Is the Camera Phone Just A Glorified Pudendascope?

If you thought taking candid pictures of Little Richard complaining about his bowling shoes was the most serious privacy issue around camera-equipped mobile phones, wait till your phone starts ringing off the hook with cock and ball shots. Gyms in Hong Kong have already begun banning cell phone calls in locker rooms, writes Elisa Batista of Wired News, out of concern for sneak pix made with the increasingly popular camera phones. A more pressing concern—and more likely field for legal action—is the ease and speed with which you can now upload pictures of a concert or performance. A real copyright issue, or this week's technoscare?

Comments

[The Mountain Goat]

Gee, I never thought of this. Tonight I’ll take a photograph of my own balls, and copyright it. that way any lockerroom shots would not just violate my privacy, but also violate my copyright, something I may be able to still protect.

[Heather]

I recently read somewhere that countries where cell phones with cameras are popular, police brutality has gone dramatically down becasue it is virtually impossible to get away with it anymore, beings everyone has a camera on them.

[Bob]

Sorry Mountain Goat, but Copyright will only protect that one image: you’ll have to get your balls trademarked (and throw in a design patent as well, see the Hummer thread).

[Sebastian]

An excellent book on this subject matter has been written by David Brin. “The Transparent Society” is a good read, and talks extensively about issue of society being awash with cameras. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

[Jim]

Given Heather’s observations, will our government:

a) try to ban them on the putative grounds that they can be used to invade privacy by posting lockerroom shots of unsuspecting victims on the internet, when the really want to ban them to protect the ability of the antiterrorist forces to ‘rough up’ a few suspects? or

b) try to enlist all the new minicam carriers in an attempt to spy on your neighbors in the name of the War on Terror.

I’m betting on b), personally.