As a result, it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in France and some other countries.
The imposition of copyright has been controversial. The Director of Documentation for what was then the Société nouvelle d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SNTE), Stéphane Dieu, commented in January 2005, "It is really just a way to manage commercial use of the image, so that it isn't used in ways we don't approve." However, it also could be used to prohibit tourist photographs of the tower at night from being published, as well as hindering non-profit and semi-commercial publication of images of the tower. French doctrine and jurisprudence traditionally allow pictures incorporating a copyrighted work as long as their presence is incidental or accessory to the main represented subject, a reasoning akin to the de minimis rule. Thus, SETE could not claim copyright on, for example, photographs or panoramas of Paris including the lit tower.