This site was suggested a couple times earlier this week, but not using the suggestion form, so it fell off my radar (seriously please please please use the form if you want to suggest a link, otherwise I just can't keep track of it; I get 1200+ emails a day and without the rules-based filters I use, I can't stay on top of things).
In any event, Barabara Streisand is taking legal action against the California Coastline project, which we've written about here before. The project is an astonishingly cool one, in which a photographic record of every inch of California's coastline is posted to the web and archived as new photos come in. The project has already been useful in filings regarding environemntal regulation, demonstrating the malfeasance of users of the coast, and in showing the effects of abuse of land.
Streisand is pissed because the photographers who shoot the coastline that her home abuts are, to her mind, invading her privacy (nevermind that dozens of satellites invade her privacy in exactly the same way, several times a day). Streisand, who has been active in environmental causes, has totally lost her shit over this, asserting that no one may photograph her property even from public airspace, no matter that this is a vital piece of the effort to preserve California's coast.
Since shortly after our web site "went live", Barbra Streisand has been complaining about a photograph on our web site, 3% of which covers her home. In February 2003, we received a threatening letter from her attorney, John Gatti of Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP, demanding that we "immediately cease and desist from photographing and displaying and identifying photographs of Ms. Streisand's home on the website www.californiacoastline.org […]".
We refuse to be intimidated by these tactics, which would undermine our constitutional protection of free speech and which would compromise the integrity of this historical and scientific database. As a result of which, we received a second threatening letter.
Our goal is to create a complete record of the California coastline. This record has been used by a number of government, university, press, and environmental groups (partial list) free of charge. It is not possible to provide the public with a complete record without the photographs of the coast that happen to include Ms. Streisand's estate. We do not believe in giving special treatment to wealthy coastal land owners.
Anyone with a private plane wanna snap a pic of Streisand's stretch of beach?
Thanks to John Parres for providing the image in question
