What started as a battle over whether people should be allowed to take photos of public buildings and artworks has devolved into a Parliamentary fight.
At the heart of the matter is “freedom of panorama,” which exists in some EU countries and gives people the right to take photos of landmarks and print them in newspapers, on postcards and for other commercial purposes. In countries where that freedom doesn’t exist, photographers must first get permission from the copyright holder or risk being fined.
There’s plenty of money at stake: the family of Edvard Eriksen, sculptor of Denmark’s little mermaid statue, is notoriously litigious. Newspapers have been fined thousands of dollars for unauthorized printing of photographs of his statue.
Julia Reda, German Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, produced an “own initiative report” on copyright that will eventually contribute to the European Commission’s reforms.
While the report is not binding, it does formally set out Parliament’s position. The report initially called for extending picture-taking right to all countries in the EU.
“The public space is there for everyone to enjoy and use,” Reda said in an interview. “Requiring permission from an architect for depictions of public buildings amounts to a privatization of the skyline.”
But an amendment from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), proposed by Frenchman Jean-Marie Cavada in Parliament’s legal affairs committee JURI, did the opposite. It explicitly stated that images of public works should not be used without permission from copyright holders.
How Cavada was able to secure enough votes for the amendment to pass is a mystery, given that not even all the ALDE members of the legal affairs committee were in favor of the move.
A pro-panorama petition gathered more than 235,000 signatures and fueled opposition to the amendment within Parliament. So did significant lobbying by the Wikimedia Foundation.
With the writing on the wall, party representatives to the legal affairs committee met and agreed to a vote on deletion of Cavada’s amendment on Thursday in Strasbourg. They also decided that no other amendments should be tabled.
Meanwhile, Cavada’s fellow ALDE MEP Marietje Schaake emailed her Parliamentary colleagues asking for their support for an amendment to re-introduce freedom of panorama into Reda’s report.
POLITICO has learned that she needed 40 signatures for her amendment to be debated in plenary, and she got them.
Schaake was not immediately available for comment.
Cavada’s camp was not pleased.
“She didn’t try to reach our office or get in touch with our policy adviser,” said a staffer who asked that his name not be used. “We regret that she forgot for a while that Mr. Cavada is the JURI shadow rapporteur for ALDE.”
Cavada returned fire, emailing his ALDE colleagues to urge them to vote against Schaake’s amendment that would extend freedom of panorama and in favor of the deletion of his panorama position.
This would mean that the report essentially condones the status quo: some countries with freedom of panorama, others without.
While the deletion of Cavada’s position is almost guaranteed, what will happen to Schaake’s amendment at plenary is anyone’s guess.