I was in a shoe store with a friend of mine and snapped a photo of her while I was there. The employee told me to give him the film or he'll call the cops, so I picked up and left before I even bothered arguing. By law could I have told him too bad? This isn't a specific question to the shoe store but i guess this could apply to any store, etc. If it's their property I'm assuming they're able to demand someone to not take a photo.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
They can insist that you stop taking pictures and they can eject you if they want, but they are not allowed to take your image card or film, nor can they force you to erase it.
About the only time a person can take your image card or film is if they are police or military guards AND you were taking pictures of a secure military installation or top secret facility.
Prior case law has established a value of $1500 for slides that are lost by a stock company or by a stock client. So I think it would be reasonable to value unprocessed images on a memory card the same way. If somebody forcibly takes your memory card with 100 images on it, that could cost them up to $150,000 if they lose it, but I know of no case law on that specific point.
You did well to avoid a confrontation and just leave. Much less complicated.
The Photographers' Rights PDF, updated Nov. 2006: [a href=\"http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf]http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf[/url]
I am not a lawyer.