Junbe 28, 2010 - Cell phone film directors, at an event near you!

School is now over (insert sigh of relief here!) and I can catch up a bit on my sleep, my movie watching (yes, of course I've watched Eclipse already - I saw it at midnight on the opening day), and my scrap booking. The grade 8 students graduated recently and there are many individuals from that group that I will definitely miss. It's a high-spirited, close-knit group of students that make you scream or smile. At their graduation, their classroom teachers performed a dance that highlighted some of the students' special moves showcased at our annual "So You Think You Can Dance" show a few weeks prior. Just before the teachers danced, however, they had to make an announcement: you are allowed to take pictures but please, do not make any videos and do not upload said videos to Facebook or YouTube. They had to make the request because at the dance recital, several cell phones were popping up in the audience to capture routines and share them with the world. As a school, the teachers have to have media release forms and special permission to post scenes with students, but students have no qualms about sharing their mini-films. What restrictions, if any, can be placed on this? If you performed a dance routine at school and someone in the audience taped it and showed it, what rights do you have to get it taken down? I know that the teachers would have been reluctant to act goofy if they thought there was a chance that their antics would have been placed for public consumption online. I also realize that banning video cameras at concerts is difficult if not impossible - and what if it's the parents posting the videos instead of the kids? I wish I had answers to these questions. I guess that's why this counts as a musing.