 Hi, I'm David Cantor with the Law Offices of David Michael Cantor and welcome to my blog. Today's topic has to do with a story that was recently run on pedapixel.com. That's P-E-T-A-P-I-X-E-L.com. This is a camera website. They talked about a court decision that upholds the right of photographers. And here's what happened. The Federal Appeals Court in the District of Massachusetts ruled in favor of a Simon Glick. What happened with Mr. Glick was pretty interesting. He was over by the Boston Commons in 2007 walking by with his cell phone. He saw some officers arresting a young man and somebody yelled out, stop it, you're hurting him. He got out his camera phone and he began to videotape. We've all seen these videos pop up ever since the Rodney King beatings. But he was videotaping it and the officers came over and said, are you audio taping too? What are you doing? And he said, yes, I have the right to do it. And they cuffed him and arrested him and they basically charged him with a violation of Massachusetts wiretap statute and in the aiding in the escape of a prisoner. I mean, this is egregious. So what happened was they eventually dropped the aiding charge, but they went forward on the wiretap case. He filed a motion in the Boston Municipal Court. The judge ruled in Mr. Glick's favor stating that, quote, the officers were unhappy. They were being recorded during the arrest. Does not make a lawful exercise at First Amendment right a crime. So they agreed with the minutes thrown out. He then filed complaints for internal affairs. They ignored him. So then filed a lawsuit under 42 USC 1983. This is called a 1983 action for a violation of the civil rights and his Fourth Amendment rights and for malicious prosecution. The state came back saying, wait a second, our officers have qualified immunity. Basically they can do what they want. You can't touch them. And the court came back and said, no, no, no, that Mr. Glick was exercising clearly established First Amendment rights in the filming of the officers in a public space. This is important because we've seen this happen in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we actually had a person who was filming a DUI arrest and they walked over and said, erase that on your phone or you will be arrested. That person erased that. And we did a blog on it on how that officer actually destroyed evidence in the course of his job. Nobody paid attention at Scottsdale PD. And this is important. Now Petapixel actually has what's known as a photographer rights gray card set. And apparently when a photographer is getting the lighting right, they have what's called a gray card. Usually just a card with some gray in color, obviously. And this particular card, they've listed the rights that a photographer has in case they get harassed by somebody in public. And I think that's an excellent idea. If you go to their site, you can purchase one for $12. I believe, as the court believes, you can film anyone in a public space or record them. Even if they don't know it, that's in the state of Arizona, by the way, as long as you know you're doing it, you can film them in a public space or record them. And for the officers to say, no, no, no, we don't like being watched while we're doing our jobs, I think is incredibly inappropriate. But hey, that's what I think, tell me what you think.