"Visitors to the Offentlig Konst site could browse a map detailing public sculptures, statues and paintings. The non-profit organisation ... has a collection of royalty-free photographs that it says can be used by the public. But the supreme court said that while individuals were allowed to take photographs of public artwork, providing those images in a database for unlimited use was "an entirely different matter".
"Such a database can be assumed to have a commercial value that is not insignificant," the court said in a statement. "The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value."
That's just stupid.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35969734
The copyright in public art & architecture, and how this affects photographic rights, has been in dispute for quite a long time (e.g. this article from Popular Photography in 2006: https://books.google.com.pr/books?id=vfyceOuNRSgC&pg=PA79) - in the US, which has probably got the best "free speech" protection laws going, any building constructed after 1990 might be copyrighted, and thus images of them can't be used commercially - I don't think works of art have this exception. Then there was this (defeated, IIRC) European Parliament proposal last year to abolish Freedom of Panorama: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7602493680/photography-in-public-places-threatened-by-proposal-for-copyright-harmonisation-across-europe (DPReview may need to re-colour Sweden yellow on their map now).
ReplyDeleteContributing an utterly insignificant value to the site's commercial value.
ReplyDelete