What "freedom of panorama" means for scanning public monuments in Egypt

"Freedom of panorama" is the legal exemption that, in many countries, lets you photograph a public building or monument and redistribute the image freely, even if the building itself is still under copyright. Egypt doesn't have a clean version of it.

Egyptian copyright law (Law No. 82/2002) permits photographing public buildings, but only for private or non-commercial use. Publishing under a free license, which is what an upload to Wikimedia Commons requires, falls outside that. Wikimedia's own policy treats Egypt as a country without valid freedom of panorama for this reason.

In practice, this narrows to one specific case: modern, still-in-copyright architecture and contemporary public art. It doesn't touch ancient or medieval structures at all; copyright doesn't apply to a monument that predates the concept by millennia, regardless of panorama law.

The check that matters, for anything built after copyright law existed: who designed it, and when they died. Most countries' copyright terms run a fixed number of years past the creator's death; once that term has passed, the building is safely public domain regardless of panorama rules.

Worth running that check before any modern building becomes a capture target; it's a five- minute lookup that avoids a real problem later.