This story caught my eye yesterday and, at least from a “Freedom of Speech” perspective, I found it pretty interesting.<\/p>\n

“Scott” (no last name given in the story I read, but I’m sure it’s out there) is an amateur photographer who likes to photograph strangers in public places — mostly in and around businesses in the Burlington, Vermont district known as Church Street Marketplace<\/a>, and specifically, a local coffee shop known as Uncommon Grounds<\/a>. (Edit: It’s “Dan Scott”.)<\/p>\n

Just so you get a clear picture of this, Scott stands on public property and shoots pictures of people he doesn’t know, without their permission, sometimes using a telephoto lens. This is all perfectly legal. Now in a perfect world, Scott would (A) ask permission from people to take their picture, (B) stop taking people’s picture when they asked him to, and (C) delete the pictures he has shot when people ask him to. Scott does none of these things. He repeatedly takes pictures of the same people after they have asked him to stop, he has refused to delete pictures after people have asked him to, and on at least one occasion (and I suspect many more), when one of his subjects got angry with him and physically confronted him, he continued taking pictures. <\/p>\n

I’m not a psychologist and I wasn’t there, but from what I can tell, “Scott” is one of those people who enjoys conflict and provoking people, even though the method in which he is doing it is legal. As long as this guy is standing in the street (hopefully in traffic …) or on the sidewalk, he can take pictures of whatever, or whoever, he wants.<\/p>\n

And, Uncommon Grounds can serve, or not serve, whoever they want. Earlier this week, the coffee house (along with 66 other businesses in the Church Street Marketplace) banned Scott from coming on to their property. This took place after Scott took place after Scott took photographs of a coffee shop employee who had already asked Scott to stop photographing him. (Scott says he did not recognize her as the same person.) <\/p>\n

I’m not sure what the coffee house hopes to get out of their action, as Scott takes his photographs from the street. And just to clarify, few of Scott’s photos appear to be of employees; most of them are of customers, either sitting inside (taken through windows) or standing outside. I’m sure this guy is bad for business. Personally I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t return to “the coffee house where the creepy guy was taking my picture through the front window.”<\/p>\n

Scott was within his legal right to take the pictures, and the businesses were within their legal right to ban him from their properties. So why doesn’t it feel like this story has a happy ending? If the people of Church Street Marketplace really want to get their point across, I suggest organizing a “photo-a-thon” outside this guy’s house. I’m guessing having camera flashes going off 24\/7 for a week or two and capturing thousands of photographs of this guy’s family coming and going might actually get the point across …<\/p>\n

For the record, I have only been confronted once for taking someone’s photograph. It was at Defcon 2007 (a hacker convention, held on private property). After taking a picture of a really cool t-shirt vendor’s booth, I was quickly and loudly confronted by the guy running the booth and told to “delete the picture immediately.” I was too embarrassed to admit that my camera was so old that it didn’t have the ability to delete a photo, so I just fumbled around for a minute pretending to press buttons and then told him it was deleted. I suppose I could have published it later, but as a general rule it’s a good idea not to go around making enemies at hacker conventions, so I ended up deleting it anyway when I got back home.<\/p>\n

Link to Coffee Shop Story<\/a><\/p>\n

EDIT: It appears, at least according to the comments on Facebook, that a lot of people are backing the photographer<\/a> in this deal. Interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story caught my eye yesterday and, at least from a “Freedom of Speech” perspective, I found it pretty interesting. “Scott” (no last name given in the story I read, but I’m sure it’s out there) is an amateur photographer who likes to photograph strangers in public places — mostly in and around businesses in the Burlington, Vermont district known as Church Street Marketplace, and specifically, a local coffee shop known as Uncommon Grounds. (Edit: It’s “Dan Scott”.) Just so you get a clear picture of this, Scott stands on public property and shoots pictures of people he doesn’t know,… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}