> It becomes even stranger in some cases. For example, you can share a photo of the Eiffel Tower because of its age – but only if it is taken during the day. If the photo is at night, the lighting is considered a separate installation and falls foul of Freedom of Panorama.
It's called a "money grab". Wouldn't you love to be able to tax photographers for taking pictures of public places too?
I mean, it's not as if there will be no pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night, that'd be silly. They'll just be able to restrict those photos to those willing to pay licensing fees.
But this is Europe we're talking about... the same people who think the label "cheddar cheese" should be copyrightable.
I think you might mean a "protected designation of origin" or a "protected geographical indication" rather than "copyright" - apparently "cheddar cheese" has no such protection although "Orkney Cheddar Cheese" does:
Another example is champagne. Sparkling wine from other regions is not technically champagne.
However, limiting the ability of the public to photograph things outdoors doesn't seem quite comparable. If a real estate company owned a significant number of buildings in a downtown area, could they then copyright the skyline of a city as the creative work of their collective architectural firms?
If you made a large installation visible from space (say, the Palm Islands in Dubai), could you claim copyright on images of Earth with high enough detail to make out your work?
Basically, what's the limit on this, because it seems like it has a pretty high ceiling for ridiculousness.
> If a real estate company owned a significant number of buildings in a downtown area, could they then copyright the skyline of a city as the creative work of their collective architectural firms?
Usually copyright belongs to the architect and can't be transferred to anyone in Europe.
> If you made a large installation visible from space (say, the Palm Islands in Dubai), could you claim copyright on images of Earth with high enough detail to make out your work?
I'm pretty sure that's already the case in many jurisdictions, including Germany where there is freedom of panorama. That only applies for images taken without technical assistance to get the view and using a satellite to take the picture is certainly technical assistance (as is a ladder btw.).
Yes, artistic lighting installations can be copyrightable, and that on the Eiffel Tower is newer than the tower. Somewhat similar situation to a mural being painted on an old building, or a new statue being installed on its facade. Without freedom of panorama, in that case you could photograph the building, but only if you're careful to crop out the mural/statue from the photo.
It's not asinine. Being able to copyright creative lighting installations seems reasonable: what if someone copies your design? But it's not reasonable to charge anyone who takes a photo of it.
I think the asinine part is copyright transferring to another medium. Its one thing to copyright the lighting installation (which is a fine thing, more power to you), but another thing to now own copyright a photo that happens to have said installation in it.
I don't understand how this could ever be enforceable. Maybe it's just a symptom of my inability to imagine how this would play out in other justice systems outside the US.
If the photo's "of" an artist's work then you probably do owe the artist. If you're photographing something that happens to have an artist's work in the background, that's going to be fair use, like the "dancing baby" video that has a bit of a Prince song in the background.
I think we are talking about a public installation like a sculpture, building, etc. No photograph, book, or film is an actual copy; but your examples are all basically trying to make a copy that can function like the original.
Couldn't a series of photos be composited to function like an original sculpture? E.g. a photosphere or VR-like presentation that allows the viewer to experience the sculpture from different angles, perhaps even in 3D?
Let me get this straight. To justify the protection of a light sculpture from photography, you create a scenario where the photographer is taking a bunch of pictures to build a "photosphere or VR-like presentation"? I shouldn't be allowed to photograph the sculpture because there is the possibility I will use these photographs to create some virtual replacement? This is how bad laws are made.
What about performing your own version of a copyrighted song publicly? Reciting a copyrighted book in a theater performance? That's not allowed almost everywhere in the world and is still not appearing in exact form anywhere else.
Which is fair enough because they are easily reproduced but we're talking about famous landmarks here. I don't think I will find the Eiffel tower's light arrangement anywhere but the Eiffel tower any time soon simply because of its distinguished shape, not because of stringent copyright law.
Which leaves a loophole then, tourist locations can prevent photography from including it by adding a copyrightable work to a building.
Also can shops not sue Google as their window displays have been copied by Google's streetview photographers (and copied and recopied many times over by Google).
Based on such a draconian interpretation of copyright law I imagine a large company could successfully sue Google with this (eg if new owners were asset stripping anyway and so didn't need to use Google for advertising/location services).
Love it, street art using images of blurred out people from Google's Streetview pasted in the real life locations where the original images were captured.
Yes, that's why freedom of panorama is an exception to copyright in many jurisdictions, because otherwise taking photos of public places becomes a minefield of copyrightable stuff strewn everywhere.
So since this is widely misreported currently, here is how I understand the situation:
* Freedom of panorama is the freedom to take a picture of a building or environment that might be copyrighted. The EU currently allows countries to restrict this right because of historical context.
* There are a handful of countries that restrict that usage (France, Belgium etc.)
* They now want to add a new rule in place that allows to make a distinction between commercial and noncommercial usage.
* There is no push to reduce the Freedom of Panorama in countries that do not have it restricted.
Interesting point re:commercial usage. If a user of a social media site posts an image not for their own profit, it's still contributing to the social media network's profits in that it's keeping users engaged with the site while the social network runs ads.
> This is not true. European copyright law would not allow individual member states to introduce exceptions beyond what it explicitly permits.
Maybe I did not make myself clear: a country that does not have a restriction on freedom of panorama will not have a restriction after those rules. This only tries to harmonize the restrictions between the countries that have such restrictions already.
That’s wrong! The new law would add those restrictions for ALL the countries. That’s why everyone is in such an uproar.
The changed proposal would make it illegal for a nation to allow the freedom of panorama.
Read the blog of the MEP who wrote the original proposal (which had a clause saying that the Freedom of panorama should apply everywhere): https://juliareda.eu/2015/06/fop-under-threat/
Read the blogpost I linked? It’s from the MEP who wrote the original proposal, and explains why it would add those restrictions for all the countries in the first few paragraphs already.
> Maybe I did not make myself clear: a country that does not have a restriction on freedom of panorama will not have a restriction after those rules.
No, existing member states will have a restriction. It will only have Freedom of Panorama for non-commercial use. Member states are NOT allowed to have freedoms beyond those in the directive: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama_2015_EVA...
If the EU currently allows country to restrict this, why would a new rule be needed to allow to make a distinction between commercial and noncommercial usage?
> If the EU currently allows country to restrict this, why would a new rule be needed to allow to make a distinction between commercial and noncommercial usage?
Because it's very annoying to have to consult local laws to figure out if you can use a picture or not. The idea is that you end up with three levels: free to use, free to use for non commercial use, restricted.
A country would then no longer be permitted to add special excemptions other than those (for instance it would be not permitted to say "restricted but free for professional magazines" or something like that)
Apparently it's a misguided attempt to protect creators by preventing others from profiting from their work. Most of the professional bodies being "protected" are actually opposed to this, as I understand from an article I read on the topic a few days ago, by the guy who wrote a report that has been quoted in the debates around this law.
The entire report is about harmonizing EU copyright, to make one set of rules instead of 28.
Countries that already have this restriction (such as France) are interested in keeping their customs and traditions, and lobbied to make this part of the report where before, it would have called the EU Commission to write EU law to forbid it EU-wide.
"Think of the artists" was a great pitch given that the report is penned by a Pirate Party MEP (and so it's easy to believe that the entire report is pro-consumer/anti-artist), and so that change slipped in.
[edit: As a funny side note, Google Street View is available in France, where such a law is in effect, but very limited in Germany, where there is no such law. It's not strictly enforced right now in France, except for night-time Eiffel tower photographs, but they want to keep it. ]
This term is used quite a bit in reference to copyright laws, and it's always bullshit. When two countries have differing laws and they want to "harmonize", wouldn't you expect that at least once in awhile "harmonization" would mean that the country with the stricter laws would adopt the more lenient laws of the other?
The proposal contains several such instances. For example it shortens the copyright of war heroes by 30 years in France, simplifies reuse of government works and provides libraries more rights to digitize and e-lend books.
You're absolutely correct. The optimal end result would be that nobody sees the creator's works online. Which could be useful in a "I hope nobody sees my terrible work" sort of way.
It probably has something to do with tourism. The thinking must be that if you see the Eiffel Tower's picture online (I believe this new law threatens the whole EU) you won't want to go see it in person anymore.
And using the typical "copyright math", they must also think one picture view = one lost tourist, so their studies probably already show that picture taking is "costing the EU trillions of euros".
The question is whether the copyright holder expected to retain copyright of photographs of the said buildings. To me, it's a very unreasonable expectation since the photographs are not only of artistic value, but of practical use when you need to identify a landmark.
What if I write a description of the building? Would it be considered a copyright violation?
As far as I know, no court has ever decided something like that but most likely yes. But don't ask me where to draw the line.
Also note that this is no different to other copyrighted works: If you were to describe the shapes of all letter in a copyrighted text that would be a violation just as it would be if you gave a pixel-by-pixel description of a copyrighted photograph.
Continental European law is mostly decided on a "spirit of the law" basis not on a "letter-by-letter basis". So if someone finds a loophole that obviously is one it is automatically covered.
If I'm reading the 2nd article correctly, the current situation is that the European Parliament will vote on July 9 whether to recommend removing the freedom-of-panorama exception, but whether that recommendation would be acted on is up to the European Commission. That's better than it being actually passed into binding rules on July 9, but I think some level of concern is warranted. It would definitely be better if the EU Parliament didn't make that recommendation. But it's true that some articles are implying EU copyright law will actually be changed on July 9, which is not the case.
Baker's Law (just named it - let's hope it catches on): If a theregister.co.uk article appears that has a controversial standpoint related to intellectual property then the probability it will be penned by Andrew Orlowski approaches 1.
not the onion - had not heard of freedom of panorama. I just assumed it was part of the commons social contract - you can put something in public view and others are free to see it.
I can understand copyright protections preventing someone from copying a building's design or aesthetics, but can't imagine how it would extend to holiday pictures were the building just happens to be in the background
Does this mean that I suddenly can't post any picture made outdoors because I'll get sued by some City Architects Association which happen to "protect" the "rights" of a random architect which designed that block of flats I have in the background?
The amended section of the report asks to extend that provision to cover the entire EU.
Even the parties that voted for the change (because protecting artists can't be a bad thing, right?) aren't sure any more after artists (incl. architects who are the most obvious beneficiaries of such legislation) complained.
And it only covers buildings that aren't out of copyright (ie. if it's personal copyright, the original artist not yet dead for 70 years, for corporate copyright 95 years IIRC).
This kind of law isn't even at the level of those laws that reduce people's belief in the importance of laws. It is the kind of law that people aren't even aware of because it is so far outside the realm of something anyone could possibly legislate or enforce that it never enters into their mind that someone could have tried to actually write a law about it.
Why isn't Greece now suing everyone who's ever taken a photo of the Acropolis for damages? That's the only vaguely useful application of this silly law i can think of.
No, no, the Acropolis is too old. What they need to do is install some dramatic lighting, and claim that the new combination is copyrighted. See also: Eiffel tower
That post is talking about people taking personal photos and sharing them privately; it doesn't address Wikimedia's concern that sharing those photos on their sites might be construed as "commercial activity".
The film and tv industry should get on board. I can't imagine they want to pay extra licensing fees when filming in public.
Is there going to be a body like PRS (which collects a fee from people playing music in public, and distributes some of that money to performers) but for buildings?
How would they work out the fee to charge? Per metre of height? Percentage of screen taken by building?
I don't think you'll ever get the film and TV industry to campaign for a reduction of copyright authority, even if it benefits them in that particular instance.
Just propose a retro-active extension of copyright so that all the Disney movies based on fairy tales (which aren't actually _that_ old, at least the versions they based their movies on) require licensing of the original story.
That probably produces quite an outcry (given how hard it likely is to identify all constituents of the estate).
It's generally pretty well established that a properly executed model release provides a pretty wide latitude of commercial usage--although one can always come up with corner cases, e.g. use of a photo in a context that implies the subject is a drug addict or something similar.
By contrast, there's very little legal precedent around the scope of property rights in commercial photography.
The analogous question is what rights you have to use a photo for which you don't have a model release, and that's where I think things are pretty fuzzy.
It would have been nice if they had linked to some explanation that gives some more details on what "Freedom of Panorama" is. I had never heard of it before today.
In India, there "could" be a lot of ridiculous laws, but people generally violate all these laws. I think with such a huge population, a law that is quite unpopular is never followed.
Realizing the article is about the UK, it smells fishy...
Us Copyright law has the "personal use" exemption, which is entirely separate from commercial and non-commercial use. Taking a photo of ANYTHING and using it for ANY PERSONAL PURPOSE, such as sharing it among family and friends is perfectly legal, as long as no commercial or non-commercial entity profits from the situation.
Posting said photo to an online service where it is exhibited publicly has not, as far as I know, been tested in US courts yet. I'm sure the lobbying powers of Facebook and Google will prevent that case of ever taking place.
That article smells of ignorant sensationalist journalism to me.
As soon as ads are shown on the page, it's typically considered commercial, at least in Germany (but probably throughout the EU).
Also, Facebook, Google et al usually have ToS that allow commercial re-use. So sharing your personal photos is possible - so posting images with any kind of copyrighted scenery to such services (likely includes Twitter and Instagram, too) becomes a legal minefield for the user, because they may be liable if the platform operator ever chooses to use such an image.
So does that mean that you're not allowed to use the images in places where other people would make money?
Most copyright laws assume there are just 2 players: Aki who owns the property and the copyright, and Ben who takes & monetizes the photo and then pays royalties.
In my scenario there is a 3rd: Aki owns the property and copyright still, and Ben still takes the photo and posts it. But then Caro monetizes the page that the photo is on.
Does Ben owe royalties to Aki? Does Caro? Do both? Neither?
Most copyright laws assume there are just 2 players: Aki who owns the property and the copyright, and Ben who takes & monetizes the photo and then pays royalties.
Usually it's the reproducer who has to pay, so Caro would have to pay both Ben and Aki, for the photo and property licenses respectively.
But Caro isn't reproducing the image, merely hosting it, as part of a larger image-sharing site. The site has ads, which is how the image is monetized. Ben uploaded it without getting permission from anyone.
So Caro is getting money because Ben is using a copywritten photo for private use.
But Caro isn't reproducing the image, merely hosting it
A private backup service would be mere hosting. If Caro sends the image to third-parties, it's reproduction. Now, in the US, the DMCA law grants Caro a safe harbour, which is to say, a pardon for the infringement if Caro takes it down rapidly after being notified. But it's still an infringement.
Ben is also infringing, of course, assuming he knew the image was to be shared by Caro.
Well, I guess you could say that Ben is requesting Caro send the image to third parties - Ben's friends Darius, Esmre, and Fae - by linking them to the page on Caro's site that holds Aki's copywritten photo.
Also we'll assume that Ben waived rights to the photo on upload (as is common) and that he's one of those "No copyright intended" fools that also seem relatively common.
Not entirely irrelevant since this same scheme was attempted with the Chicago bean sculpture. My question is that if a mirrored piece of public art reflects an image that you own the copyright to can you hold the owner of the artwork in violation for an unauthorized "reproduction"? If not then why does light traveling the other way get special treatment?
Wtf? what is the justification for this?