My arm aches with every word I type. It aches because a few hours ago, three rather bulky employees of the Thriftway at 43rd and Walnut in Philadelphia handcuffed me and dragged me to the back room while onlookers ignored my...we'll call them impassioned requests...to call the police. It aches because I resisted; it aches because I resisted being escorted to a back room with $8K of photo equipment; it aches because I resisted letting three large men delete my photos. It aches because I fought a rather visceral battle with those who wish to control content, and, well, it aches because I lost. The pictures were deleted in the end, in that very back room. My struggles bought me enough time to call the paper to tell them what was going on, which certainly would have helped had my assailants had even less honorable intentions, but they could not save my photographs.
They weren't great photographs, just some pictures of clearance signs and empty shelves. That's not the point. They were *my* photographs. And the law was on my side.
It's a complicated tale, this story. Not really one of copyright. It would be easy to draw an analogy to the collective ??AA's, to proclaim the three bullies to be RIAA, the MPAA, and the BSA. Yet that's not exactly right, for the law was on my side. Perhaps the law in this scenario could represent moral right, as one generally assumes it does, and brute force which prevailed in the end could stand in for the DMCA, SBCPA, et. al. But perchance that's not right either. For there's nothing morally right about downloading copywritten works, it's just economically wrong for copyright holders (N.B. different from 'content creators') to be granted such an iron-fisted grip on content.
The real story doesn't have any less confusing an ending. After dragging me off to the shady back room and deleting the photographs, I proceeded to explain to them exactly why what they had just done was wrong. How they had every right to ask me to stop shooting, but they could not control the pictures taken before they asked. How a story would be written about Thriftway's closure, whether or not they refused to talk to the police. How I had just bought some candy for the office from them. And they proceeded to explain to me the 75 jobs being lost, the constant stream of photographers sulking about (N.B. I *never* sneak around on assignment, so I'm not sure I buy this one), the customers and employees supposedly freaking out about the photographers. After ten minutes of conversation, we shook each others' hands, I gave them the number of the paper to call and talk to a reporter about the story, and asked them if I could take more pictures to replace the deleted ones. They reluctantly consented. After a few frames, one of them even offered to move around some signs to make the pictures better, and was a little surprised when I told him that any picture I took of that would be a manipulation of the truth and thus highly unethical to publish.
My arm still aches, but I can't be mad. Ten minutes of dialogue ensured that. I won't be pressing charges. Those three men have enough misery in their lives ahead of them, enough of an uncertain future, without my adding to it, and they were scared. After all, as any Industry exec knows, fear can be a powerful force, can cause you to demonize customers, can cause you to handcuff the very people who can help your cause.
--Ari
