i’d probably lean the other way because the art is so prominent, but yeah: i don’t see why the law has to treat all photography as equal.
maybe it’s an intent issue, which granted can be notoriously difficult to prove, but if you’ve deliberately set out to use a specific piece of art for a commercial work - compensate the artist. ( do it even if you don’t have to in my opinion. )
a continuing issue is the length of copyrights. if they were decently short - it’d be less of a problem.
it also feels like there’s some issue around “generic-izaton”. in trademark, if something gets used as the common place term, it can lose it’s trademark. something like that should probably be acknowledged with public art and architecture. ( ie. paris and the eiffel tower. )
