
The city I write this in protected its name, so I am not allowed to use it - r3bl
https://blog.r3bl.me/en/the-city-whose-name-i-cannot-mention/
======
skywhopper
Unrelated to the article: I really liked the picture of the Statue of Liberty
in the article, but having been to Liberty Island myself, I thought it looked
sort of off (there are no trees in front of the statue and no bridges behind
it, and likely nowhere you could actually stand to get that particular angle
and framing, without using some crazy telephoto setup). At first I thought the
pyramidical skyscraper in the background was the Transamerica building in San
Francisco and perhaps this was a shot of a replica Statue in the Bay area. But
again, the bridge was unfamiliar and the apparent distance from the statue to
the bridge and the city behind it did not fit with my recollection of San
Francisco Bay geography.

But after doing a little bit of poking around at where replicas of the Statue
of Liberty may be found (there are lots of them!), this one appears to be on
the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. That's Tokyo in the background
and the Rainbow Bridge. (See the wikipedia page on Odaiba[0] for a similarly
framed shot.)

Anyway it's a great shot of the replica, the bridge, and the city of Tokyo.
Credit for the photo is down at the end of the article[1], but whether the
author of the piece realized what the photo was actually of or not, I'm now
savoring the additional layers of context and irony the photo brings to the
piece.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaiba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaiba)
[1]
[https://unsplash.com/photos/S9lCKQ9XS8c](https://unsplash.com/photos/S9lCKQ9XS8c)

~~~
robin_reala
Interestingly, that probably means that that photo is illegitimate. Photos of
sculptural entities attached to architecture are considered copyright breaches
in Japan, and Odaiba is certainly not old enough to have moved into PD.

~~~
rcdwealth
What is copyright breach in one country, it is not necessarily in the other
one. One cannot just impose laws to other countries, that is why countries are
sovereign.

To impose copyright restrictions in other countries there must be either
international agreement or the law in that other country that permits such
limits.

------
phkahler
>> Legal and private entities that use the emblem and the name of the City of
Sarajevo...

With the word "and" in there, I'm thinking this is more about protecting the
emblem. Using an emblem (not a flag) of a government entity in certain ways
might be construed as conveying something to the content. In other words,
putting the emblem along with the name of the city might lead people to think
a web page was produced on behalf of the city. I seriously doubt using the
name of the city like in the blog is a problem.

I suspect in regard Sarajevo the author is deliberately making the situation
sound more absurd than it really is. Having said that, I think his point
regarding architectural works is valid. Publishing pictures of publicly
visible objects - and buildings in particular - should not have legal
hinderances.

~~~
jhanschoo
It would have been absurd if not for the cease and desist made to the FB
page...

~~~
TomK32
He is making it absurd. In the article the author claims that he cannot name
the city of Sarajevo and that view is of course bullshit. You can always write
about something. The article's title is plain wrong, as is its introduction.

Using the name (in a sense of making it your own or using if for something you
sell) is a whole different matter though. The city of Sarajevo might not have
a strong obligation to protect its name as say a music label defending their
name against a computer company, but still they city has good reason to check
on those things.

Having said that, the city is of course morally wrong to use this power on a
simple facebook page with vintage photos. They probably have a problem with
some photos of times they rather want to forget (I see a photo from 1941 and
IIRC that was under Nazi-occupation (stupid Italians, why would anyone ever
want the balcans?)) If anything, the city should have invited the page's
admins to their own tourist bureau, help them and make sure they know some
basic rules about copyright (like not using photos with a Getty images
watermark. seriously?).

~~~
Dylan16807
So _obviously_ it's protected speech in the title of an article, but
_obviously_ it's not protected speech in the title of a facebook group? I
don't think the distinction here is as strong as you imply.

~~~
TomK32
The facebook page is a legal (or rather private) entity as described in the
city's law, an article about the city of Sarajevo is not. If you write a book
about the city, the book is not a legal entity and you'll be fine using
"Sarajevo" in the title. If you name your publishing house "Sarajevo books" it
is a legal entity and you might want to talk with the city first.

~~~
rcdwealth
Facebook page cannot be a "legal entity". Further, legal entities may be as
well private entities.

Legal entities are created by governments, either as governmental
organizations (persons on paper) or as companies and various types of
associations (private persons on paper).

Facebook page may be opened up by such legal entity, but itself does not
constitute such.

------
dahart
> Since I am unfamiliar with such a dumb court verdict from the US, I assume
> that I am free to show you the photo of the State of Liberty during the
> night.

FWIW, in the US, all photos taken from public property are legal. Also, a
photo of a building can't violate the building's copyright. Building another
building that looks like it can, but taking a photo of it can't.

[http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm](http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm)

~~~
jackcarter
That doesn't mean you won't have be harassed by the law:
[https://www.wired.com/2014/07/five-sue-gov-over-
targeting/](https://www.wired.com/2014/07/five-sue-gov-over-targeting/)

~~~
erric
Yes, the War on Photographers has been in full swing since 9/11.

------
anigbrowl
_Legal and private entities that use the emblem and the name of the City of
Sarajevo without the permission to do so from the regulatory body_

Author needs to learn the difference between 'use' and 'mention'. 'Use' means
to exploit for commercial purposes, eg by operating a company called 'Sarajevo
tours' or selling 'Sarajevo salad'. You don't need permission just to say you
live and work in Sarajevo.

Remember folks, 'statutory interpretation' doesn't mean every conceivable
reading of a legal text is valid. Generally you should consult a legal
dictionary in your jurisdiction of interest to discover how common vocabulary
is construed for legal purposes, because it often differs from what people
imagine.

~~~
valuearb
Maybe Sarevejo should have considered how people will interpret their dumb law
before they made it. Can you imagine not being able to name your business
“Sarajevo bed and Breakfast” or something like that?

It’s like they are actively trying to suppress tourism....

~~~
anigbrowl
Yeah, I can imagine it. Perhaps their experience was that people selling
inferior services by trying to freeride on the name were actually hurting
tourism. You appear to have assumed your conclusion.

~~~
valuearb
There isn't a city in the world that doesn't have hundreds of businesses that
incorporate the cities name in the business name. It's often done as a point
of pride in their city by the business owner. Ever heard of the "Chicago
Cubs"? How about "Portland Cement"?

~~~
anigbrowl
None of which is responsive to the point I made. Bye.

~~~
valuearb
I understand discussions where you realize you've taken a wrong position can
be uncomfortable, so I won't bother you any more other than to say I addressed
exactly your points.

------
maffydub
Regarding copyright on photos of the Eiffel Tower at night due to the
arrangement of the lights...

It would be interesting to take a photo of the Eiffel Tower by day, and then

\- apply style transfer to turn it into a photo by night (which would, I
suspect exclude any lights)

\- train a (second) neural network to predict the positions of lights on a
night-time photos of various buildings (ensuring that all buildings/light
arrangements in your dataset predated the Eiffel Tower's lights).

I suspect that you could end up with images close to the real Eiffel Tower -
at least close enough for it to be aesthetically pleasing and recognisable as
the Eiffel Tower.

What would the copyright position on this be? IANAL, but it seems as though
either

\- the lights are not exactly correct, and so this (manipulated) photo isn't
covered by the copyright on the lights on the Eiffel Tower or

\- the lights are correct (or close enough), and so the lights on the Eiffel
Tower are in the obvious places (given that a ML algorithm could predict them)
- in that case, is there enough creativity in the arrangement for copyright to
have been granted.

Thoughts?

(I'm sure I'll never find enough time to actually do this - the style transfer
is trivial, but finding a suitable dataset of photos of other buildings of a
suitable era by night is probably too much work! :( )

~~~
rlpb
This kind of logic when applied to law is debunked in the widely circulated
essay "What Colour are your bits?":
[http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23).

Short answer: the law sees right through trickery like this, focusing on your
intent instead.

~~~
maffydub
Interesting - thanks for the link, but I'm not sure my question is actually
"debunked" by that article.

I outlined two possible scenarios: either

\- the lights are not exactly correct, and so this (manipulated) photo isn't
covered by the copyright on the lights on the Eiffel Tower or

\- the lights are correct (or close enough), and so the lights on the Eiffel
Tower are in the obvious places (given that a ML algorithm could predict them)
- in that case, is there enough creativity in the arrangement for copyright to
have been granted.

I think you're right that, in the second case (which the article addresses)
copyright would back the original creator - the "but ML predicted them so
there was no creativity" argument is probably pretty weak. (It's also
different from the idea laid out in the article you linked to - in that case,
the recreator of 4'33" was very prescriptive about what they were creating.)

However, in the first case, I don't see how the law "sees through trickery" \-
I don't think there is trickery going on. My intent is to create a plausible-
looking image of the Eiffel Tower at night (e.g. to illustrate an article on
it). It doesn't matter whether the lights are in the right place - I'm not
using it to discuss the lights.

As someone else commented
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16198190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16198190)),
the photo of the Statue of Liberty in the article is not actually the Statue
of Liberty on Liberty Island in Manhattan - it's actually in Tokyo. However,
as a casual reader, I see the photo and recognize it (incorrectly, as it turns
out), which is all the author needs to make his point.

~~~
rlpb
> It doesn't matter whether the lights are in the right place - I'm not using
> it to discuss the lights.

It doesn't matter that you managed to find a way to create a photo that looks
like the Eiffel Tower at night by not actually taking a picture. Your goal was
to make a picture that looks like the copyrighted thing. Therefore, you
effectively copied it. That it's a poor copy doesn't stop it being a copy.

Put this another way. Let's say I ran a random number generator until I had an
exact bit-for-bit copy of a JPEG that is a copyrighted image. Did I copy it? I
think the essay establishes that I did, because that was my goal. The process
of stopping only when I had an exact bit-for-bit copy will have made it a copy
in a judge's eyes.

What if I stopped when, rather than being a bit-for-bit copy, it was "good
enough"? I don't see that this would make it any different.

What if I used something more intelligent than a random number generator to
increase the chances of me getting the desired result sooner? I don't see how
that would make it any different.

Conclusion: how, technically, you come up with the result doesn't matter. If
your goal was to come up with something that looks like it, and you stop when
you have something that resembles it (doesn't matter if the match is good or
bad), you will be deemed to have copied it.

~~~
maffydub
Thanks - interesting!

So, let's imagine that the Statue of Liberty in Manhattan was copyright, such
that you couldn't take (or at least benefit commercially from photos) of it...

The author of the original article used a photo of a very similar statue, but
one that is based in Tokyo. I don't know whether they're identical, but let's
assume not, and that there is no similar copyright.

(I appreciate this is very hypothetical, but so was your "let's say I ran a
random number generator" argument.)

The author of the original article used a photo of the Tokyo statue with the
intention that readers would interpret it as the Manhattan statue.

Would the author be deemed to have infringed the copyright on the Manhattan
statue?

By your "if your goal was to come up with something that looks like it, and
you stop when you have something that resembles it (doesn't matter if the
match is good or bad), you will be deemed to have copied it" definition, it
seems they would.

~~~
rlpb
> Would the author be deemed to have infringed the copyright on the Manhattan
> statue?

Possibly. You hit the nail on the head when you say "with the intention that
readers would interpret it as the Manhattan statue". It's all about the
court's interpretation of the intent of the parties involved.

I don't think anyone can predict what a court would decide. Perhaps the court
would say that because any statue would have done, and what the reader
interpreted it as was immaterial to the content of the article, it wasn't an
infringement. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is what would happen.

All I'm saying is that if you try to "work around" copyright using "parallel
reconstruction", the courts are entirely able to see through this if they so
wish. The courts are never going to say "you got us there". I'm not making any
claim as to whether they actually will or not in a particular hypothetical
case, since that depends on the circumstances of the court's interpretation of
the bigger picture (intent, appropriate interpretation of the law, etc), which
is far more subjective.

------
BrandoElFollito
Sarajevo. There, sue me for infringement.

Of course this is not the way it works. I can mention Décathlon and Microsoft
even though they are registered trademarks. I can post a picture of the Apple
logo when illustrating Apple stuff.

There are things I cannot do (like using them as if they were mine) but
mentioning the name is not a problem.

So Sarajevo FTW.

As a side note about the requests from the city of Sarajevo (sorry) to pay for
the use of the city : they certainly should protect misuse (false documents
for instance) and possibly (though I disagree) commercial use of the name.
This is quite common, though enforced to various degrees (usually not, after a
few cases which went wrong, for instance in Krakow, Poland).

Fair use will prevail, though this is a real pity we need to come to that

~~~
icebraining
Except this is not trademark law, so there's no "fair use" unless it specifies
so.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Yes, they set a local law but still try to enforce it abroad (by requesting
things with Facebook).

They could go the trademark way (which then may be enforceable in a commercial
context) and would be subject to fair use.

------
rocqua
The meat of the article comes from the fact that certain facebook pages were
sent some form of 'cease and desist request' by officials of the Sarajevo city
council. Later, we learn that things got resolved for these facebook pages.

What if these requests were just a clever scammer, trying to get some money?
That seems to make more sense to me than a city council being so obtuse as to
request payment for use of its name.

~~~
johannes1234321
Over here in Germany some city administrations won't do such things for money,
but to make sure that this is not seen as an official page where false
information is spread. Finding the right balance can be hard. I would assume
it's the same over there, rather than actually trying to get money.

~~~
jiggunjer
When people look to Facebook as the official channel for anything, there's
already a problem.

~~~
TeMPOraL
People look to Facebook as the _effective_ channel for anything. Unofficial
fanpages of stuff are usually significantly more informative and up-to-date
than official ones.

Example from my city - the best way to find about problems with public
transport (e.g. a tram had an accident and blocked off an entire route in both
directions) is through an _unofficial_ Facebook fanpage.

------
HenryBemis
Unfortunately, Democracy/Freedom isn't full developed in this part of the
world. Feel free to downvote, but politically speaking, there are still many
open wounds, and unresolved issue, issues in this region of Former Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately they were caught in the middle of a cold-war-political-game and
this is one of the outcomes.

I don't think that local authority has any objection that Sarajevo can be
named in a blog post. I think it is to prevent other political forces from
making claims (founded or otherwise) and it's Alexander (in this case) is
caught in the middle of this ....storm.

~~~
goialoq
Which part of the world as Democracy/Freedom fully developed? The Eiffel Tower
and the US NY Port Authority have similar IP restraints.

------
oaiey
I think that such a legal paragraph is quite common. It prevents other
entities to mimic official documents and pretend they represent the city. I am
pretty sure, you can use the city name as location any time you want.

On the other hand: There have been stranger things :)

PS: Not a lawyer

~~~
emilfihlman
>It prevents

No it doesn't. In any way.

------
jrockway
So... that picture of the Statue of Liberty is actually one of a copy in
Tokyo. The bridge is the Rainbow Bridge, not one in New York. We also don't
have a copy of the Eiffel Tower in New York, nor do we put the anti-collision
lights on top of buildings like they do in Tokyo.

[https://goo.gl/maps/H9RAEx131UA2](https://goo.gl/maps/H9RAEx131UA2)

~~~
late2part
But we'll always have Vegas.....

[https://www.google.com/search](https://www.google.com/search)?
q=vegas+paris+eiffel+tower&source=lnms&tbm=isch

------
jimnotgym
Well I have a much stupider example. English Heritage (now Natural England I
think) decided they owned the rights to Stonehenge[0] 3-4000 years after the
architects demise. It seems they realised their error once it had been
splashed across the front pages....

[0][http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/latest/photo-
news/stone...](http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/latest/photo-
news/stonehenge-bosses-regret-photography-ban-update-19051)

~~~
mncharity
> stupider example

The EU side of the Euro is copyrighted, with a permissions grant that
prohibits disparaging use. So nice closeups of Euro coins get removed from
Wikicommons (as not freely reusable), and are yet-another-license pain to use
in OER education content.

------
syntheticnature
Related: the story of the owners of Bully Hill Vineyards in New York State,
who are legally enjoined from using their last name on their product. They
founded another wine company under their name originally and sold it to Coca-
Cola, you see...

Wikipedia, since it appears their website's cert is just out of date:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_Hill_Vineyards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_Hill_Vineyards)

~~~
syntheticnature
Their side of the story, if you feel up for temporary security exceptions:
[https://www.bullyhillvineyards.com/about/heritage/](https://www.bullyhillvineyards.com/about/heritage/)

------
Spoygg
You might be misinterpreting the law. Not sure for that case, but it's pretty
standard (in this part of the world) that you can't use city or state name in
commercial purposes (as a part of the name of the business or a product)
without entity permission.

edit: also pages/domains that could be seen as representing the city can get
notices about name usage. Domains, iirc, can be claimed for this reason by
city.

It's kinda common sense, using city name, for some people, might be seen as
representing the city, so any posts made by the page might damage the city
public image etc.

edit 2: added note about part of the world

edit 3: moving this from reply

> I live in neighboring country, when you're starting a business you can't
> have city or state name in business name without permission. Also using
> domains that have city or state name included might get you in some trouble.

> Probably more usual in this part of the world.

Adding: since both our countries still have a lot of laws from communist era,
there's all kind of crazy ideas pushed through laws.

~~~
jimktrains2
I'm not sure what you mean by pretty standard, but it's literally the opposite
of pretty standard. How many little place have the city they're in in their
name? I could probably find dozens for Pittsburgh without much effort.

Edit: I a actually had a company with my state's name at one point, registered
in said state with no issue.

~~~
Spoygg
I live in neighboring country, when you're starting a business you can't have
city or state name in business name without permission. Also using domains
that have city or state name included might get you in some trouble.

Probably more usual in this part of the world.

------
2Pacalypse-
Oh man, now I'll think twice before I try to correct someone's spelling:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3yncb0/the_beauty_of_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3yncb0/the_beauty_of_bosnia_and_herzegovina/cyexzrm/?context=1)

~~~
tomca32
Probably thrice since that looks like a pun. "Jebo" means "fuck" in the local
language.

~~~
ithkuil
Not necessarily. Confusing v and b is a quite common mistake: they are next to
each other on the qwerty layout and many languages (such as Spanish) don't
differentiate the sound of b and v.

------
AlphaWeaver
The author didn't mention it, but another stupid example of this in the US is
the Hollywood Sign. You can't shoot pictures or video of the sign without
permission.

This video by Tom Scott goes into detail:
[https://youtu.be/KUdQ7gxU6Rg](https://youtu.be/KUdQ7gxU6Rg)

~~~
icebraining
You can shoot pictures and videos. You just can't use them for commercial
purposes.

EDIT: forgot the reference:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100510105723/http://www.hollyw...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100510105723/http://www.hollywoodchamber.net/index.php?page=17)

------
__s
Selecting the black blotches reveals the name. Should be using FULL BLOCK. HN
doesn't allow me to include it in this comment

[https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2588/browserte...](https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2588/browsertest.htm)

Of course, this comment could be seen as commentary on laws against accessing
insecure intended-to-be-secret data. Blame not the author, but me, for they
obviously intended the name to be omitted, & I trespassed their security when
I selected the text. Lock me up

~~~
yunyu
Clicking the button at the end of the article reveals the name. It's 100%
intentional.

~~~
r3bl
Yes, completely intentional.

The idea is that the city's name is hidden by default, but very easy to
discover if you decide to do so. So you can highlight the text, click on the
button at the bottom of the page, or go to the linked Wikipedia pages in the
first paragraph to reveal the name of the city.

------
hsivonen
Hmm. I wonder if companies named after the municipalities they've been founded
it have ever needed to deal with this kind of thing from their municipal
councils.

Such names exist in many countries. Off the top of my head, I can think of
Nokia (Finland, telecom equipment), Emmaljunga (Sweden, prams) and Gorenje
(Slovenia, kitchen appliances).

In Finland, University of Helsinki owns helsinki.fi and City of Helsinki owns
hel.fi. For a while, the city was apparently pressuring the university to have
links to city stuff on the helsinki.fi front page, but it seems that now the
front page is all university stuff again.

~~~
Spoygg
Gorenje was founded while former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was
in blooming, it was a thing to call factories by city names, so there's that.

------
OliverJones
Hmm. Type "flights to SJJ" into your favorite search engine and watch it break
this law.

A while ago I needed to talk to a lawyer at MIT about making a derivative work
of a chunk of software published, by MIT, under the MIT FOSS license. They
were clear that I was free to mention the Institute's name, as long as it was
clear to a reasonable reader that I was not claiming their endorsement.

I suppose a municipality might want to be able to avoid confusing the public
with spoofs. It's not hard to believe a scammer could send out fake municipal
water bills. They need a way to shut that down. But claiming copyright in the
city's name seems clumsy.

Plus, the name is important. You really wanna have people calling it TCFKAS?
(after the ASCII rendering of Prince's name, TAFKAP, during his dispute with
his label.)

------
tlogan
I'm that part of the world so I will give you some background.

He was using both name city of Sarajevo and using emblem of the city on his
Facebook page. And since situation there is kinda tricky it is not interest of
anybody living in the city and want to ensure peace and p... (ok - just peace
- prosperity needs to wait for the next century) to have any 3rd-party
representing the city.

I'm not sure what he was doing on his Facebook page but he might one one of
the guys saying: "hey lets start the war again ...". Or might not. This was a
move by politicians: maybe stupid. Maybe based on fear of another war. It is
complicated.

------
pjc50
The Iain M Banks novel _Against a Dark Background_ has a throwaway mention of
a region called Regionner with capital city Capitaller, the true name having
being obscured by a centuries-spanning all-consuming litigation.

------
radovanb
There are many various restrictions on the use of photos of landmarks /
building - couple of them here:
[https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-
resources/lega...](https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-
resources/legal/stock-photo-restrictions/)

It also states that "Images depicting the [Eiffel] Tower’s lighting design are
unacceptable for commercial use" ... which I think is fair.

------
backtoyoujim
As humans we could de facto rename Sarajevo to something more representative
of its new policy.

------
zokier
But does the city actually have the authority to put such restrictions? Of
course they can say and claim anything, but would it actually stand in courts?
What about internationally, is there some agreement that applies?

------
megaman22
Reminds me of the idiocy about not being able to use the name Superbowl,
because it's trademarked. Leading to all kinds of businesses referring to it
in roundabout terms like "the big game"

------
Decabytes
As long as laws and rules like this exists, they will get abused.

------
juandazapata
The click baity title is mildly infuriating

------
chris_wot
Call it something else. Then when the city complains tell them it’s because
you can’t use the name in writing.

------
sandworm101
Totally incorrect for most western nations. Google "nomitave use".

~~~
goialoq
Is Bosnia a western nation?

------
lemiffe
The name is visible on one of the images (from a Facebook screencap)

~~~
r3bl
Thank you for spotting that!

I was so obsessed with the actual conversation that I have forgot to check
other sources in the screenshot. I have pushed a change that makes those two
occurrences censored.

------
pmatos
But Wikipedia has no problems writing Sarajevo. Why is that?

------
shmerl
What a moronic idea to copyright buildings scenery.

------
pbhjpbhj
Couple of things, I'm not a lawyer but I follow IP law and have worked in
related fields, this is not legal advice:

The statute he cites says that a person under that law would be required to
pay for _damages_ to Sarajevo for use of its name. A blog post is almost
certainly not going to create any damages. Also as it's a local ordinance it
probably applies only if you are in that city when you write.

>I was already aware that I can’t show you the mascot of those Winter Olympics
games, since doing so would be a copyright violation //

He can probably _report_ on it. It's not the EU _per se_ , most copyright goes
back to the Berne convention, which leaves some areas open for national
variances. Yugoslavia was signatory to that prior to the EU existing, and then
there's UCC, TRIPS neither of which rely on EU in any way.

Now, the Olympic Committees are known for abusing IP law, they'll sue you for
even an allowed usage of mascots and word marks (ie textual trademarks).
That's because most people would rather not risk going to court, and most
people don't know IP law well enough to be certain they have an allowed use.

>So, until the architect who designed the building dies and additional 70
years go by //

As he later points out that is a misunderstanding. The building is not the
issue, the light display is being considered an artistic work, it's the
creator of the light display who owns the relevant copyright here. I don't
know French law, but most arrangements of lights would fail at being
sufficiently creative to acquire copyright. And of course there are usually
exclusions for reporting, as the blogger is doing.

In UK we have Fair Dealing which is extremely restrictive, I'd expect France
to have something closer to the much more liberal USA Fair Use in which
usually being non-commercial makes copying allowed (though the definition of
commercial is nuanced, is not just selling; and being commercial isn't
necessarily _not_ Fair Use).

Something I don't know about is how French law would apply, assuming this guy
is in Bosnia & Herzegovina, it seems their local law about not showing this
"[art]work" shouldn't restrict him?

Also, if he writes privately and has his work published elsewhere, eg on a USA
based server, it seems like he should be protected by USA Fair Use laws!?

IMO governments need to have some way to address the chilling effect of being
sued for legal activities. A company knowingly operating in this way should
have all state IP protections cancelled.

------
f_allwein
Sarajevo.

Also, really? Hope this is a misunderstanding...

~~~
Froyoh
Let me say it too! Sarajevo.

------
ComputerGuru
It seems the world has gone full circle and somehow we have ended up back in
an authoritarian dystopia, this time one “we” ironically built and enforced
ourselves.

~~~
icebraining
How so? This seems to be plain-old legal censorship.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Censorship _is_ an authoritarian tool. It used to be carried out by the might
of the sword and now it's enforced by the full weight of the law, hence the
"legal censorship" as you put it.

~~~
icebraining
Right, but legal censorship has been around for thousands of years. I don't
see the full circle you're talking about - it's more of the same.

------
goialoq
Flagged article, headline is a lie and article is intentionally misleading.

------
JepZ
Sometimes you have the feeling that copyright laws are made by grown-ups who
want to use the law so that the other kids don't copycat them...

------
jcroll
Is there a part of this blog post where the author isn't whining about
something?

------
taylorexpander
It’s Sarajevo and this blog post is about the only thing I can find on this
with quick google searches, and you said it yourself that you’re not a lawyer,
so I really think you’re just misunderstanding something and are making a big
deal out of nothing.

~~~
rocqua
I'd agree with you if this was only interpretation of the law. However, the
city council actually took steps to contact the administrators of various
Facebook pages with the request to pay for the name.

