Use of Images

Cameras are welcomed at WtSS, as a part of our collective storytelling and self-expression. WtSS has worked to encourage the sharing of our community’s identity and cultural information through photography, videography, and film. WtSS also seeks to protect that culture from unchecked commercialization or commodification, and to moderate an environment where participants’ rights to privacy, free expression, and creative immediacy are given additional consideration by our community. Your entrance to the event is your acceptance of the terms, conditions and guidelines in these Terms and Conditions for the use of photographic imagery obtained at the Event, whether still or video. These guidelines and agreements are aimed at protecting WtSSs’s inhabitants and its cultural values; they may seem unusual at first glance, but WtSS’s goal is to preserve the principle of Decommodification within the WtSS event, and to encourage and observe respect for personal privacy and freedom of expression. WtSS monitors dissemination of photographs primarily to ensure that photographs from the WtSS Event are not used for advertising or commercial purposes, and that they do not infringe on participant’s rights to privacy.

I UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT THAT NO USE OF IMAGES, FILM, OR VIDEO OBTAINED AT THE EVENT MAY BE MADE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM WtSS, OTHER THAN PERSONAL USE. I understand that I have no rights to make any non-Personal Use of any image, film, or video footage obtained at the event, and that I cannot sell, transfer, license, sublicense or give my images, footage, film or video obtained at the event to any other party, except for Personal Use, and I agree to inform anyone to whom I give any footage, film, or video that it can only be used for Personal Use. Use in any advertisement or in the title or cover of any publication designed for dissemination to the public (other than blog posts) of images from the WtSS Event, of drawings or representations of the WtSS sculpture, logos, trademarks and other intellectual property owned or licensed by WtSS, or of the phrase “WtSS,” is prohibited without prior written consent of WtSS.

“Personal Use” of images, film or video means to share with friends and family, to display on personal websites (as long as your website does not sell any other product or service, and as long as your website does not purport or appear to be an official website of WtSS or Burning Man NL), to display on photo sharing websites, and to display at art exhibits or similar exhibits. Social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook are deemed “Personal Use” only if the display of the images, film or video on these sites are not used for the promotion or distribution of images with the intent to publicly display them beyond one’s immediate network, and if one’s immediate network is not inordinately large, to be determined in WtSS’s sole discretion.

I further assign to WtSS a joint ownership in the copyright for images obtained at the event so that in the event any third party displays or disseminates any of my images in a manner not authorized by this agreement, WtSS can enforce against the third party any restrictions concerning use of the images, and I appoint WtSS as my attorney-in-fact to execute any documents necessary to effectuate such assignment. WtSS agrees that it will not utilize this joint ownership to enter into any licensing agreements for the images. Since I understand that, in the absence of written permission from WtSS, I have no right under this agreement to sell, transfer, license, sublicense or give any of my images, footage, film or video obtained at the event to any other party, except for Personal Use, in the event that a third party obtains and uses any of my images, footage, film or video for use other than Personal Use without such written permission from WtSS, I agree that any permission, license or rights I may have granted this third party is completely void and invalid and that WtSS has the absolute right, as joint copyright owner, to require the third party to cease all use of the images, footage, film or video.

I agree, in the event I post, or allow to be posted, any images (still or video) on a personal website or a website controlled by a third party, that:

1. I will place, or cause to be placed, on any website in which such images are displayed, a notice that the images can be used only for the poster’s personal use and not for any other purpose and that downloading or copying of the images is prohibited, except in accordance with the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license where the licensee agrees to use the image for non-commercial purposes and only for his or her Personal Use (as defined herein);
2. I will not authorize the use of any images under the Creative Commons’ license if the image contains any nudity, partial nudity, or sexually suggestive poses (nudity and partial nudity include any images in which bare breasts, bare buttocks or genitals or genital areas are visible), and WtSS, as joint copyright owner, may revoke any Creative Commons license if such license was erroneously placed on the image in violation of these Terms and Conditions;
3. in the event WtSS notifies me that any such images must be removed, for any reason whatsoever in WtSS’s sole discretion, I will promptly remove or cause to be removed those images, and in the event after notification by WtSS any such images are not removed, WtSS may, as joint copyright owner, cause the removal of any such images.

The only Creative Commons license WtSS approves for personal use licensing is the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike. For full legal code see [1]. However, as described above, images that contain human nudity, partial nudity or sexually suggestive poses may NOT be licensed in this fashion. Be aware that the use of this license does not supersede these Terms and Conditions nor the responsibility of the photographer/videographer to obtain all necessary permissions from subjects and artists as appropriate.

WtSS forbids the making of private profit from the documentation of nudity at the event when images are presented in a sexual context, and/or without the express written permission of subjects. If you have seen a violation or suspect a problem of this nature, please contact the Wolve Rangers or event organizers (media@burningman.nl).

WtSS requires any party interested in making a commercial enterprise out of their documentation of the event or distributing footage beyond Personal Use on personal friend/family networks to enter into a written contract with WtSS. Such projects require WtSS’s review and approval prior to commercial distribution.

WtSS’s community grows primarily by word of mouth. The organization does little to solicit attention from television or media companies about the WtSS Event, and does not seek to artificially grow the Event itself by exposure through the mass media. WtSS does continue to support the free expression of news reporters, storytellers, small groups documenting special projects, cultural or fine art photographers, and creative authors/researchers or academics looking at WtSS from an anthropological perspective, but all such uses require a written agreement with WtSS in order to use images from the Event. Contact media@burningman.nl.