Dear Ian Hudghton, David Coburn, Alyn Smith, Catherine Stihler, David Martin and Ian Duncan,
I am deeply concerned about European Parliament proposals which would end Freedom of Panorama – the right to photograph buildings in public spaces – in all the European Union.
I am a volunteer contributor to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons - you are no doubt familiar with the former, but the latter may require introduction. The Wikimedia Commons is a sister project to Wikipedia, an online repository of freely-licensed images for any and all to make use of. Many of the images used on Wikipedia are from the Wikimedia Commons. Among other things, the Commons collects images of buildings in public spaces. For example, it contains images of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh, or of particular interest to me (as a student), images of the University of Aberdeen. These are beautiful and important buildings in our shared public spaces, and I think everyone benefits from having images of these available, both from a documentary and artistic standpoint.
The reason the Wikimedia Commons is able to provide these images to the public is due to Freedom of Panorama. Freedom of Panorama is an exception to copyright law that most European countries (including the United Kingdom) provide. It permits anyone to take photographs of buildings located permanently in public spaces, without infringing copyrights that might be held on the buildings themselves. This means that anyone can take a picture of the many beautiful buildings in Scottish (and indeed, wider British and European) public spaces, and cannot be sued by copyright holders. It is an exception that benefits the wider public, who are given freedom to take pictures, rather than a tiny minority of copyright holders on buildings.
The problem is that Freedom of Panorama, and therefore also the massive repertoire of freely-licensed images of public buildings accessible to the public that Wikimedia Commons is able to provide, is currently under threat. The InfoSoc Implementation Report voted on the 16th of June by the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, and Amendment 421 by Jean-Marie Cavada, would restrict Freedom of Panorama in the European Union to "non-commercial use" only.
This may initially sound reasonable, but the devil is in the details. The Wikimedia Commons is not just a repository of "free as in beer" images, it is a repository of images that people have complete freedom in use: they can not only obtain them for free, but they can redistribute them without restriction and create modified versions. "Non-commercial use" threatens these images, then, because they would no longer be usable without restriction, and therefore no longer qualify to be on the Wikimedia Commons. This would mean force the removal by Wikimedia of quite literally thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or more, of images of buildings and artwork in public spaces. This would also force Wikipedia to remove images from its articles.
This threat is not just because of Wikimedia's policies, but also because of the possible legal interpretations. "Non-commercial use" is not clearly defined, and on the Internet it is particularly hard to tell what would fall under that umbrella. If a website publishes such images, but includes a small amount of paid advertising to cover its costs, should that really count as "commercial use" and expose the website owner to lawsuits from copyright holders, for the crime of showing a photograph of a public building? Is a website which accepts donations and serves such images, such as Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons themselves (which are entirely donation-funded), a "commercial use"? Furthermore, there is a risk of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons being considered "commercial" simply because they are such massively popular websites, despite their nonprofit status. The potential legal issues are huge and force the hand of Wikimedia here: if Freedom of Panorama is restricted to "non-commercial use", they will have to remove all of these images.
Furthermore, is it fair even for the clear-cut cases? If if an artist takes photographs of buildings and artworks that are permanently in public spaces, and uses these to create original work which they later sell for a small amount of money in order to support themselves, should they really be liable for copyright lawsuits from people who own the buildings? It is also worth considering that many educational uses are also commercial: most educational materials are sold for money. Anyone who makes "educational materials" would be vulnerable. Even those which are not sold for money might be: many people publish free and highly valued educational content online and support it with small amounts of paid advertising. They might now be considered "commercial" users.
So, I strongly urge you to support removing or changing the text on the 9th July plenary in Strasbourg. Else, educational and artistic use of tens of thousands photos of our cherished public buildings across all of Europe is under serious threat.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Andrea Faulds