My home town Mechelen (Belgium) is having an exhibition about the world expo in Belgium in 1958. One of the only remaining buildings from that year’s world expo is the Atomium, one of the most recognized buildings in Belgium. When tourists visit Belgium, this is on their agenda. Obviously, a lot of pictures are taken in front of the Atomium.
The exhibition in Mechelen was supposed to show these types of photos. Photos of people who had visited Belgium during the world expo. Sounds very innocent, right? Well… Since the Atomium was/is such a prominent building on the world expo site, it’s obvious that this appears in a lot of photos. According to copyright laws, they can’t show the pictures. Well… They can show the pictures but it can’t have the Atomium in it. Every time the image of the Atomium is shown, they (and actually, you too) have to pay a copyright fee, get written approval from the company that manages the building and to top it off, every photo must have the “(c) vzw Atomium” copyright line.
The exhibitor has found a creative way to get around that and is now looking for 100 Photoshoppers to cut out the Atomium from all of the exhibited photos. That just seems wrong to me. I mean, it’s totally cool that they are specifically asking for Photoshoppers (Photoshop being an Adobe product :D) but the reason why seems wrong to me. The Atomium is a public building and a landmark that was (probably) paid for with tax payer’s money but you can’t show pictures from it without paying copyrights to the building owner. So that got me wondering where this copyright-fee goes to? Does it go back to the owners of the building, in this case the tax payers? I think not…
So when does copyrighting go too far? I think this would be an excellent example.
In a world of patents, copyrights and intellectual property Its kinda scary getting in the way of other peoples ideas let alone create your own without breaking a sweat.
I think having to pay a copyright fee for taking a photo of a building is pretty stupid. Probably the most stupid thing I’ve read all year.
Unbelievable! This is what it says on the Atomium website:
The image of the Atomium is protected.
Any use, distribution and/or reproduction must be notified to Atomium asbl or the society SABAM. Any infringement of this procedure will be pursued through the courts.
It’s like if there was a copyright on the Florence Dome, the Grand Canal in Venice, the wooden bridge in Lucerne… we could go on forever.
Now, the funny thing is that on the Atomium Blog (http://blog.atomium.be/) THEY have a Flickr feed on their right column… showing pictures tagged “Atomium”, which in turn links to about 10′000 pictures. 10′000 copyright infringements.
And for laughs, here is an example of the letter that gets sent to people who use an image of the Atomium on their website: http://www.chillingeffects.org/fairuse/notice.cgi?NoticeID=760
What will be next?
I believe it’s the same issue with the Sydney Opera House.
I’ve always wondered about this in my home town of Seattle. The Space Needle is in every tourist photo, seattle-based film, and quite a few local logos as well. At what point do iconic buildings become part of the local landscape?
Very interesting post.
On another note, I assume that you mean that the exhibitor was looking for “those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images” (http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html)
Seriously though, informative blog; found you from Scott Kelby’s blog.
@Kenton: Do you work for the Adobe brand-police? :D
In California and Nevada, even trees have been copyrighted. See the article here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DC1031F931A3575BC0A966958260
29,200 images available using Google images.
I’ve heard many times about Atomium management team going too far with their copyright protection. I don’t think it’s very similar to Sydney Opera, because that one is about the architect rights while Atomium is about owner rights. With Atomium being built for public money, and freely visible/accessible from public grounds it’s management team indeed goes too far. It is just ridiculous like in this example with Mechelen museum.
As more and more people around the globe start to realize possible benefits from their copy/owner rights it’s becoming more and more clear that the copyright laws are weird and need to be changed. Authors and owners rights do need to be protected indeed, but in a reasonable and balanced manner.
Many texts that are sometimes contradictory and/ or vague circulate on the Internet about the publication of photographs depicting the Atomium.
For recall, the royalties are perceived by the descendants of Andre Waterkeyn, the engineer who conceived Atomium in 1955, and not by the a.s.b.l. Atomium.
In the precise and exclusive case of information articles related to the festivities of the fiftieth birthday of the Atomium and of Expo 58, private pictures intended for non-commercial and non-promotional purposes, published in low resolution (max. 600 pixels wide / 72 dpi), are free from copyrights. However, the copyright ? Sabam 2008 – http://www.atomium.be must be mentioned.
The press can download and use the photographs and iconographic documents that are present in our virtual pressroom and which are freeware. However, for each one of these iconographic stereotypes or documents it is also imperative to mention, in addition to the copyright ? Sabam 2008 – http://www.atomium.be, the copyright of the photographer who is the author.
For the most part the copyright issue becomes relevant only when the photo or film is being used for commercial purposes ie. the exchange of money for service or product. Tourists can generally photograph and post images. Also generally speaking, the extent to which the object of architectural interest is the focus of the photo or takes up the majority of the photo will influence whether the copyright has been infringed.
One of my favourite photos of my mother is in front of the Atomium in the sixties. Would love to put it out there and share it. Shame this can be such a deterent.