Sharing Your Trip Photos Might Be Breaking the Law

a woman sitting on a ledge in front of the eiffel tower

If you took a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, your use of those photos is limited thanks to something called freedom of panorama — “the unrestricted right to use photographs of public spaces, without infringing the rights of the architect or the visual artist.” You can’t publish or distribute your photos or video without permission.

Last week The Guardian ran an article by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales talking about this issue and legislation on the horizon from the European parliament. Freedom of panorama exists in most European countries, but if the proposed reform goes through it will not exist in anywhere in the EU.a map of europe with different colored countries/regions

Wikipedia has some great information about this including illustrated maps. It was interesting to see that Italy, France, and Belgium are among those countries that have no freedom of panorama, and that the US has limited freedom of panorama, buildings are ok, but sculptures and art are not.

The article(s) are definitely worth a read!

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