[try_the_bass]

I think the provider's concern is that a) it will become a burden on the system if this usage becomes widespread, and b) it encourages people to engage in risky behavior in order to have their image captured on one of these cameras.

Both of these are valid arguments, which you seem to discount out of hand, as if the provider's concerns are inherently invalid.

Let me flip the question: should anyone who captures an image of you in a public setting be free to monetize your likeness? If you are arguing that the provider's concerns and wishes are irrelevant, would that not also apply to every person who leaves the privacy of their own homes? That they, too, would have absolutely no say in how their likeness in public settings is used?

I feel like we've already established a precedent that yes, you should have some say in how your likeness is used, even when it's captured in settings where you are freely putting it on display in public.

Why does this not apply to other resources that are just as freely given?

[Dylan16807]

The idea that it might become a burden seems unrealistic to me.

And banning pictures is a bad way to keep people out of traffic.

As to your flip... it really doesn't make sense to me. This art project gives people control of their own images! The city is trying to stop them from controlling their own images.

Saying the provider's wishes don't matter (which is a pretty strong exaggeration of what I said) does not even resemble saying the subject's wishes don't matter.

[try_the_bass]

It seems like you intentionally missed my point: when you're in public, you are the provider of some non-trivial amount of data. There is no distinction between subject and provider in that case.

To follow your logic in that case is to argue that you should have no control over how your likeness is used once you provide it to the public by simply being in public.

This is nonsense. The provider of the information being collected should generally have some say in how that data is used; and if we want a respectful and kind society, we should respect those wishes so long as they are not unreasonable.

It is not unreasonable for NYCDOT to ask that people not use their traffic cameras to take selfies. Encouraging people to flout those wishes, even in the name of "art", is to encourage a society that does not respect other people's wishes.

[Dylan16807]

It was not intentional.

> when you're in public, you are the provider

I see.

I think we should draw a distinction between information provided on purpose or not. And other distinctions based on who is in the information. So I see your point now, but I think the calculation goes differently because my argument is not nearly that simple nor entirely focused on that specific aspect.

You have control over your likeness because it's your likeness. If you provide someone else's likeness, you deserve much less control. If they want to control it, you deserve even less.

> The provider of the information being collected should generally have some say in how that data is used; and if we want a respectful and kind society, we should respect those wishes so long as they are not unreasonable.

I'd give a lot more leeway for going against the wishes of the provider in particular. I don't think they should get a very privileged position. It's not burdening them, and it's not their personal information. They can ask but I don't think polite society requires agreeing in this case. It's nice of them to be worried about other people's safety but it's a pretty minor safety issue and the person walking around is the one who gets to make the decisions about their own safety.

[try_the_bass]

I think I agree that there's a distinction to be made between information provided on purpose (or for a purpose) and not. However, I think I come to the opposite conclusion: information provided on purpose should have stronger guarantees in favor of the provider's wishes, because purpose implies intent, and intent requires effort to turn into action.

Your likeness, on the other hand, is freely given to all observers, at no real cost or effort to yourself. You just are, and it is. In fact, you touch on this when you talk about "burden" on the provider.

NYCDOT might not be providing their personal information, but effort and cost is required to maintain this infrastructure, and I think the effort begets respect, at the very least.

While I agree that someone should always have some level of input into how their likeness is used, because it truly is no burden on them to provide it, I think respectively less weight should be given to it. I think the best effort should still be given to respecting a person's wishes when it comes to their likeness, of course, but perhaps comparatively less than when someone intentionally shares something that took effort to create.

So it appears in fact I agree with your logic, but have somehow arrived at the opposite conclusion. Perhaps because I consider "burden" more broadly than just the marginal effort of supporting an additional viewer of a camera feed?

[Dylan16807]

The impact on their server is barely anything. Itty bitty fractions of a penny. So the amount we need to respect their wishes specifically for burden reasons is negligible.

Control over your own likeness is not "burden", but it's important too, and in this situation I would say it's orders of magnitude more impactful and important than the server costs of a few seconds of viewing.

> Perhaps because I consider "burden" more broadly than just the marginal effort of supporting an additional viewer of a camera feed?

The reason they set it up is not for selfies, so I think the marginal cost of selfies is the right metric. But even if we look at total burden to set up the system, that's divided over a ton of users, so the person taking a selfie is still looking at a minuscule fraction of it.

[try_the_bass]

> The impact on their server is barely anything. Itty bitty fractions of a penny. So the amount we need to respect their wishes specifically for burden reasons is negligible.

I don't think you can amortize "burden" across the number of consumers like that. If you want to take that approach, then you also seem to be arguing that the more people who see you in public, the less your likeness is worth--but I think empirically the opposite is true.

> Control over your own likeness is not "burden", but it's important too, and in this situation I would say it's orders of magnitude more impactful and important than the server costs of a few seconds of viewing.

But, why? If the marginal cost of someone taking a picture of you is next to nothing, why is control over that more impactful and important than server costs, for the same duration of viewing? If the marginal burden of someone viewing your likeness is approximately 0, and you're weighting the producer's preferences by that marginal cost (below), does that also not imply that the more people who see your likeness, the less your wish for control over your own likeness matters?

> The reason they set it up is not for selfies, so I think the marginal cost of selfies is the right metric. But even if we look at total burden to set up the system, that's divided over a ton of users, so the person taking a selfie is still looking at a minuscule fraction of it.

Again, I think this is the wrong way of weighting it. I think the preferences in general are an indivisible quantity, and the same regardless of the number of people must decide whether or not to respect those preferences. It's a preference, and each potential consumer must decide for themselves whether or not to respect those preferences. Having more consumers does not "cheapen" the weight of a producer's preferences for the next marginal consumer.

A model in which you weight preferences by marginal burden subsequently cheapens all preferences based on the number of potential consumers of the thing you're sharing. This makes no sense, and empirically--as in the case of "control over your own likeness"--more consumers seems to make that preference even more important. By amortizing the weight of preferences across the pool of potential consumers, you're essentially arguing that if your likeness were to be made available to everyone, for free, your own preferences regarding control of your likeness would become irrelevant.

I don't necessarily think that all preferences are equal, but I also bias towards weighing everyone's preferences as worth respecting, unless there's a compelling reason to assign more or less weight to those preferences. For example, when preferences are legally protected or morally aligned, I tend to weight them more; while preferences that are simply asinine or I consider to be immoral are similarly downweighted. I don't feel like this is a radical viewpoint, though?