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Comment by hjnilsson | Hacker News Reader

No. The law in question explicitly allows depictions of building, they are seen as separate from artwork.

Street View depicts other things than building. The following example is almost certainly illegal:

No. Street View does not offer a list of all artwork, and a way to find the images of them. Thus it would not fall under the "database of artwork" umbrella mentioned in the law. There is no metadata such as author of the work etc. that would make it a database of artwork.

If you enter 'statue' in the search, it'll give you a list of famous statues. If you click any of them, you are shown the artwork together with a description.

This seems to fit the description of a 'database' given elsewhere in this thread, but it may be that some detail in the law allows things like this. Perhaps because it is a database that contains other things than art as well.

Its free. Maybe that's the difference.

That is the same argument that typing "Avengers 3 torrent" in Google Search gives download links, so Google are liable for copyright infringement the same way Pirate Bay is. While technically true, there is a diference in intent here that needs to be taken into consideration.

No, Google themselves are providing Street view, the maps and taking the all the photos.

That's a good point, I didn't know about that functionality. I'm not sure the distinction that the database also contains other, unrelated, data and photos matter in this case.

Certainly the database that google has backing its mapping service has commercial value in a much more obvious way compared to the wikimedia public artwork database.

I guess that the licensing agency either didn't know of this function, or else started with the easier target.

My baseless guess for the outcome if they sue google is that google would win on jurisdictional grounds after five years of battle.

It's an unusually badly written law:

§ 24 Works of art may be reproduced

1. if they are permanently located on or at a public place outdoors,

2. if the purpose is to advertise an exhibition and sale of works of art, but only to the extent necessary to promote the exhibition or sales, or

3. if they are part of a collection, in catalogs, but not in digital form.

Interesting. To me that reads like I can reproduce the art as soon as any of the three points is true. In that case the exception in the third point wouldn't matter, because we already have permission by the first point. I wonder if lawyers have a specific way of reading it though..

Laws are read in order of specificity. So the most restrictive law takes precedence. For example. In the sentence above, depictions in a catalogue is more specific than any depiction in a public place, so that takes precedence. (And in general, the constitution takes precedence over all other laws)

As you may realise. There is a huge room for interpretation in the specificity, which is why we have courts & judges that settle these matters.

So you say, as long as they implement "statue and art blurring" similar to what they have now for faces and license plates?

Sometimes I don't envy those engineers :p

But what about artworks at/near streets?

The law allows photos of artwork as long as the photos are not part of a catalogue of art. And Street View is obviously not an art catalogue.

outdoor statues

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