Legality/Intellectual Property issues of photographing "art" buildings?

[angryhampster]

My sister sent me an email the other day and I don't have a clue how to respond to it. Instead of rephrasing and making things more complicated, here is the email body:

Hey,
Random question for you to ask your bro, since he is a photographer. Can you ask him what the deal is with copyrights/IP rights for taking a picture of a building and then selling that picture? Like the empire state building is copyrighted as a work of art, so you can't take pics of it and sell them with the owner's permission, but is there any resource that details exactly what you can and cant take pics of for commercial use?

Thanks,
L



It's something I've never really thought about before because you see it done so often. Anyone have any thoughts or resources regarding this?


Thanks!

[krb]

Google the term "property release". It's basically the same as a "model release".