A sculpture that has been put up in a Seattle public sculpture park has a nice little sign on it describing what it is, a typewriter eraser. At the bottom of the description is a note to all who care to read it:

Sorry, photography of this sculpture is prohibited.

As a photographer, these types of things bother me. It is in a public park, which was paid for by local taxpayers. Avoiding the entire debate over politics and legal copyrights, it is just lame. The purpose of doing this is not for your average tourist who may take a photograph, although they would like to stop that as well, but aimed towards those who may take a photograph of it and have postcards or other memorabilia produced which would yield profits to a 3rd party, not the artist or the city.

FreedomToPhotograph.com has several articles submitted by photographers who have had issues taking photographs in public locations; this is the first case I�ve been made aware of where there is a sign made to specifically try to stop people from snapping a photograph. What will now more then likely happen, due in part to the amount of coverage this story is getting due to the dumb sign, is a barrage of photographers taking photos and sharing them on the internet, quickly followed by vandalism, probably in the form of graffiti.

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