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MBTA guys warn photographer to stop taking photos on a public street
By adamg on Fri, 08/29/2008 - 8:41am
Mike reports on a little run-in with a couple of guys in an MBTA SUV outside a South Boston bus depot:
Recently I was in South Boston to take pictures of the Macallen condo building. Directly across the street is (what I think is) an MBTA bus depot, and I took a few photos in that direction to capture a rainbow that appeared after the rain. As I was leaving, an MBTA SUV pulled up with two people inside and asked me what newspaper I work for. I said the photos are for a photography class I'm taking. They responded quickly something about warning me that I wasn't allowed to take photos on or of MBTA property and drove off. ...
Earlier:
Further proof the MBTA's photo policy not worth the paper it's printed on (incident at South Station).
I'd point to the MBTA's own photo policy, but the MBTA Police Web site is now the Kenmore busway of Web sites: Yes, it's under construction (because apparently whoever's re-doing the site has never heard of using an internal test server while keeping the existing live site up instead of just displaying a large graphic of a guy shoveling manure). So here is a copy of a draft of the policy, which I recall was basically the same.
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Another link
http://carter.gamerspage.net/images/MBTA_Photo_Pol...
Reliability questionable.
The best part is the policy of stomping out photographers is "for our protection"... just like when the police chiefs deny us the right to bear arms. Thanks kids, but I'll protect myself. I don't need your paternalistic draconian policies, and I certainly don't want to pay for their oppressive enforcement.
Soooooo...
...where's the picture of the SUV? :)
Seriously, though- I'm not in the least bit surprised. Carry a copy of The Photographer's Right (which reminds people that you can take pictures of whatever you please from public property), and a copy of the photo policy.
Bizarre
I don't think I should have to have my name, DOB, address, and license # written down to go into some MBTA police log just because I want to take a photo of a train or bus station, or a vehicle, or people there, or...
The photo doesn't hurt anyone, or mess up the station. I can see not obstructing with gear, but otherwise this is ludicrous. The police in Union Station in DC just went through a big thing about this- Amtrak confirmed they do not prevent people from photographing, but security was doing just that...
can the MBTA policy actually call for this, legally?
legal to restrict photo? No.
No. You can take pictures of almost anything you want, if you're standing on public property. In the US, the right to photograph is very wide and well-established in law (http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf). There are only a couple of real exceptions. The military can restrict the photographing of specific installations or equipment if it is deemed a matter of national security - ditto for the DoE and nuclear sites. And if someone is secluded in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy (dressing room, bathroom, etc), then it's not ok to take their picture without consent. That's about it.
So taking pictures of the MBTA property from a public street is completely legit. The MBTA guys were completely outside their authority to try to stop that.
Otoh, if you want to use the image commercially (in a for-profit newspaper, magazine, book, for purchase from your Flickr page, etc) then you're talking about the right to publish - and things are a bit different. Here you may run into trouble if your image contains a copyrighted work - like a sculpture - and you don't get permission by the copyright holder. Or if the image portrays the subject in a 'unfairly negative light' there's a chance that the image publisher could be sued for libel. But the bar for that is pretty high in this country. Certainly, the MBTA would be laughed out of any court for suggesting that a picture of a rainbow over a bus depot was in any way libelous.
Libelous photo?
Unless a photo is doctored or Photoshopped, how can it be libelous? Truth is an absolute defense in a libel case.
just so
But what constitutes "doctoring"? Is it limited only to subsequesnt modification, or can the method and technology used to initially record the image be manipulated to convey false information to the viewer?
There are a few instances where a court has recognized that the composition of a photo can convey an inaccurate, and in some cases deliberately misleading impression to the viewer. Take as an example, a picture of a policeman sneezing rather explosively, with a little girl reacting several feet away. But the depth of field of the photo makes it look as though the officer is barking angrily into the face of the child, who is reacting with fear or shock.
Published on the front page of a local paper in a community where the adult in question is widely known, it would be completely reasonable for the courts to look at the question of libel, even though the photo was not doctored after the fact.
Sadly, they wouldn't be laughed out of court
One might have thought they'd be laughed out of court for attempting prior restraint on those three MIT kids, but they actually got a temporary restraining order out of that for a week or so.
Apples and oranges
The reason given by the courts for granting that order was that it was not immediately obvious if the students had obtained proprietary information in a legally proscribed manner (ie trespassing physically or 'cybernetically' into locations that were not public for the purpose of fraud). The MBTA made no claims of libel, but rather tried to invoke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. My guess is that they attempted to use this much newer and untested statute because their lawyers knew that the actions of the student researchers would not rise to the level of libel or any other long-held legal standard of malfeasance.
And note that Judge O'Toole not only lifted the gag order against the students (almost two weeks ago), but at the same time made it abundantly clear in his statements that the MBTA didn't have a leg to stand on in further pursuing any legal actions against them. That's pretty close to getting laughed out of court, as these things go.
Legal rights of photographers
Google it. There's a PDF with that title by andrew at kantor dot com. Informative.
basically, if it's private property, they can tell you to leave, no confiscatory bullshit. Trespassing is the law here, not photography. Public property, unless it's a missile silo (or the old shipyard in Quincy, free game.