Copyright and the Right to the City

In walking, loitering, performing, taking photos, and in a number of other ways individuals inhabit the public spaces which make up the shared physical environment of the city.In inhabiting these public spaces individuals encounter a variety of copyright-protected works–for example public sculptures, murals, images and text on advertising billboards, street art. Yet even though individuals have little choice but to encounter these works, copyright law does not offer a means of (legally) interacting with them.This results in widespread, if unconscious, infringement of copyright law via the flouting of the relevant legal rules, even as this flouting enables inhabitants to make a vital contribution to the development of culture within the intellectual commons.That such infringement occurs has come to broader attention recently in the calls made for the adoption of a 'right of panorama' at the EU level.