Why Your Holiday Photos And Videos Of The Restored Notre Dame Cathedral Could Be Blocked By The EU's Upload Filters

from the blame-it-on-the-EU-Copyright-Directive dept

Although the terrible fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris destroyed the roof and spire, the main structure escaped relatively unscathed. Thoughts now are on repairing the damage, and rebuilding the missing parts. France has announced that it will hold an international competition to redesign the roofline. As the Guardian points out, the roof was ancient, but the spire was not:

Notre Dame was built over a period of nearly 200 years, starting in the middle of the 12th century, but the lead-covered spire, which reached a height of 93 metres from the ground, was only added in the mid-19th century, during a major restoration project completed by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

That fact has stimulated a lively debate about whether the roof should be restored to how it was, using Viollet-le-Duc's design for the spire, or rebuilt with a completely new, contemporary appearance. The French Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, acknowledged this issue when he announced the competition:

"The international competition will allow us to ask the question of whether we should even recreate the spire as it was conceived by Viollet-le-Duc," Philippe told reporters after a cabinet meeting dedicated to the fire. "Or, as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, whether we should endow Notre Dame with a new spire. This is obviously a huge challenge, a historic responsibility."

Techdirt readers may be interested in what might otherwise seem a rather rarefied architectural discussion because of how French law implements EU copyright exceptions. The site copyrightexceptions.eu explains:

In the European Copyright framework the rights of users and public interest organisations are codified as exceptions and limitations to the exclusive rights of authors and other rightsholders. As such, they form one side of the balance between the rights of creators to exercise control of their works and the rights of the public to access culture and information. While the exclusive rights of creators and other rightsholders have been largely harmonised across the 28 member states of the European Union, exceptions and limitations are far from harmonised. Article 5 of the 2001 Copyright in the Information Society (InfoSoc) Directive (2001/29/EC) contains a list of 20 optional and one harmonised exceptions. In 2012 the Orphan Works Directive (2012/28/EU EC) added another mandatory exception. This has created a situation where user rights across Europe are a patchwork.

One of the optional copyright exceptions in EU law is whether to protect works of architecture, and sculptures in public places, or to allow "freedom of panorama". France chose the latter, but imposed a key condition:

The implemented exception authorises "reproductions and representations of works of architecture and sculpture, placed permanently in public places (voie publique), and created by natural persons, with the exception of any usage of a commercial character"

This is why pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night taken for commercial purposes require a license: although the copyright of the tower itself has expired, the copyright on the lights that were installed in 1989 has not. And it's not just about the Eiffel Tower. As the credits at the end of this time-lapse video show (at 2 minutes 10 seconds) other famous Parisian landmarks that require copyright permission to film them include the Louvre's Pyramid and the Grande Arche in the French capital's business district.

It is not clear whether taking photos or videos of these landmarks and then posting them online counts as commercial use. They may be for personal use, and thus exempt in themselves, but they are generally being posted to commercial Internet services like Facebook, which might require a license. That lack of clarity is just the sort of thing that is likely to cause the EU Copyright Directive's upload filters to block images of modern buildings in France -- including the re-built spire of Notre Dame cathedral, if it is a new design.

A key proposal that the Pirate MEP Julia Reda put forward in her copyright evaluation report, which fed into the Copyright Directive, was to implement a full freedom of panorama right across the EU. The European Parliament backed the idea, as did all the EU nations except one -- France, as Politico later revealed -- so the idea was dropped. That lack of an EU-wide freedom of panorama is yet another example of how the Copyright Directive failed to throw even a tiny crumb to citizens, while handing out even more power for the copyright industry to use and abuse. So if one day your holiday pictures and videos of the re-built Notre Dame cathedral get blocked in the EU, you will know who to blame.

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Filed Under: architecture, article 13, copyright, france, freedom of panorama, notre dame, photos