A virtual tour of a shop also publishes foreign artworks. For example, if a large photo hangs in a doctor’s office and I upload a 360-degree photo of that room to Google Maps.
This is a copy of a foreign photo published on the internet. Do I have to make the foreign photo unrecognizable?
I live and work in Germany but this problem should exist almost everywhere and I have not found a good contribution to it yet.
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@funtob thanks for asking this. I don’t know what’s the right answer for this, perhaps one of our Google Moderators is best to give the right position and answer for this. Not just limited to a virtual tour, but any of our photographs. I am sure many photographs of museums will have lots of copyrighted art or objects etc in them, which could have been uploaded to Google Maps etc. Just tagging @GeorgesHR @NadyaPN .
I was searching through LG Connect, but didn’t manage to find a good answer.
On the web, I found this example legal case which could be good for reading https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm
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This is actually a very interesting question @funtob and the answer depends highly on both what country you are in and your intentions. I can answer for Australia (note this isn’t legal advice, always seek a lawyer for that).
In Australia if you exactly copy an art work by taking a photo of it or it in its frame without making any visible effort to create a new composition then you are copying the work and infringing copyright.
However, if you make your own composition and the artwork is an element of your composition then you are not infringing copyright.
Examples of what would be ok are:
- Image of a building interior which has art works
- A street photograph showing street art on a wall where it is only part of the composition
- A photograph with a prominent art work that is used in combination with something else - e.g. a couple of people admiring the art work
Regards Paul
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Hey @funtob ,
Thanks for the question. I would refer you to @PaulPavlinovich `s answer. His explanation is great.
I will only add Street View Policies and the section Intellectual Property Violations.
My personal advise is if you are ever in doubt, you should blur.
Thanks for the tag @StephenAbraham .
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thanks for your responses!
They seem pretty reasonable to me. I consulted a book now that explains german law for Photographers. @PaulPavlinovich in germany it seems to be pretty close to your explanation about Australia. I found out ike always it depends a lot on the individual case: if the third partiy artwork is an “insignificant contribution” to your photograph or not. From time to time people here open the case whether something is a significant contribiution or not. They do it because the chance to get a good compensation exists. So far the example I found deals with a printed prospectus. There a third party artwork in the backround was found to help the scene significantly and the business owner had to pay out the painter afterwards.
One question remains to me: who has the trouble if another artist clamis his rights?
1).Goolge as the mighty platform 2). the buisines owner as the priniple contractor 3). me as the photographer?
unfortunately my nice book only gives examples of old cases when street view did not played the important role of today…
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That is a challenging further question @funtob my guess (and I emphasise) guess is that an artist would likely go after the source of the most money Google, but given Google would likely vigorously defend itself they might go closer to home. It is worth noting that the User Contributed Content Policy does specifically forbid adding content that may infringe the rights of others which means Google are leaving that responsibility with the original contributor.