Thanks very much for explaining that, Nathan. That was instructive and it
confirmed some of what I had suspected.
Wikipedia has been worried, however, that it would not be able to use images,
that it would be considered commercial use.
Finally, it doesn’t surprise me that some have jumped to inaccurate
conclusions; it seems that few people trust the machinations of the EU, the
Parliament or the Commission. Much of its operation appears to be obscure or
remote, some of it secretive. An example of the latter is TTIP . . .
Chris
> On 10 Jul 15, at 05:27, Nathan Wajsman <nwajsman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Our agency does not deal with copyright per se but yes, I know about the
> issues.
>
> First: the petitions are a bunch of alarmist bullshit. I got one from
> change.org <http://change.org/> which urged me to sign, otherwise “taking a
> holiday snap in Europe might be illegal in a few days”. Hogwash. Nothing of
> this sort was ever contemplated. The whole discussion is about commercial
> use. So nobody’s ability to take a photo of anything and stick it on their
> Facebook page was ever questioned.
>
> Second: the “Freedom of panorama” is a right that exists in some EU countries
> (e.g. the UK or Sweden) but not in others (e.g. France or Italy). In the
> countries which do not have this freedom, such as France, you have to get
> permission from the owner before using an image of a restricted object
> COMMERCIALLY. Contrary to popular belief, taking a picture of the Eiffel
> Tower at night is not illegal; using that image in an advertisement is unless
> you get permission from the authority that manages the image rights for the
> city of Paris. This has nothing to do with fascism, a word that should not be
> used lightly.
>
> Third: what happened in the past few weeks is that the European Parliament
> has been debating copyright. Why? Because it is widely expected that the
> European Commission will propose a revision of EU copyright law during the
> fall, and the Parliament wanted to give the Commission some recommendations
> (which it did not ask for and which it can ignore since the Commission has
> the exclusive right to propose legislation, which is then decided upon by the
> Parliament and the Council).
>
> Fourth: during that debate, a French MEP, Mr. Cavada, proposed an amendment
> that would harmonise the “freedom of panorama” across the EU. Being French,
> he wanted the law everywhere to be like it is in France, i.e. restrict
> commercial use in some cases.
>
> Fifth: yesterday, the Parliament voted down the proposed amendment, so that
> its official position is that each Member State should have the freedom to
> deal with “freedom of panorama” as it wishes, i.e. the status quo remains.
>
> Sixth: the whole thing was a storm in a teacup because of what I explained
> under the third point.
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