Not all aspects of European Copyright Law are the same in all countries. Belgium and France in particular but also Spain are known to afford protection against photography of buildings, artwork and sculpture in public places. However the nature of this protection is a minefield of individual artists' and architects' legal viewpoints.
The strongest and most basic protection is when the building is allied in some way with a product. For instance if you use a modern building as a background to advertise a car. The same building could be photographed without problems to promote regional tourism if the building has become a tourist icon.
A discussion I had in a Paris stock library a while ago raised the issue of Extra Territoriality. i.e. whether the law could be pursued for uses in another country. Basically the answer is no. (Only the USA and The Philippines extend their laws to other countries.) In other words you can take pictures in France and publish in the UK without problems. French photographers might not be so lucky. However, there is at least one successful case where a picture in a UK airline's in-flight magazine was considered to have been distributed in France when a plane landed there. This led to a successful action for plagiarism in the French courts where damages were much more worthwhile than in the UK courts. I think the photographer was Elliot Erwitt.
Bob Croxford
On Saturday, August 2, 2003, at 01:33 pm, ian reynolds wrote:
So bog off. This also applies in european law, now as the copyright laws
have been homoginised. So as I understand it the need for a building
release in france may be now iilegal. Not sure how true though.
Though I may be wrong.
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