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