Copyright reform in EU may make your travel photos illegal

Next time someone taps you on the shoulder outside the Roman Colosseum, it may not be a couple asking for you to take their photo (because let's be honest, that couple doesn't want any pictures but selfies), but a police officer warning you against taking your own photos. This could be what the future looks like if the European Union passes a new copyright reform law that makes publishing photos of famous landmarks illegal in commercial entities — Facebook included.

It comes down a provision in copyright laws called the “freedom of panorama,” which currently allows people in most EU countries to take pictures in public spaces that include copyrighted works and publish them. If overturned, it means that many of the world’s landmarks and public art installations must be blacked out (or replaced via Photoshop with a goat, bagel, or Kim Kardashian) unless permission has been given by the author, artist, or architect (good luck finding Banksy).

Or as the EU Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee put it in amendment 421:

“The commercial use of photographs,video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them.”

The issue gets particularly thorny when out-of-copyright landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower, get modern design additions, like its night-time lighting system, created by Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel. So pictures of the Eiffel Tower in the day are legal, but illegal after dark.

Posting pics on Facebook and other social networking sites also becomes tricky. Although you may not be charging people to see your own selfies at the world's top selfie spots on Facebook, it is commercial website.

As it turns out, the law is actually already on the books in several European countries, including France, Italy and Greece, where on occasion it is enforced. In fact, that’s the reason the image on Wikipedia for the Atomium building in Belgium is in silhouette.