Let me add something even more funny: in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1].
> The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.
This gets further complicated by sculptural works that are not part of the architecture of the building which have their own copyright. For example, the sculpture of lions in front of the New York Public Library are works of sculpture and not part of the architecture of the building and so photographs of them are derivative works... though that's not an issue now as they've fallen into public ___domain (they were the example given when I started photography as a sculpture that was often photographed along with architecture)... but are trademarked.
Then you get things like the Eiffel Tower which is public ___domain, but the lights (installed in 1985) are not... so a photograph of it, by night, is under copyright.
Yup, that's insane, all of it. Anything that is visible with the human eye or a reasonable camera (i.e. no 1200mm superzoom into someone's residence where a painting hangs) from the open street or any area accessible to the general public such as parking lots, airports and the likes should be freely redistributable.
> in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1].
I think most people agree that that is ridiculous. I'm not sure how they manage to enforce that, even with Europe's generally strong ideas around copyright and moral ownership and such.
> I'm not sure how they manage to enforce that, even with Europe's generally strong ideas around copyright and moral ownership and such.
Copyright holders use Google's reverse image search to find anyone who posts such photos to Twitter, Facebook or whatever, and then file civil damage claims.
[1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000108536963/schraeges-urh...