[mike]

The personal use/profit use thing is a different point - I mean, in Italy the Ministry of Cultural Heritage theoretically requires a permit if you take a photo for professional purposes in an a valuable context (which in Italy includes most town/village centers, as it would be in France, Spain and other countries). While I disagree with this law, it's rarely enforced. The paradoxical point of the article is when they guess that a photographer using a professional equipment is surely doing a professional job. Nonsense: if I have the money I can buy a race car and have also all the tuning stuff, this doesn't mean that when I drive it I'm a professional race driver. If I drive faster than the speed limit, it's another matter.

Sometimes I hear of problems - this rarely occurs anyway - if you use a tripod: sometimes the authorities are just worried about over-crowding public places; imagine e.g. the center place of Florence (which is not so large) packed with people wanting to use a tripod at the same moment.

I disagree about the "paradoxical point" because it makes sense to me. If you're using gear that looks professional, and you have a model that looks like she's professional, it looks professional and if the right authority comes by they will point that out to you that you need a permit. Agree or not, it has been my experience. One of the reasons I really like my Pen-f is I've used it in places where I would have been told to put my camera away.

Of course he's not going to tell a family obviously on vacation to stop taking pictures with their smartphone.

I still wouldn't be surprised to find out he had people holding reflectors and helping with the shoot. Maybe he was "commandeering" a portion of the beach? Again, while nothing wrong, other than upsetting the people behind him, it is conspicuous.

I've been to many places where you need to by a permit upon entering to use a camera. These places are usually quite strict about even smartphone use. Conversely, there are probably draconian places where the law says no photography period without a permit where they (mostly) let most people get away with it. I see this happen in museums quite often nowadays with smartphones. At least most smartphone users won't stand in front of something for an extended period of time. Which is probably part of the reason they have these rules (overcrowding as you put it).

I live in an area that a lot of big production movies are made. It's funny watching drone footage of some location and then the scene starts at a local location. They definitely pay for permits and/or work out financial agreements to film at locations.

Fundamentally, I disagree with these rules/laws. But, where do you draw the line? Like a lot of laws like this, even covid mask rules, they try and write a simple rule that ultimately does not apply to all circumstances....

Cheers, Mike