NH Supreme Court To Rule On Bigfoot Video Shoot In Public Park 166
alphadogg writes with this excerpt from the Boston Globe: "On a whim two years ago, performance artist Jonathan Doyle paraded around the bustling peak of New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock in a $40 Bigfoot costume from iParty. He thought his deadpan video interviews with hikers describing their Bigfoot sightings would be worth a few chuckles on YouTube, and might boost the profile of his other artwork. But the staff at Monadnock State Park found the Yeti act abominable. When Doyle returned with friends to shoot a sequel, the park manger quashed the production and ordered Doyle off the mountain, insisting he needed a state permit to film a movie in the park. Bigfoot stepped up with a lawsuit, alleging that the park's permit regulations are unconstitutional. The New Hampshire Supreme Court next month will hear Doyle's complaint. Though many elements of the dispute border on the absurd, the case raises some serious free speech issues."
Limits are necessary, or are they? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is huge. (Score:5, Informative)
The purpose of the regulation is mentioned in the article:
The permit regulations are for “mitigating the impacts of commercial events’’ in state parks, and “protecting visitors from unwelcome or unwarranted interference, annoyance, or danger,’’ among other considerations, the state wrote in its brief.
Do you really want a Geico lizard harassing you while you are hiking around Yellowstone? Probably not. What this guy was doing could be interpreted as shameless self-promotion and harassing people.
I don't know if he was harassing people or not. I wasn't there, and the article doesn't give much info. Maybe he was, maybe the permit requirements are reasonable, the court needs to decide that.
The point is, even if the court lets this stand, it's can't be used as a precedent to limit us any more than we already are (and really, I don't want people blocking traffic on the freeway for their pet youtube videos).
permits sometimes needed in national parks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:permits sometimes needed in national parks (Score:5, Informative)
The $100 fee is misleading. He would also need to take out a $2 million insurance bond which would have cost him several hundred dollars more on top of it. They may not have physically denied him access by telling him to get the permit, but the price tag for entry was prohibitively high when all is said and done and that's the problem. They seemed to apply the permit tied to bigger things to this guy in a costume with a consumer grade camera.
The way I've read into this seems to imply they just didn't like what he was doing the first time and hid behind the permit business this time as a way to make him go away. I don't think I'd spend $700/800+ just to film some Bigfoot footage for YouTube.
Re:Limits are necessary, or are they? (Score:4, Informative)