[Advocacy Advisors] Freedom of Panorama case law - which law applies?

[Jan Weisensee]

Hi all,

Thanks for sharing Dimi. I have no info on questions 1 and 2, but as
for question 3, in terms of EU advocacy the story is good for two
reasons:

(1) Because part of the problem stems from the fact that there is no
single EU regime on FoP. As you know many MEPs and most COM people hate
legal inconsistency. They would very much prefer to
have one rule applicable throughout the Union. 

(2) This is in my view exacerbated by the lack of logic in the German
law. I think some people could understand if German FoP excluded
pictures taken from the (private) ground of the protected monument
itself, because it would protect those views on the monument which are
potentially private (for instance if a building was explicitly built
behind a wall or covering trees). But excluding a
photograph taken from my own living room (if it happens to be on the
opposite side of the street) doesn't seem to make much sense.

So I think the story line is nice: Inconsistent laws across the EU
which make actions illegal that no normal person would have expected to
be illegal -- this can't be in the interest of the EU. :)

Best,
Jan


On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 15:42 +0100, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I came across n interesting piece of text in a German mainstream
> newspaper that ran an article on Freedom of Panorama. [1] or [2]
> 
> According to the text, there has been court action against pictures of
> the Hunderwasserhaus located in Vienna. [3]
> 
> 
> Theoretically, both countries enjoy full FoP. [4] The German law,
> however, has one restriction: pictures need to be taken from a public
> ground. With other words, not only the building must be located on a
> public street or square, but also the photographer (effectively making
> pictures made with a drone in Germany a noFOP). According to the
> Austrian law, there is no such restriction. 
> 
> What happened is, that somebody took a picture from the building
> across the street. The image is perfectly legal in Ausstria, but the
> rightsholders of the Hunderwasserhaus in Vienna managed to get German
> courts to order a stop of distribution in Germanny.
> 
> 
> Questions arising are:
> 
>       * Are there other countries where a "on the ground"
>         specification exists?
>       * Can I request the take down of a picture of the Millenium
>         Bridge in London in France?
>       * How can we best coin this knew piece of information to best
>         suit our advocacy efforts?
> Cheers,
> 
> Dimi
> 
> 
> [1]http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/recht/urheberrecht-warum-fotos-vom-eiffelturm-teuer-werden-koennen,21116446,29726088,item,1.html
> [2]http://www.rundschau-online.de/recht/urheberrecht-warum-fotos-vom-eiffelturm-teuer-werden-koennen,21117814,29726088.html
> [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasserhaus
> [4]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Malta
> 
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