And this leading article in The Times, 24th June (copied without permission, I have to confess).
Next time you take a photo of the London Eye, or the Angel of the North, or any monument, artwork or building in a public place, know this: you are exercising a freedom that is under threat. This is the freedom of panorama — enshrined in British copyright law since 1911, but now in the sights of European Union legislators.
While the freedom of panorama is granted in the majority of EU member states, there is a minority, including France and Italy, where it is restricted. For example, the Eiffel Tower may be photographed in daylight, because its age exempts it from copyright law, yet snapping it at night with any intention of distributing the image violates the copyright held by the designers of its nocturnal illuminations.
Enter Julia Reda. Ms Reda is the sole MEP of the European Pirate Party, not a crew of seafaring politicians, but a pan-European movement advocating reform of copyright and patent law. Whatever the desirability of her broader manifesto, Ms Reda is right on one thing: she is seeking to extend freedom of panorama across the EU.
This extension is being resisted by a group of MEPs who agree that European law on photography ought to be unified, but want to unify it around the French example. This group’s success could mean that taking photos in public places would be impossible without having provided a range of assurances, obtained a variety of permissions and paid a range of fees beforehand.
The freedom of panorama may be little known, but it is a fundamental liberty all the same. It is absurd that the commendable effort of a sole MEP to extend a British freedom across the continent has metamorphosed into a threat to that very freedom on British soil. The French can unify nonsense all they want, but it is still nonsense. On this, The Times sails with the pirate.
