Abstract
Freedom of panorama, an exception to copyright law, is the legal right, in some countries, to publish pictures of artworks which are in public space. A controversy emerged at the time of the discussions towards the revision of the 2001 European Copyright Directive, opposing free knowledge communities as advocates of the public domain, and authors' collecting societies aiming at preserving their constituents' income. The article decrypts the legal framework and political implications of a topic which has been polarising copyright reform lobbyists, and analyses its development within the public debate since the XIXth century. Articulating legal analysis with text mining, this article aims at contributing to the policy debate.
Highlights
Freedom of panorama is the legal right in some countries to publish pictures of artworks, sculptures, paintings, buildings or monuments that are in public spaces, even when they are still under copyright (Brazil, Germany, UK, US)
The broader category of public art is used to inform the question of freedom of panorama, including outdoor works of art and buildings which are still copyrighted, as well as cultural heritage sites, whose reproduction is regulated in some countries (e.g. Italy), even if they are under copyright in the public domain
We presented the origins of the copyright exception to reproduce public artworks, the legal framework of freedom of panorama, the arguments developed by lobbyists on both sides and the disproportionate role taken by the Wikimedia community in the agenda-setting and the mediatic sphere
Summary
Freedom of panorama is the legal right in some countries to publish pictures of artworks, sculptures, paintings, buildings or monuments that are in public spaces, even when they are still under copyright (Brazil, Germany, UK, US). The legal research to be performed by photographers requires determining the date of death of the author, here the architect or outdoor artist, adding 70 years, and taking into account tremendous variations (Angelopoulos, 2012) Such a duty of care can be all the more difficult as the authorship of such a thing as a building or an outdoor monument is not documented next to the work, such as in a museum. The analysis will focus on selected countries because of their representativity on both sides of the debate: Germany as the birthplace of the exception, Belgium as the latest jurisdiction to have adopted an exception during the current controversy; France and Italy as countries granting rights to works even if in the public domain; Sweden as another country with a recent case law against the exception. While other stakeholders of the online space are affected by this legal prerogative, neither social media platforms, nor the press, chose to join the campaign towards a new or broader exception
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