Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Wednesday 1/2/2006

Stop! Stop! Enough already! In the House of Lords, a bill is rejected that would have given police constables the power to take down websites if they thought they were helping terrorism. Police constables as web censors! How much training are they going to get to help them make informed, sensible decisions? What exactly is wrong with getting a proper warrant for this sort of thing? I'll have to ask my friend David Mery how he feels about the competence of the police to judge such things.

That's not enough, oh no. A friend of a friend is stopped in King's Cross station by the Transport Police, and told that taking pictures is not allowed anywhere on the Underground – and would he mind destroying the pictures he'd taken (he would, as it happens, and they don't press the point). He, like my friend, like me and like everyone I talk to, know of no such restriction – indeed, the Conditions of Carriage on the Transport for London website says that you can't use flash or tripod. Ordinary photography, therefore, is fine. Surely?

My photographic pal (Mindspigot at Flickr — he's jolly good) phones London Underground's customer relations department. "No, no trouble with ordinary photography", they say. Then they call him back quarter of an hour later. "Er, we were wrong," they say. "Photography without a permit has been banned. We didn't know." Mindspigot points out that the information on the website is at best ambiguous, at worse positively wrong. "Yes, we know. We're still trying to find out more." How about all the tourists? No, that would be silly. Wouldn't it? Hello?

So, as best we know, someone somewhere has changed the rules and told nobody except Transplod — who are busy applying a rule which even London Underground's own staff don't quite understand. You probably need a permit — that, despite the rather confusing FAQ online, won't cost you £300 an hour but for which you need to email a JPG (of yourself, silly) to London Underground's Film Unit. They may not be set up for coping with thousands of applications, so give them a chance. But nobody seems to know under what law this new rule has been applied, what the punishment is for disobeying, or what the limits are. Or why it's there: we can guess, can't we. Feel safer now? I'll have to ask David again

Meanwhile, over in America, an artist has told Volkswagen to go away after it tried to claim that he wasn't allowed to draw VW Beetles — infringing their IP, dontcha know. Of course, that's ridiculous and the company backed down.. But not for much longer, because a bill is going through Washington which will outlaw any unapproved use of anything that might be construed as a corporate trademark. Taking a photograph that includes a product? Hah, Forget it. An average street scene will include cars, lamp-posts, clothes, all manner of manufactured items which may fall under the new rule. Hope you like kittens and flowers and trees — at least until the genes get patented.

Stop. Please, just stop. Just for a week or so, until I get my breath back, while I still have some measure of control over the breathing process.