CES's stupid anti-photo policy: Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel tears into the monster Consumer Electronics Show for its photo policy, which allows the show to turf out anyone who takes a photo of a vendor's wares without permission. CES is a giant show, with tens of thousands of attendees, and is the very definition of public disclosure. There's no conceivable reason to exhibit something at CES except to make it public. The idea that you can stop your magic product-photons from being cursed by the evil CCDs of the attendee photographers and thus keep your publicly exhibited products from becoming public is, well, just dumb.

CES exists for two primary reasons: showing new products to retail buyers who are looking to plan inventory purchases to fill up stores cleaned out by holiday shopping and to promote the latest new products to consumers via the coverage provided by enthusiast and mainstream media. Anyone who has covered CES in the past has had a forceful sales drone literally throw themselves between cameras and their products, chiding for attempting to show their products to the world outside of their carefully orchestrated marketing. This against our primary role as media and the show's raison d'etre: to show new products to potential customers.

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See also: Photo-sharing for pictures taken where you are not allowed to take them

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