2025/10/31 by Lampropoulos, Panagiotis
paper · doi:10.17636/101113077
Contemporary counterculture movements, such as Black Lives Matter, engage in iconoclasm of colonial artefacts that are situated in public spaces to oppose entrenched urban narratives, a mode of protest that clearly conduces to social-media activism. Discourse about the interaction between protest, activism in the digital age, and copyright law must account for the interaction between the legal system and movements of this kind. The present paper focuses on two concepts: the right to the city and the freedom of panorama. It explores the ways in which moral and economic rights are biased against counterculture protests and argues for reform. In addition, I outline a more democratic legal approach to public art and the narratives that issue forth from it. Specifically, I will focus on the hierarchical nature of moral rights, as well as on the toleration of the destruction of the work of countercultural protestors. Lastly, I will demonstrate that the current law does not give full play to the freedom of panorama; accordingly, I will argue that the copyright regulations on public spaces, as they pertain to social media, are outdated.