[Advocacy Advisors] Freedom of Panorama case law - which law applies?

Thu Feb 5 14:14:27 UTC 2015

Am 04.02.2015 um 17:49 schrieb Jan Weisensee:
> 
>  
> Thanks John for the clarification. From this angle it makes much more
> sense then.
> 
> Even though I still find it a bit weird that "public space" is so
> narrowly defined in Germany. What about someone building a sky scraper
> next to a protected monument, including a rooftop café? What about
> pictures taken from a regular airplane?

yeah, I know, it is sort of anachronistic in many ways. I just wanted to
highlight that there nevertheless is some (weird) logic to it.

> To decide which views exactly
> would be protected seems very hard

the courts took the easy way out: What a person can view from open air
public ground without additional equipment is panorama, everything else
is not.
Additional problems were created recently with the decisions in favour
of "Preussische Schlösser und Gärten" in which it was held that even
public parks can be excluded from panorama freedom under certain wacky
circumstances :(

> and it might still be well possible
> to tell decisionmakers that such a law works like a trap for citizens
> who just want to take photographs. :)

true

Best
John