EU Parliament gets ready to vote a new law which will make it really hard to take "legal" photos in public places

Jun 26, 2015 21:28 GMT  ·  By
A photo like this would become illegal under the EU's proposed copyright reform
   A photo like this would become illegal under the EU's proposed copyright reform

When you prepare to take a photo, you usually check to see the sun's position, the lighting, camera settings, tell the person in front of you to smile, you check what's behind you so you won't fall off a cliff when backing up, etc. Copyright is usually the last thing on your mind.

But that's what the EU is trying to do. On July 9, the EU Parliament will vote on a reformed EU Copyright Law, and if passed in its current form, it will make it illegal to take a photo of a public building, landmark, street poster, or any another object you don't own the copyright for.

This is called "Freedom of Panorama," and currently a few states have it, but some don't.

Julia Reda, member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party, tried to bring the Freedom of Panorama to all EU states, but in a meeting of the EU Legal Affairs Committee, her initial plan was turned upside down.

Politics always makes a mess of the simplest things

Instead of voting to adopt a looser copyright law for all images taken in public places, the committee voted an amendment which will have the EU Parliament vote to outlaw any imagery taken without the consent of the rightsholder.

A quick example: you and your girlfriend go on vacation, you take a photo of her in front of a cool building, and then she posts it on Facebook. If it's a modern building, chances are its architect is still alive and holding the copyright for the building's architecture. Which now means you broke his copyright by taking a photo of the building, while your girlfriend did the same by uploading it to Facebook, a company that makes money by the ads it runs next to the photo.

As Mrs. Reda says herself, "[...] this is something that has really fallen out of its time and I'm quite upset this particular amendment has been adopted, [...] trying to restrict the ability to show the public space and to share this picture in the Internet times is really something that's anachronistic."

You can see Julia Reda's reaction at finding out the Freedom of Panorama amendment in her original copyright law reform has been changed in the video below (minute 2:00 onwards).

If you're as outraged as her, a first step would be to sign this petition. Otherwise, genres like street and travel photography would be really hard to enjoy in Europe.