A draft bill aims to stop children and adolescents being secretly photographed - by forcing all mobile phone manufacturers to include a 'click' sound when a snap is taken.
Submitted by New York Republican Peter King, the brilliantly-named Camera Phone Predator Alert Act would "require mobile phones containing digital cameras to make a sound when a photograph is taken".
Child safety
The draft bill states: "Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone."
The idea of a phone making an audible 'snapping' sound that can be heard in a given radius might deter some people... though physically disabling the speaker, or even using normal cameras (which aren't included in the bill) are easy ways for sneak photographers to bypass making noise.
However, the notion isn't as preposterous as you might think... according to the Gadget Lab, a similar law is present in Japan, requiring all phones used to make a clicking sound to alert others of a picture being taken.
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lewisskinner
January 27th
2. Absolute stupidity! Those who want to work around it will be able to do so with a simply wire-cut and minimal inconvenience, and those who have no need to do so will be annoying everyone when taking photos of stained-glass windows in a church.
How about legislating to ban all audible sounds from phones so that these children and adolescents stop exploiting us with their loud music from mobile phones on public transport? Or course, the ban need not apply to mp3 players...
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technobrakes
January 27th
1. Im guessing America have never herd of divinci. I turned the click noise off my Sony Ericsson. How inconvenient at a wedding or any event were you need quite. The people that come up with ideas like this must not own computers. The law will only annoy the innocent and not help the situation at all, DRM anyone.
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