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CNN Live At Daybreak

Festival Organizers Angry Over Nude Photos

Aired September 06, 2002 - 05:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, they must like to burn things out West, because organizers of the annual Burning Man celebration, held in the Nevada desert, are burning mad and filing a lawsuit.
CNN's Rusty Dornin has the scorching details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Three days of whimsy, art and more than a bit of the outlandish on public land in the Nevada desert. Then the icon of the party goes up in smoke. Burning Man, a kind of an art festival that began on a beach in San Francisco in 1986, is considered by some of its fans to be the ultimate in self-expression. For some, it's about getting all dressed up. For others, the fun is getting undressed.

But now the organizers of the do your own thing event are suing a video company for taking nude pictures of participants and selling the videos on the Internet.

TERRY GROSS, BURNING MAN ATTORNEY: It's clear what their intent was. I mean this was not a newsworthy intent in any sense. It was very salacious. I mean basically they just, you know, with their long range telephoto lens, all they did was zoom in not on a woman, you know, entire, but just focusing on breasts and genitals.

DORNIN: The suit, filed in San Francisco federal court, claims Burning Man is a private event that bars any videos for commercial use without permission. It says so right on the ticket. But a ticket doesn't constitute a contract, says a spokesman for Voyeur Video, the defendants in the suit. Besides, they say, how can festival organizers call an event with 30,000 people private?

JIM O'BRIEN, VOYEUR VIDEO: These women exposed themselves in suggestive manners for the cameramen and they enjoyed being photographed. And we just, we just document what goes on.

DORNIN (on camera): So you didn't ask them?

O'BRIEN: It's a public event and they, you know, we don't really have to ask.

DORNIN (voice-over): None of the women featured in the videos joined the lawsuit. Burning Man participant Laura Casey took outdoor showers are her campsite, but wasn't featured in the videos.

LAURA CASEY, BURNING MAN PARTICIPANT: I feel violated. I definitely feel violated. I went to Burning Man to have a good time, to be sort of free, be free of the outside world. I'd be embarrassed if my boss at work saw it, if my family saw it, because I was doing something that I thought was private.

DORNIN: Festival organizers claim Voyeur Video has been warned twice and even forced them to stop using the name Burning Man in the title. Voyeur Video argues it complied with that request, and now has every right to be at the festival.

O'BRIEN: Basically, Voyeur Video is sort of like CNN. We're a news company. We cover events in a different way than CNN and we go to, we just cover all the adult parties that go on all over the world.

DORNIN: A CNN for adult parties? Well, in covering this event, it's up to the courts to decide.

Rusty Dornin, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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