Just FYI - the bill is already on the agenda of next week's plenary session (Thursday 16 June), so best case scenario is that the parliament approves it that day. The opposition will likely again propose amendements, and might again call for a second reading (if 1/3 of the chamber's members request this).

Regards,
SPQRobin

2016-06-11 16:18 GMT+02:00 L.Gelauff <lgelauff@gmail.com>:
Awesome, thanks for the update. Thinking ahead - if this would be accepted as a change, how would that work with retroactivity? If it becomes active, I assume it will be valid for all new communications and reproductions, so we don't need to make a new photo to use this article, right? Which means practically speaking that we could undelete a lot of Belgian images the day it enters into force, which might be a nice PR thing - turning the pictures live on Wikipedia almost immediately. Is something like this being planned?

Is there expected to be a tricky situation for a set of works because the change speaks of 'and as long as the reproduction does not infringe upon the normal exploitation of the work' (freely translated)? Is it covered what is meant by 'normal exploitation'? Given that the architects have received so much for some of the buildings, might they claim that this is normal exploitation now? Having this clarified in parliamentary proceedings by the proposers, by stating clearly that charging for a photo is not normal exploitation, would probably resolve this, if that didn't happen already. 

Best,
Lodewijk

2016-06-11 15:52 GMT+02:00 Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com>:
Hi all,

The text on Freedom of Panorama in Belgium that was adopted in committee two weeks ago is finally available online (FR & NL). [1] There were only minor, technical changes as compared to the version adopted in the first reading. Notably, "reproduction" was replaced by "reproduction or communication" in two places, which is very useful in regard to the EU's legal framework.

The Socialists and the French speaking Christian-Democrats proposed again to limit the exception to non-commercial uses only, which was rejected by 10-5 with one abstention. The same opposition then proposed a second amendment, asking for at least compulsory attribution when the images are being used commercially. This was again rejected 10-5 with one abstention. [2]

The entire text was adopted with an identical voting behaviour of 10-5 with one abstention. The majority is made up of Flemish Nationalists, Flemish Christian-Democrats and the Liberals from both language groups. This is also the governing coalition of Belgium. The Greens, who normally side with the Socialists in Belgian federal politics, abstained instead of siding with the opposition which they are part of. As part of the debate the Socialists kept bringing up the example of France, while the Liberals and Flemish Nationalists replied, that they intentionally chose to model the legislation after the Dutch and UK examples.

The next step is a plenary vote that should happen rather soon (in several weeks, depending on the workload). We have a stable majority, but might still try to split the Socialists by asking parts of the group to at least abstain (voting for government coalition proposals is not really a political option for them at this point). After that the King has to confirm the bill by signing it before it is published in the State Gazette. 10 days after publication the text become legally binding in Belgium.

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