Taking pictures of famous landmarks and uploading them to a website , Facebook, Twitter or Instagram will become a violation of copyright. Famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburger Tor, the London Eye or Sagrada Familia may need to be censored in holiday pictures published online to avoid violating copyright.
(Photo: Nro92/Romaine/Wikipedia)
While this might sound sound like a joke or totally reasonable, these restrictions are not new. The famous Atomium building in Belgium is currently censored on Wikipedia. The reason is that the inheritors of the architect of the building own the copyright and don't allow a picture of the artwork. For the same reason also the actual statue of Copenhagen's landmark The Little Mermaid is not visible on the Wikipedia page, instead the page shows similar statues.
Although taking and distributing the pictures is legal for personal use, especially posting them on social media could become an issue.
Sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter generate revenue and e.g Facebook states in their terms, "for content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."
On the 9th of July the European Parliament will vote on the law that should regulate the copyright for the entire European Union and the new law is more strict than currently in place in many European countries. Especially citizens in the United Kingdom, Germany , Spain and The Netherlands are worried.
