A Stitch in Haste

"This is not your island. This is our island. And the only reason you're living on it is because we let you live on it."
--Lost, Season 2

As I noted during my Prague vacation, more than one attraction I visited prohibited the use of any cameras or camcorders, even without flash or lights. Bummer.

Now consider this picture, taken at a fair in Fresno, California:


I don't know much about copyright law, but I do know that you can't "copyright an area."

Boing Boing makes the following observation:

One of the side-effects of the entertainment industry's war on copying is that it's created a kind of folk-mythology about copyright being a kind of magic word you can invoke to put a fence around anything that you want to police.

I think there's truth in that -- see, e.g., the bottom of this website. But I also think that this sign reflects another problem with modern law: the fact that property rights now mean much less than they used to, and that contracts mean even less.

My property, my rules. Why do we make it more difficult than that? You want to come into my home? Take off your shoes. You want to eat in my restaurant? No smoking. You want to see a show in my theater? No children under five allowed. You want to visit my fair in Fresno? No cameras.

Why try to invoke some "copyright" gobbledygook? Maybe because they have to.

Much of it traces back to the smoking bans: The right to run my property as I saw fit was turned on its head and became your "right" to enter my property and dictate to others -- and to me -- how we could behave on my property. Sheer madness -- and getting worse with each new crop of hack politicians.

So too with contracts. Don't like the terms of a contract you entered into? Sue, or lobby, to void it. Claim "unconscionability" or "fraud" or "predation" or "invasion of privacy." Whichever you choose, you might very well win -- contracts are increasingly viewed as suggestions, or bargaining positions, more than as voluntarily binding agreements. The right to set terms to a contract are all but completely eroded. Someone offers a local fair in exchange for a fee -- and an agreement not to take unauthorized pictures. Accept or decline, partake or abstain. But don't cry "unfair," and don't leave the proprietor with little choice but to appeal in desperation to copyright law. This is an affront to anyone's sensibilities -- how?

So who has a right to be surprised when people look to preserve what ought to be their obvious rights via less-than-obvious back-door remedies such as an (untenable) attempt to "copyright an area"? The only reason we see such bizarre approaches is because the reasonable, sensible approaches of straightforward property rights and freedom of contract are increasingly declared null and void.