Talk:Freedom of Panorama in Europe in 2015/Learn more

Countries

I've seen it said there are 16 FoP countries in EU, now I count 17. Has something been changed recently? --Oop (talk) 09:56, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Maybe 16+1=17 is about Croatia: 16 before 2013. –Be..anyone (talk) 02:22, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

What can I do

What can I do from North America? Mattsnow81 (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Keep on rockin'.[1]--Anders Feder (talk) 03:01, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

This is not (and never was) a problem

The legislation only applies to commercial usages, so wikipedia has nothing to fear.

By the way, Freedom of Panorama does not apply already to France, Italy and Greece (among other countries), however I see on wikipedia plenty of images depicting French, Italian and Greek buildings, sculptures and arts on public places. So, what are we talking about exactly?

If anything, the proposed amendment is absolutely fair. It is only reasonable that companies and anybody who makes money based on these images will have to ask for permission and possibly pay a fee. I thank wikipedia for bringing up this issue to me, and I will contact my MEP to express enthusiasm at this proposal and encourage them to do their best to pass this law.

I agree with the previous opinion, with one important exception. The matter at hand shows the hilarious American bias of wikipedia, since the bizarre idea of writing directly to one's MEP and getting anything out of it can only come from someone accustomed to the US system, but completely oblivious to how the European MEPs are elected and actually operate. Most of them hardly attend any parliamentary sessions, and there have been plenty of cases (wikipedia is your friend) where MEPs blatantly disregarded very serious accusations, so they could hardly care less about weirdos and geeks writing them about some extremely minor technical issue.

Also, encouraging people to approach MEPs in Brussels or Strasbourg (as the wikimedia page does) is tantamount to encourage people to make short but memorable visits to Belgian and French prisons. Believe me, whoever wrote that page does not have the slightest idea on how these things work in practice, and has never interacted with real MEPs in Brussels or Strasbourg.

I note that user 85.81.85.101 agrees with their own previous unsigned post. Alekksandr (talk) 19:30, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I note that it is not unheard of of several people living or working in the same locale and thus having the same IP. Surprisingly, despite that physical proximity, those people sometimes disagree with each other. 85.81.85.101 19:41, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

This is all in good fun, but the real question posed by the OP still stands: some EU countries are already red on the map, but Wikipedia bursts with images of public buildings from those countries. What gives? What are we exactly talking about? Why is this not mentioned in the FAQs?

I would love to know, before talking to my MEP, and getting a free visit to a Belgian prison for my troubles. 217.78.6.143 19:50, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

It appears that Wikipedia has mostly turned a blind eye on the issue, as long as nobody from the affected countries has complained about a particular image subject. If this were to become EU-wide law, that position would soon become untenable. Also, many public buildings in France, Italy and Greece are old enough not to be protected by copyright, and at the very least, it may be non-obvious that a building has protection.--OttoG (talk) 13:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

"Most of them hardly attend any parliamentary sessions" - Don't spread unfounded statements. Attendance at EP sessions is about 90% http://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-member-states-attendance.html 87.212.145.228 17:18, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Consequences

On the other hand, on Wikipedia there are tens of thousands of images of public places in France, Greece and Italy, even though those countries are already red on the map and do not have Freedom of Panorama. So it is not very clear what the problem actually is.(85.81.85.101, 1 de xullo de 2015 ás 19:32‎)

Yep, these countries are listed with no FOP: Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg.

However, it seems to be only used in case of [[2]] in Brussels, Belgium. I checked some of [[3]], but could not find any other than Atomium. 212.50.203.198 21:15, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

The current consequences section mostly implies that any such law would apply retrospectively, which would be unprecedented, wouldn't it? Most of the current text in this section should be removed unless this is really the case. Cebderby (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia gives free (of cost) publicity to the respective copyright owners. In return, Wikipedia risks being sued by them on basis of copyright regulations. This is not a reasonable busines proposition for Wikipedia and so Wikipedia should only publish photos of copyrighted buildings (or other work of art) if paid for that by the respective copyright owner. The default should be "not permietted" (no pictures related to the copyrigthed work) for the red and yellow countries. In the case of the Atomium, I would suggest to disallow any pictures at all for the article.

This page is not encyclopedic

With phrase like here's how to ACT NOW, one cannot help but see this page as a giant crowdsurfing effort to affect policy. Frankly it is disgusting, regardless of if the proposed law's are cool or not, is it not our job to present both sides of these things? You know a little thing called BALANCE? For example, as a reader, I wasn't even given the rationale behind the EU's alleged law!

Rest assured that I'll be contacted my EUSSR member to let them know I support the bill, as tactics like this on the other side of the argument always rub me the wrong way. 178.167.198.128 21:31, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

• This page is on meta.wikipedia.org, which to quote the start page is: “… the global community site for the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement in general. Meta-Wiki's discussions range from coordination and documentation to planning and analysis of future Wikimedia activities.” The page is not encyclopedic and should not be, because it is not part of the encyclopedia as such. And of course, the Wikimedia Foundation, just as any organization, will defend itself against vaguely motivated legislative changes that would restrict its core activities.--OttoG (talk) 12:59, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the point of contacting MEPs

I am sure that parliamentarians on both sides of the Atlantic are used to being contacted by constituents and are often rather indifferent to their pleas. That is why it is essential to appeal to the significance of an issue to the general political goals of the politician, or to the local economy of the politician’s country or region of origin.

In the case of freedom of panorama, it is of considerable importance to the tourism and conferencing industries, which should mean that it is in the interest of many MEPs to preserve and improve it. It could also be noted that many small businesses these days rely on Wikipedia for texts and images used in describing the area where they are located. This should be significant to any MEP who pledges to encourage small businesses.--OttoG (talk) 13:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

non-commercial use

So currently we can only upload images of buildings in counties without Freedom of Panorama (e.g France) to Wikipedia and not to Commons. An inconvenience but stopping people using photographs. Will this proposal not improve matters? As there is a non-commercial rule with Creative Commons images, why is this amendment a problem? I would like to make photograph laws in the EU easier and willing to contact MEPs but this article really needs a clear statement of the issues. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:22, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Hey!

What about Sagrada Familia in Barcelona? Will it be censored? PomocyHelp (talk) 05:35, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Have we been spoofed?

Pirate MEP pranks Telegraph with holiday snap scaremongering, The Register, 25 Jun 2015 at 12:25, Andrew Orlowski

Wikipedia jumps aboard the bogus 'freedom of panorama' bandwagon, The Register, 2 Jul 2015 at 12:18, Andrew Orlowski