Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-17/In focus


 * Yesterday I emailed all 54 Spanish MEPs asking them to vote against Cavada's proposal. It's easy to do and better than just standing still while Freedom of Panorama is being attacked. B25es (talk) 05:26, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * How did you find their emails? I thought about emailing Polish ones, but where are the tools to help us get such information? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The Parliament's MEP search engine might be your friend :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 11:31, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Hellas has freedom of panorama at least since 1995!
This map is factually wrong, Hellas should be green like the UK, there is full freedom of panorama in Hellas, there are no restrictions in what or who you can photograph in public and no restrictions in publishing or selling the resulting photos or videos for any non-commercial use (editorial/journalistic or artistic). Joxi Szriasztista (talk) 20:50, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * If you mean Greece, then you are wrong, because as you say yourself, there are non-commercial restrictions. Which, among others, mean that Wikipedia cannot use those pictures. Limited freedom is not freedom. Also see commons:Commons:Freedom_of_panorama. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Then it should be yellow on the map, not red.--213.220.230.51 (talk) 10:41, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems legit. WP:SOFIXIT - I suggest you contact the image authors and see what they say. Or just upload your own version. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I've just written about this
Borrowing heavily from this article, I've just written about this on Medium: "Freedom of Panorama is under attack". UK residents can contact their MEPs for free really easily through WriteToThem (a site I helped set up): https://www.writetothem.com/. It's not quite so easy for other EU citizens, but the Parliament's MEP search engine does provide email addresses for MEPs. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 11:31, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice article! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the article - just a remark: I think the text "lighter green countries protecting only images of buildings" in the FOP map caption may be misleading resp. depend upon the interpretation of "protecting" - what the lighter green colour in the map means is that these countries have freedom of panorama for buildings only (not for other works of art in public spaces). So they're not "protecting" the images of buildings in the sense of granting protection to the building's copyright owner. You probably meant that they're "protecting" the building images from copyright claims, but, well... maybe it could be phrased differently? Gestumblindi (talk) 19:15, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you!
 * Ah, thank you. I've amended the caption to clarify that.
 * — OwenBlacker (Talk) 21:55, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

How about organizing a wikipedia-wide demo/protest?
Idea: Use images with blank-out, king of used in this signpost article, in high-visible wikipedia articles, such as appearing on the Main page or pages with high traffic. This will bring much wider attention than Signpost. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:03, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This is being discussed at commons:Commons:Freedom_of_Panorama_2015. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)


 * The German-language Wikipedia shows a black banner since today: de:Wikipedia:Hauptseite. --Túrelio (talk) 10:57, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Further discussion
Further discussion is at: There are also discussions on the various Wikipedia language versions of languages spoken in Europe. Romaine (talk) 04:49, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Two weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe on the English Wikipedia
 * Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015 on Wikimedia Commons


 * In German-language Wikipedia (German-speaking countries currently have freedom of panorama), there's currently a lot of activity regarding this matter, including a survey on possible actions to make the public aware of the issue (e.g. blacking out images, banners), and an open letter to the MEPs, already signed by 377 community members. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:02, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Currently, there are 740 signatories, and the number is steadily growing. I can't really remember any kind of Wikimedia-related open letter or a similar thing with that many supporters - and it's not even on English Wikipedia... Gestumblindi (talk) 19:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The MediaViewer letter penned to the WMF drew over a thousand signatures. Res Mar 01:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, the freedom of panorama letter is now at 862; I think it will also reach more than thousand :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 10:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Now at 1580 :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 20:50, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There are now nearly 3000 signatories altogether - split into daily subpages to reduce page size; 1663 in total at de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/23. Juni 2015, de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/24. Juni 2015 and de:Wikipedia:Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments zur Erhaltung der Panoramafreiheit/25. Juni 2015, and additionally 1310 at the main letter page. However, as the banner deployed in German Wikipedia now contains a large button linking to the letter, and is displayed to all users (also those not signed in), the letter has somewhat changed its focus, which I'm not sure is a good idea: It was originally presented as a letter by "authors of German-language Wikipedia" and is still undersigned with that phrasing, but due to the banner's appeal to the general public, it contains now lots of signatures by people who aren't Wikipedians. That's a bit misleading, I think - of course, there's nothing to say against a letter by the general public, by Wikipedia readers, but these kinds of open letters should be clearly separate. I'll post on the discussion page ther regarding this matter. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:52, 26 June 2015 (UTC)


 * There is a Petition to European Parlament "Save the Freedom of Photography!" on Change.org, but cannot be linked due to blacklisting of change.org. --Túrelio (talk) 19:35, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Consider the effects on local communities and regions when talking to parliamentarians
MEPs have to consider the best interests of Europe as well as of their countries and regions of origin when making decisions. Tourism is an important and increasing part of the economy in most European regions. And in the international competition for visitors, images and videos are the most important tools available. Just look around to see what kind of imagery airlines, hotels, tour organizers and others in the tourism and conferencing sector tend to use. Photos and drawings of famous structures are everywhere. The official tourism boards of cities and regions—as well as large corporations—might be able to take the time and effort to contact every copyright holder to get permission, but for small and medium-sized businesses, it will be easier to just drop the use of photos of anything but really old buildings. This will be bad for the overall marketing of the cities and regions that the MEPs represent. And it is worth noting that many small tourism-oriented business use precisely Wikipedia as a source of information and images to use when promoting their local surroundings.--OttoG (talk) 12:47, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Why couldn't I photograph the landscape ?
Then should we promote the destruction of the public buildings that prevent us from freely taking photographs of the landscape ? The Millau Viaduct is an example of this, if I want to take a photo there, this thing in the middle is preventing me from doing so. Sometimes laws become really stupid! Or maybe we have to post-process the photos and replace the buildings with the faces of the people voting these laws. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.212.114.60 (talk) 14:59, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It's not just public buildings! It's *any* buildings still under copyright.  If your photo of a landscape includes just one house whose architect's heir's copyright agent has not granted you a license, you are in trouble.  For example that concrete building behind the London Eye in the first example photo is probably also under copyright by a different legal entity. Jbohmdk (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Historical note on how the non-freedom of Panorama for sculptures is real in Denmark
A few years ago, copyright holders of the little mermaid statue (omitted in picture above), sued a porn publisher who used a photo of it on the cover of one of their movies. The family of the sculptor routinely collects royalties etc. from 3D copies of the statue, but I have heard of no other case where they sued over 2D pictures. Jbohmdk (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, the family routinely collects royalties from newspapers and other publishers that publish photos of the sculpture, see "Den lille havfrue" section on the "ophavsret" article in the Danish Wikipedia and links. Note that there are FoP in Denmark wrt. to buildings. There is also FoP for "non-building" works of art when the object is not the main motive and it is not use commercially. &mdash; fnielsen (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Voting: outcomes
Today the European Parliament voted about the copyright report, including the subject Freedom of Panorama.
 * The negative text by Cavada (Freedom of Panorama only non-commercial in whole EU) was dropped by 502 to 40.
 * The positive text by Schaake (full Freedom of Panorama in whole EU) didn't pass by 228 to 303.
 * The report as a whole was accepted with 445 to 65 with 32 abstentions.

Thanks everyone, we almost manage to achieve a full swing, which is a very tough feat to get done in 3 weeks.

What is next? Autumn 2015: European Commission planned proposal on a renewed EU Directive.

Romaine (talk) 14:29, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * , thanks—I was looking for numbers on the Schaake amendment vote. Can you link your source? – czar   02:29, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * , sorry for the delay, there was a vacation/conference in between.
 * The voting was about the Implementation of Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. The text what the European Parliament voted about is A8-0209/2015 (pdf). There you see it is paragraph 46 which is about Freedom of Panorama.
 * The results can be found on the website of the European Parliament via this page in this document. Go in the document to section 9: Harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights. It is § 46. There you see the original text was rejected: 40 for, 502 against, 12 abstentions.
 * The line above is amendment 3: The page A8-0209/2015 shows on top the various amendments. Amendment 3 is from Schaake (pdf). The Schaake amendment got 228 for, 303 against and 24 abstentions.
 * Romaine (talk) 15:12, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Corporate endings

 * If I were commissioned to put a work of art in a public place affected by these laws, not only would I have the power to charge money for the visibility of my work, but to restrict the visibility of the surrounding environment. If I were really clever, I could join a society of artists with the power to manipulate the production of media for the sakes of political bias. Of course, that situation would only achieve the height of its effectiveness when all the public works of art had been bought out by corporations. Doesn't sound likely at first, but this freedom of panorama thing is only starting, whereas corporate power acting just like that... ~ R.T.G 08:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)