assault now more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable."

Like that time I went into the Prado cafe on Commercial Drive. Michael was about to leave on a 2 month journey away from Vancouver. I got out my camera, I was going to take a close up of him as we sat and enjoyed our coffee.
Immediately, a staff member rushed over to tell me that photographs were not allowed inside the doors of the Prado Cafe.

"Why?" I asked.

" Because we worked really hard on this environment and for you to come in and photograph is, violates our rights to intellectual property."

"Interesting. What about outside the cafe?"

"No. We don't like that either."

You have got to be kidding me. Did you contact the Museo del Prado in Madrid to enquire whether or not you were ripping off their intellectual property? And I'm not the only one to have this ridiculous experience.

I'd like to print off this downloadable 'rights of a photographer', laminate it and secretly addit to their menus except I'll never go back because they're pretentious bastards. But I often want to slam them with local photbloggers, like have a photoblogger meeting inside and snap photos until their 'intellectual property' implodes from the shock.