Why capture and display Photos of the Eiffel Tower in the day "allowed", and at night "forbidden" and punishable by French law?

If you ask a group of people about the most famous city in the world or about a teacher who distinguishes his city and country, what do you think the answers will be? Of course, a percentage of people may answer the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, or perhaps the White House in Washington, DC, or even the giant statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro.

But the answer that will certainly win the greatest number of votes is the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower not only defines Paris but also symbolizes the whole of France and the key milestone that makes it the world's first destination for tourists (85 million tourists in 2013).

But there is a strange and little known knowledge among people in general that the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, is not allowed to be photographed at night, although its day-to-day images are some of the months in the world and the figures it represents are everywhere, so photographing it at night or using its night pictures is illegal (Although this law is not really enforced, it exists as text and applicable if the desire arises).

So, even though the images of the tower fill Google's search results, the Stock images sites rarely contain any images of the tower at night to avoid any legal consequences.
But why is it illegal?

It is simply because architecture is one of the art of art and is therefore protected by intellectual property rights.

In fact, the tower is not the only one protected by these laws. The world has transformed many buildings that have a protected design from theft and cloning. Perhaps the most famous of these is the London-style Mary Ax, an egg-shaped building in London, Both are protected from copyright infringement by their designers.

The strange thing is that both of these buildings and many other buildings do not prevent their portrayal in reality (except if the picture is the same building) unlike the Eiffel Tower, which is forbidden to show in any pictures, even though panoramic at night.

In general, the copyright law grants the original manufacturer of any new product - whether inventive, construction, film or even portrait - the monopoly right to his invention, including the rights to sell and publish his producer for a period equal to the life of the original manufacturer, plus a number of years different from another country , In Pakistan the additional period is 50 years, in Venezuela 60 years and in Jamaica up to 95 years. Many other countries grant the monopoly of the product for 70 years after the death of the original inventor, including the European Union, Laws, including copyright law, as one country.

But there are always exceptions to each rule. One of the most important exceptions to the European copyright law is the freedom to take panoramic pictures. It is a kind of wide-angle photography that takes a broad picture, that is, you take a general picture of the city or any other place without focusing on details in particular ).

What the free panoramic photography law means is everything that your eyes are in public places, where you can photograph it and you have the total freedom to make videos of those places, reproduce them and even sell them, but there are also exceptions, especially in France, where the EU allows its members not to Restrict the freedom of panoramic photography within their own copyright laws, and France does not provide that freedom.

This is simply because the European Union's intellectual property laws differ from some special cases in France. France is currently the only European country that forbids the depiction of buildings even in panoramic images, but in 2016 you can take photos of protected buildings under copyright law for personal use only. That any commercial use of these images is considered by the French law a violation of copyright, which means that if you take a picture or video of the sky of Paris for example and wanted to use it for the purpose of profit it is forbidden, or you will have to obscure or hide some of the buildings protected, buildings designed by engineers with Arjen either alive, or they died during a period of less than 70 years, so they are still protected, and if they were photographed for commercial purposes, the owners can sue the actor.

What about the Eiffel Tower after our knowledge of the laws in France

The designers of the Eiffel Tower have long since died (Gustav Eiffel, named after the tower, is not actually the designer but has bought design rights) and intellectual property rights to the design of the tower have fallen since 1993, 70 years after his death, as with any other work of art In France and the European Union in general, this means that the Eiffel Tower, its exterior appearance and design are now in the public domain, and all the miniature copies of the Eiffel Tower sold on the streets of Paris these days are in fact shocking.

We now come to the most important and fundamental part of this article. Having learned the copyright law in France and the rights of the Eiffel Tower in particular and that it has been in public places for more than 24 years, why can not we photograph it at night?

Well ... the sudden reason for this is that the lights in the Eiffel Tower, which is a good art work, are of course protected by copyright law.

For decades, the famous tower was not lit at night. It did not happen until 1985, and the style of distributing it is a work of art itself, so it is still protected by the proprietary rights of its original designers, making any commercial use of it (Including showing it on a YouTube video or showing it on a website like your own).

In fact, it is not just the Eiffel Tower, since France does not abide by the fact that EU laws provide for the freedom of panorama images. Many French buildings are protected by intellectual property rights because their designers are still alive or have died over the past 70 years, Parisian, for example, is frustrating to look for a point where the protected buildings do not show intellectual property rights in the images. It is worth noting that the Louvre's glass pyramid is also included in these rights because it was not built until 1980.

In the end, it is important to mention that although these laws are rare in practice, the possibility of being prosecuted for using images of property-protected buildings is almost impossible to obtain statistically, but at least theoretically available, so it is best to stay safe and try Avoid content that is already protected by ownership.