I was thinking about those outfits celebrities wear that mess with flash photography equipment, and I was watching a dude on TV just now whose shirt pattern was going apeshit because of the camera, and I wondered if there could ever be a pattern or material that, when filmed, caused the camera irreversible damage. And if that were physically possible, I wondered if intentionally showing up to camera-heavy events wearing said shirt would constitute a crime on my part.
It’s just a shirt after all. It’s not like I’m grabbing a camera and smashing it on the ground. But at the same time, I know it will have that effect, so I’m accountable. But it’s not like my shirt is emitting damaging laser beams or anything, it’s entirely passive.
Also, is there anything like this scenario in real life/law?
There, technically, hypothetically, could be a situation where such shirt is possible. But it would require a bug in the camera firmware, which would probably work on just one camera model. For example, a shirt with a pattern that tricks the camera into detecting more faces than it was designed to, causing a buffer overflow and a crash. Reasonable, although extremely unlikely
I rolled my eyes at your optimism that such a material would exist but I took it all back by the end. Despite it being incredibly niche and unrealistic, that is by far the most clever suggestion in the thread!