Alan:
>There was a short news clip recently about a state legislator introducing a
bill to require that people not
take a picture of someone with a cell phone or similar device without their
permission. I haven't yet found
the bill's actual language. Of course, many dopey bills get introduced and
don't get passed. Does anyone else
know of similar legislation being proposed?
>How it is possible to distinguish (in a legalistic sense) among various
electronic devices that take pictures.
Will the next Canon DXX have a phone? What is the poor street photographer
to do?
same way I guess that they succeeded in recalling a whole bunch of firearms
here in Oz - the argument that guns kill people won the hearts of the voters
and the government and many gun types were recalled - of course, only legal
guns were collected and the mystique increased and we now have had a 50%
rise in gun related crimes :-/
OK, maybe that's not a good analogy as firearms tend to raise emotions..
Still, when they were in the hands of those who used them as tools and there
was little mystery or romance involved, all seemed to be flowing along
smoothly.
funny thing is I thought it was illegal to commit illegal acts, that was
what I was tought growing up but the powers that be seem convinced that a
better way is to restrict access to stuff instead.
An amusing succession of events occured here in Oz where some journalist
found out that amonium nitrate could be used to make bombs.. and farmers
could buy it by the ton! The immediately began a campaign which led to the
government attempting to licence or limit the amount of fertilizer that
could be bought in one hit. A couple of weeks later some clown went and
bought the stuff from dozens of outlets and rang a jouno to say 'looky here,
I just bought half a ton of the stuff' - now they want to create and
maintain a national register of buyers! Any kid doing high school
chemistry in the last 100 years has known what could be done with the stuff
... but all of a sudden it's become dangerous to know these sorts of things.
The internet was initially blamed, but then someone found reference to it in
a book (heinous!)
this sort of controlling legislation seems to be on the increase, but it'll
no one any good. If they meet with any success or aproval over the mobile
phone/camera issue, it'll only be a small leap to including any other type
of imaging device - except of course the myriad ccd security cameras
scattered across most urban centres (for our own good of course)
incidentally, many swimming pools here in WA have banned mobiles from the
premises on the off chance that it may contain a camera. Other
establishments are following their lead.
anyone want to buy a Minolta16? it doesn't look like a mobile phone ;-)
/rant
k
"There's an old saying in Tennessee, i know it's in Texas,
probably in Tennessee, that says, 'Fool me once...
shame on ... shame on .. you; but fool--you can't get fooled again.'"
-- Prince George Bush
