I've got no opinion either way on this issue. I saw the PB article headline the other day and never bothered clicking on it because I just don't care about some grainy spy shot of a prototype bike I am not going to buy. If I was in bike buying mode and it was likely to be a model I was keen on I would have read the article. If I was forced to choose a side I would say the testing/R&D process needs to be done with more care to prevent people taking photos vs. the riding public at large not taking photos when they see something cool at a trailhead. That's just because the former process involves professionals/industry insiders who are compensated to develop bikes and the later are just the largely clueless riding public who have mostly never given this issue a second thought.
Any MTB media site could just include in its "Terms and Conditions" for posting to the site that pre-production/prototype images/video are not allowed and will be taken down without notice if posted. Given we consume/participate on these sites for free that seems like a reasonable condition to agree to and I would assume in the course of a year we'd be talking about a handful of posts that would be affected so not some wide ranging impact. This gets around any ethical concerns about how site users are treated and preserves the desired expressed here by Pete to respect the MTB company R&D process.
Feb. 26, 2021, 6:28 a.m. - Vik Banerjee
I've got no opinion either way on this issue. I saw the PB article headline the other day and never bothered clicking on it because I just don't care about some grainy spy shot of a prototype bike I am not going to buy. If I was in bike buying mode and it was likely to be a model I was keen on I would have read the article. If I was forced to choose a side I would say the testing/R&D process needs to be done with more care to prevent people taking photos vs. the riding public at large not taking photos when they see something cool at a trailhead. That's just because the former process involves professionals/industry insiders who are compensated to develop bikes and the later are just the largely clueless riding public who have mostly never given this issue a second thought. Any MTB media site could just include in its "Terms and Conditions" for posting to the site that pre-production/prototype images/video are not allowed and will be taken down without notice if posted. Given we consume/participate on these sites for free that seems like a reasonable condition to agree to and I would assume in the course of a year we'd be talking about a handful of posts that would be affected so not some wide ranging impact. This gets around any ethical concerns about how site users are treated and preserves the desired expressed here by Pete to respect the MTB company R&D process.