Street artists seeking copyright protection for their murals face many hurdles. One increasingly important one is 17 USC 120(a), part of 1990 legislation extending copyright protection to architectural works for the first time. Section 120(a) limits the new copyright protections for architecture, providing “the copyright in an architectural work ... does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of … photographs … of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.”