It's not asinine. Being able to copyright creative lighting installations seems reasonable: what if someone copies your design? But it's not reasonable to charge anyone who takes a photo of it.

I think the asinine part is copyright transferring to another medium. Its one thing to copyright the lighting installation (which is a fine thing, more power to you), but another thing to now own copyright a photo that happens to have said installation in it.

What about clothes? chairs? umbrellas?

Soon we won't be able to take photographs of anything...

That's my point, the photograph, video, painting, etc. is not a replacement for any physical item.

I don't understand how this could ever be enforceable. Maybe it's just a symptom of my inability to imagine how this would play out in other justice systems outside the US.

They already enforce that in France.

How? Just like any other regular old copyright violation.

If someone's e.g. selling a poster of the Eiffel Tower at night, I think a lot of that poster's value derives from the efforts of the lighting artist.

Ok, let's go with that. What can you photograph outdoors that does not have someones efforts to style an area?

If the photo's "of" an artist's work then you probably do owe the artist. If you're photographing something that happens to have an artist's work in the background, that's going to be fair use, like the "dancing baby" video that has a bit of a Prince song in the background.

Nature?

(I suppose you could argue that the ability to get to said nature is often dependent on roads and other transit networks...)

What if I take a high quality picture of a painting? What about a video of a photograph? What about a film based on a book?

I think we are talking about a public installation like a sculpture, building, etc. No photograph, book, or film is an actual copy; but your examples are all basically trying to make a copy that can function like the original.

Couldn't a series of photos be composited to function like an original sculpture? E.g. a photosphere or VR-like presentation that allows the viewer to experience the sculpture from different angles, perhaps even in 3D?

Let me get this straight. To justify the protection of a light sculpture from photography, you create a scenario where the photographer is taking a bunch of pictures to build a "photosphere or VR-like presentation"? I shouldn't be allowed to photograph the sculpture because there is the possibility I will use these photographs to create some virtual replacement? This is how bad laws are made.

Yeah but come on... that sounds so ridiciouls.

In this particular case, I just don't see a copy of the Eiffel Tower's lighting arrangement appearing in exact form anywhere else...

What about performing your own version of a copyrighted song publicly? Reciting a copyrighted book in a theater performance? That's not allowed almost everywhere in the world and is still not appearing in exact form anywhere else.

Which is fair enough because they are easily reproduced but we're talking about famous landmarks here. I don't think I will find the Eiffel tower's light arrangement anywhere but the Eiffel tower any time soon simply because of its distinguished shape, not because of stringent copyright law.

Have you ever heard of the city Tianducheng which contains a copy of the Eiffel tower? Not that European copyright law would stop them...

Wow, I have no words because I've just eaten them.

I wonder if there's anything that would stop a European country from copying the Eiffel tower?

Wikipedia has a long list of replicas (though I wouldn't classify some of them as one):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eiffel_Tower_replicas

The Eiffel tower isn't copyrighted anymore so there is nothing that would stop anybody.