Libertine Hippy festival Burning Man has fallen foul of the Electronic Frontier Foundation after it tinkered with its rules to claim that all snaps taken at the event belonged to it.

The event will have tens of thousands of creative people gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom. Apparently, Burning Man is concerned that people will take pictures of the even and post them on the world wide wibble, as you do.

It has changed its Terms and Conditions for the event which says that as soon as “any third party displays or disseminates” your photos or videos in a manner that the Burning Man Organisation (BMO) doesn’t like, those photos or videos become the property of the BMO. In short “we automatically own all your stuff” man.

The BMO also limits your own rights to use your own photos and videos on any public websites and you are not allowed to licence your snaps using open source licences. You will not be able to label their photos “Burning Man 2009” or even use the words “Burning Man” on their Facebook walls or Twitter updates.

The EFF said that BMO's not the first to misuse the DMCA this way. Some doctors recently have begun to use the DMCA process to take down negative comments patients post about them to websites like RateMDs.com. It is just hugely ironic that an outfit dedicated to freedom of the individual, creativity and free spirit, should be such a bunch of fascist control freaks, the EFF says.