The Photo Flap Moves to Rockville
From Marc Fisher, Washington Post:
The battle over the right to treat downtown Silver Spring as if it were a real downtown–that is, a public space where people have the right to express themselves as the Constitution guarantees–continues. In the latest chapter, the developer has announced–get this–a photo contest in which winners will get $100 in coupons for doing what the developer still insists it has a right to prohibit: Take photos in an open public space.
But now, the battleground shifts a few miles to the north, to downtown Rockville, where the new town center–also a private development spurred by considerable public investment–is also making noises about preventing citizens from taking photos in what appears to any reasonable person to be a public space.