Some years ago, the Pebble Beach Association tried to assert that the lone cypress tree could not be photographed without permission since they claimed they used an abstraction as a registered trademark. For a while, the city of Chicago apparently prevented professional photographers from taking pictures of "the bean" statue. Paris wishes to forbid taking a picture of the Eiffel tower at night. And in the post 9/11 environment, some law enforcement folks have interfered with photographers taking certain pictures, of the ExxonMobil facility in Torrance, CA, for example.
One of the more interesting blogicles I've come across is this one concerning DRM and photography on the "Lady That's My Skull" blog written by a person whose online identity is "Sleestak". The blogicle is worth looking at in part because of the novel ideas and in part because of the way in which photographs have been modified to show an example of how DRM might work when photographing public spaces and other subject matter.
If not already in existence then soon the technology will be available, and then the inevitable law, that would require all recording devices to access a license database of copyrighted material prior to allowing the photograph or video to be successfully recorded. In the near future all image recording devices could be required to determine if the the image or subject in the selected scene was protected by copyright or was restricted in some way. Anyone attempting to take a photograph of a work of art, something in public venue or otherwise protected subject matter would find their attempt blocked by the software of the recording device. Even today with little effort and varying success commonly available software can analyze a digital image for content such as in facial or shape recognition or in use for comparison for differences between images.
The future camera loaded with restrictive software would otherwise function normally, but the software would block and spoil the image for the user unless a fee is paid to the owner of the copyrighted subject or an EULA is strictly adhered to.
The recording device would simply not capture an image if something restricted by copyright is anywhere in the image field.
WiFi-enabled cameras are here. Doing image fingerprint lookups for the infinite number of possible shots seems a challenge presently, although doing lookups after the picture is taken might work if one could restrict the use of the image for a period of time.
Even if this isn't an immediately practical approach, "Sleestak's" blogicle does raise interesting and important questions concerning the technical, practical, and economic limits of DRM as the basket of relevant technologies evolves.
