Unfortunately that is the case. There are certain buildings in the US, or the Eifel Tower in Paris at night, you are not allowed to reproduce without obtaining a license from the according copyright/trademark holder.
The French and wider EU rules around this (often referred to as "freedom of panorama", discussed here [1]) are actually quite complex. From my time contributing to Wikipedia, I've seen a number of cases of photos on articles being removed due to it.
If I recall correctly the issue with the Eiffel Tower at night is that they claim (and I assume courts have agreed unfortunately) that the lighting fixtures are copyrightable?
IP is one of those areas where programmers like to imagine the law is a function definition which provides clear answers. And aside from obvious stuff like selling bootleg copies of a movie - it doesn't.
Whether the pattern of light hitting a building is copyrightable is likely to be an under-explored area of case law. E.g. in the UK it would probably have to be a work of 'artistic craftsmanship' which is not defined in the statute. But the Eiffel tower is in France. So now you have two slightly differing sets of copyright law.
In the end many IP cases come down to bluffing because the actual class of question has never been settled by a judge.
On the other hand you have other cases like Banksy today loosing a case on trademarking one of his paintings. Which was dumb because he'd have got further with copyright infringement.
That's quite insightful in understanding how the concept of intellectual property works in practice. I see, it's about making a claim to convince the other party of its legal ownership.
Whether the actual legality of the claim is proven in court or not, it may not matter if the claim is convincing enough, or too costly to contest.
I do feel like there are situations where you're creating artwork as a public good, and the artist should lose copyrights in exchange for the notoriety/impact/visibility associated with the project. Things like massive buildings, lighting the Eiffle tower, or creating Happy Birthday should fall under that.
It might sound unfair, but as an artist, creating a iconic piece of art that will be around for generations should really be worth more than money. Perhaps governments around the world could set up a fund to compensate/honor artists who achieve this.
This sounds like you’re saying if you’re an artist, and you do a really good job, you shouldn’t get paid and should lose the rights to your work. That’s quite a strange concept.
B) Lots of people find the current rules to be unfair. An enterprising fellow could build a massive structure in NYC and claim royalty rights over any photograph which may contain it.
You might be a-okay with that, but I take it to the extreme and think about what would happen if every building owner in NYC asserted copyrights over images of their building. Then every photo taken in the city would be subject to royalty/licensing requirements. YouTube's content scanners would automatically flag any video with shots of the city, etc.
Exactly. The government should forcibly open source software projects and set up a fund to honour their creators if it decides those projects are a public good.
Why absurd? they are performance that just happen to be occurring frequently. If a Broadway musical is played every night, does it stop being a musical?
There is some French law on works of art and photos of them being prohibited. I once posted a picture of a World War I memorial at Verdun to wikipedia and it was removed for violating said French law.
I mean, I can see a case for copyrighting such a setup as an art-piece. Although it's still silly if used for anything other than discouraging others from making money off it (e.g. selling photos).
> I mean, I can see a case for copyrighting such a setup as an art-piece.
I must admit I don't. I cannot bring myself to see the Eiffel tower being copyrighted at night as anything but absurd, even for selling photos.
Not everything needs to be profitable or have a price tag. I think we should agree upfront as a society that you shouldn't expect to make money from photos of the exterior of your public building.
I just don't understand how you can restrict photography of something that's in the public view. I'd expect that while most public sculptures etc are copyrighted, this restricts reproductions of the sculptures themselves, not images of them. The creative work here is the lighting system, and I don't feel an image of that actually copies that.
If someone monkeyed with the lighting fixtures, they would be creating a derivative work of the fixtures and if they do it without a license from the copyright holder, they would be violating the copyright.
if it's really an issue of copyright (I don't know this myself but just going with the theory) then it would probably depend on how closely your digital alterations match the actual lighting. If you did it to match/copy the copyrighted lighting, by looking at the actual lighting (in person with your laptop, from a picture, from memory), it would violate copyright just as much. If I re-type the words of a copyrighted text, it doesn't mean I haven't violated copyright.
> If I re-type the words of a copyrighted text, it doesn't mean I haven't violated copyright.
Copyrights are hard. Even if you look at public domain works like Sherlock Holmes, whose original stories are in the public domain, you can run into issues by giving him personality traits that are associated with derivative works that are still under copyright.
It was actually used for advertising a long time ago. Big old "CITROËN" on it. Really gaudy, but a trademark nonetheless, so it does put us into some sort of IP territory.
I might understand the point if what you were trying to sell was a picture of the tower- that is, if the image of tower itself were the reason people are paying for something.
If it's just part of a crowded the background, though, as in this case, it doesn't make sense. You can't put in the sky an object visible from everywhere and then ask people to pay (or even just ask permission) to use pictures that include it.
It becomes more complex if you are an Instagram influencer and share yourself with Eiffel tower on the background - do you need to share loyalties and how much of it?
I wonder- if I need to pay royalties to share a picture including a building, can I sue the owners of the building for popping up in my pictures? If I am an instagram influencer, can I ask owners of buildings to pay me for the space they occupy in my pictures?
The thing is, yes you can try to ask the owners. But what do you do, when they refuse? Because it is not in the owners interest, it is in yours interest.
The thing with the influencer is, that s/he does that for commercial purposes. The list published by Adobe give you a hint what is allowed and what not. I don't know if the list is a complete list and I didn't verified the details. But it gives you something.
> yes you can try to ask the owners. But what do you do, when they refuse?
The same thing they would do if you didn't want to pay them: you sue them. For abusive occupation of your pictures.
I am being paradoxical, but the point I want to make is that if you want to make profits or claim any rights on the image you project in a public space (admitted that it should even be allowed, since you didn't pay for said space) then you must also accept the liabilities deriving by the same. You should not be allowed to claim the rights and disown the liabilities.
The comment you are replying to contains a link to a list which shows the different categories of restriction, including your example: Cityscape vs Exterior.
That's just a list of what Adobe restricts, not what is generally restricted. Each jurisdiction is different, but Adobe tries to appease all of them which unfortunately defaults to being restrictive.
If you take a picture of enough of the text, you've actually reproduced the work under copyright.
No amount of pictures of a building will reproduce it.
Also, if they want to claim ownership of the recording of something clearly visible in public, they should take responsibility and make payment for everyone that views it against their will. Yea, that latter half of that sounds ridiculous. The first half should as well.
Here is a comprehensive list with their restrictions: https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image-r...