A man has published home-made and scanned photos of paintings from a museum on Wikipedia. That is unlawful, judges the Federal Court.

If a museum forbids taking photos, visitors are not allowed to take their own pictures of paintings and put them on the internet. This has been decided by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). A man photographed paintings in the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim and scanned photos from a catalog. He uploaded all these pictures on Wikipedia.



In the case of the scanned images, the man violated copyright law, judges decided. The photographer had only transferred the publication rights to the museum.



With his own photos, he also violated the prohibition of photography in the museum. This was expressed by pictograms with a crossed-out camera and was part of the general terms and conditions.

The paintings themselves are public domain, that is, they are no longer subject to copyright protection 70 years after the death of the artist.

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