Starbucks in the picture
Posted on May 28, 2003 @ 10:48 in General
When I was in Seattle, everyone insisted that Starbucks was somehow 'evil,' just like Microsoft, but no-one could explain me why. I had already returned home when Lawrence Lessig posted that he'd heard of two instances where customers of Starbucks were prohibited from taking pictures on the Starbucks premises, because of
Starbuck’s copyright of their entire 'environment' — that everything in the place is protected and cannot be used with Starbuck's express permission.
An investigation by bumperactive.com reveals that the situation is not as grim as it seems, as they quote the Starbucks PR person as saying:
"Starbucks does not have a photo policy for the general public. Our policy is not to allow media to photograph within our stores without prior approval from our media relations marketing team." (Related BoingBoing post, because you can't (yet?) link directly to the post at bumperactive.com)
So the cases Lessig reports were probably caused by an overzealous manager, who hadn't read the company guidelines well. Still, if you often take pictures wherever you go, it's probably a good idea to have a look at the Photographer's Right, a one page flyer succinctly describing your rights as a photographer. All we need now is localized versions.
Which leaves the question of whether posting pictures of you in Starbucks on your weblog makes you "media"? And the question why the Seattlites tell me Starbucks is evil?
[update: An ex-employee of Starbucks explains the origins of the 'no-photography policy' (via BoingBoing of course).
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