A word of warning about Youtube

If, like me, you post videos of your herpetological activities on Youtube, make sure you know the law and strictly abide by it:

RE: The Worst Thing About YouTube (YouTube - The Tubers Documentary) - YouTube

I agree this can be a problem. I also agree, that certain laws are probably too black and white. I worry, though, that people might think that such laws can therefore be ignored. Ah, just do it, but don´t put it on youtube. Well....no....i think it´s much more important to educate people about why those laws exist. If the public, or herpers are sufficiently educated about it, it may even allow for the laws to be changed and be less strict (and sometimes outright ridiculous).
Certain herping activities may cause you trouble if you share them with the rest of the world, but it´s also important to remember that some herping activities shouldn´t be done. I have seen a few youtube herping videos that i would have been glad to hear ended up in a fine.

That´s why i like your comment, Peter, "make sure you know the law and strictly abide by it" and i would add, make sure you understand why it exists. If you do, you may well find that you will voluntarily surrender your "right" to certain activities.

Azhael said:

I agree this can be a problem. I also agree, that certain laws are probably too black and white. I worry, though, that people might think that such laws can therefore be ignored. Ah, just do it, but don´t put it on youtube. Well....no....i think it´s much more important to educate people about why those laws exist. If the public, or herpers are sufficiently educated about it, it may even allow for the laws to be changed and be less strict (and sometimes outright ridiculous).
Certain herping activities may cause you trouble if you share them with the rest of the world, but it´s also important to remember that some herping activities shouldn´t be done. I have seen a few youtube herping videos that i would have been glad to hear ended up in a fine.

That´s why i like your comment, Peter, "make sure you know the law and strictly abide by it" and i would add, make sure you understand why it exists. If you do, you may well find that you will voluntarily surrender your "right" to certain activities.

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If you understand why it exists, you also might find yourself losing respect for the law. Sometimes the law is an ***, and I don't have much respect for poorly conceived or worded laws with perverse outcomes; blame it on my lack of an authoritarian personality. The law is a tool that we create, and it's often useful, but it also frequently behaves like a buggy piece of software, and bug-fixes can take decades to come out, if the buggy laws get patched at all.

Do what is right, just don't post it on YT

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(The uploader, when replying to someone who suggested that he should have simply left the injured Echidna at the side of the road and not put himself in legal jeopardy by stopping to examine it.)

I see related issues with some regularity in fora. If you're going to break laws, don't be foolish enough to advertise the fact you're doing it! An awful lot of people are only too happy too give out far too much personal information online, with no toughts as to the possible repercussions [legal or otherwise].

FrogEyes said:

I see related issues with some regularity in fora. If you're going to break laws, don't be foolish enough to advertise the fact you're doing it! An awful lot of people are only too happy too give out far too much personal information online, with no toughts as to the possible repercussions [legal or otherwise].

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There's still the problem of not always knowing that you're breaking laws. It's not immediately obvious that picking up a bearded dragon and promptly putting it back counts as taking it from the wild, for instance. I try to inform myself about the laws that are relevant to my own activities, but they're often a bit vague and difficult to interpret without expert legal advice (unclear wording as read by a layman, minor differences between English and Scottish laws etc), so I don't feature any native amphibians in my videos in case I accidentally run afoul of the law, and I spent a while recently researching the law to make sure that keeping things in my outdoor tanks didn't count as releasing them into the wild (the criteria for assessing that one are rather complicated, to say the least). There's also the danger that I might get prosecuted for animal cruelty if one of my videos shows me dropping a newt, or one of my tanks looks like it hasn't been cleaned in a while or something like that. It doesn't sound very likely, but you never know; stranger things have happened.