2013/8/20 Pavlo Shevelo <pavlo.shevelo@gmail.com>:

> Hi, I'm from Ukraine (WMUA) and we also "enjoy"
>> very complicated and unfriendly law for photos of monuments and
> heritage
> so called "lack of panorama freedom" so we (perhaps not me personally but
> still) are very much interested in experience interchange how to handle that
> tough and nasty matters.

Hi Pavlo,

I don't know in details the situation of Ukraine but for Italy and for
what I have heard, also Greece the situation is worse than the lack of
panorama freedom (we also don't have that, if you wonder, anyway).

The point is that both Italy and Greece (and AFAIK also Egypt) the law
says that if the photo is depicting something which is considered by
the State part of "cultural heritage" then there are addtional
restriction other then copyright.

In practice, in both countries when you want to publish a photo of a
monument (and putting it on a website is considered "publishing") you
have to ask for a permission/authorization from some governamental
agency (in Italy they are called "Soprintendenze per i Beni Culturaly"
in Greece something along the line of "Counsel for Archeological
Heritage") indicated by the law.
To give this permission this agencies may require you the paiement of
some fee/tax.

This depends on the fact that the law considers the monuments in his
territory as "assets" of the State and therefore they ask for a
"compensation" when you want to make photos of it.

Please note that in principle this has nothing to do with copyright
(and therefore with panorama freedom). This applies to everything that
the law and these governamental  agencies consider "cultural
heritage", they may as well be archeological remains and everything
still apply (and, /ça va sans dire/, both Italy and Greece have a lot
of monuments which are well beyond any copyright protection)

Details on how this is implemented vary (and possibily Greece is in a
worse situation than Italy), but for example in Italy we do not know
if this law is applicable to foreign (i.e. non-italian) citizens. The
point is that copyright laws are applicable in all countries because
there international trade agreements that say that is valid in all
countries we do not know if these kind of law have the same
applicability of copyright.

C

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