[HN Gopher] The Berlin Egyptian Museum's scan of the Bust of Nef...
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The Berlin Egyptian Museum's scan of the Bust of Nefertiti (2017)
Author : Tomte
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-12-24 16:58 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| Daub wrote:
| I have published a book which required many photos of famous
| paintings. The paintings themselves were no longer covered by
| copyright, but the photos of the paintings were. In the end I had
| to swop out half of them for cc images, in some cases of
| different paintings.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| fantastic work. Wishing the best of success with the author's
| investigations into other museums as well.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| If you want to see lots of freely available scanned artifacts,
| check out scan the world.
|
| https://www.myminifactory.com/scantheworld/full-collection
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I have some experience with bringing museum exhibits online, and
| unfortunately this experience is total standard.
|
| Museums think they own their artefacts, and they want to control
| who gets to "publish" them. Typically museums have a few
| archaeologists that they have close ties with who get the
| privilege of publishing stuff. If some random person comes along,
| god forbid from abroad, they will try everything to stop you from
| getting access to their collection.
|
| They often don't even have time to publish their stuff, so many
| museums have unpublished objects in storage that noone knows
| about and they more or less keep secret because they want to
| decide who gets to publish them.
|
| This fiefdom affects big and small museums alike.
|
| One tactic that occasionally works is to get some important
| institution or some well connected professor to contact the
| director of the museum and sweet-talk to them to give you access.
| Giorgi wrote:
| aka nepotism
| mod50ack wrote:
| Yep, I work in this area and museums/libraries often believe
| that they have the right to prevent you from using the creative
| works whose originals they physically hold. This is usually not
| the case. And in the vast majority of countries, digitizations
| of at least 2D works aren't able to be copyrighted.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Exactly. You can go into a museum, take a photo, and do with
| it whatever you want, legally, even though the museum usually
| claims that you need their permission to publish it.
|
| The problem is of course that you can't take photos of stuff
| that isn't exhibited, so you need to get their permission to
| check out the stuff in the basement.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Europe actually does have a few countries that claim that
| photographing or digitizing a public domain work recopyrights
| it. They also have neighboring rights and database rights
| regimes on top of that.
|
| If you wanna know more, you should look at the one time the
| National Portrait Gallery threatened to sue Wikimedia[0] for
| having an archive of uncopyrighted material. It went nowhere
| - primarily because the US has soundly and firmly rejected
| the nonsense that "sweat of the brow" creates copyright.
| Hell, even the EU doesn't think you can recopyright public
| domain works this way. But the UK-hosted NPG is still
| asserting primacy of UK law over the whole Internet to this
| day.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_a
| nd_...
| lordfrito wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| This jibes with stories my father told me about how he and his
| brothers found Indian burial sites and other Indian artifacts
| in upstate New York when he was a kid/teen. He must have found
| thousands of arrowheads over the years (tilled farmland brought
| them to the surface). I found a few walking the fields with him
| as a kid myself.
|
| Anyhow he said the burial site was a major find and they knew
| it, and so they contacted the museum of Rochester or something,
| which came in much took ownership of everything, including all
| credit for the discovery, then hid the artifacts away, etc. He
| didn't have anything nice to say about his dealings with them,
| the experience majorly disappointed him, as he believed this
| stuff was meant for the public consumption but in the end was
| just hidden away.
| teddyh wrote:
| I remember this. Before the files were released, I seem to recall
| that there were some people who surreptitiously got some scanning
| equipment into the museum and scanned the artifact without
| permission, and published the result:
|
| magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d86dc5d56479a89074af1c3365a3b7d3d1404fb2&dn=N
| efertitiHack3D.stl
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Apparently, the author of this article believes that story was
| a hoax, source [0]. Reading his arguments, I am also inclined
| to believe the same.
|
| [0] https://cosmowenman.com/2016/03/08/the-nefertiti-3d-scan-
| hei...
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I had a chance to go through the author's website [0], and it's
| quite the pleasure! I've always been bit of a historical art
| nerd, so to know that I can have my own little 3d scans of such
| amazing pieces of history gives me immense joy.
|
| On other news, now that 3D scanning is becoming pretty
| commonplace with the iPhone pro LiDAR and apps like [1] or [2], I
| wonder how long such protests by museums will last before they
| have to relent as 3d scanning becomes as commonplace as taking
| pictures of artwork in the museums.
|
| [0] https://cosmowenman.com/ [1] https://hege.sh/ [2]
| https://record3d.app/
| RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote:
| Is there any statement of the museum which explains *why* they
| were being this obnoxious?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Before it was already freely available, but only for research
| and non-commercial use.
| rippercushions wrote:
| "Freely available" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet
| stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
| 'Beware of the Leopard, I presume.
| RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote:
| Found one, unfortunately it's in German only:
|
| https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/en/news-detail/arti...
| Tomte wrote:
| Two arguments:
|
| We never intended the scanned data to be a "product", but
| simply created it as an intermediate step in the masking
| process.
|
| Also, the taxpayer expects us to alleviate his burden by
| trying to make at least some money, and the FOIA requestor
| declined to promise non-commercial use.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "the taxpayer expects us to alleviate his burden by trying
| to make at least some money, and the FOIA requestor
| declined to promise non-commercial use. "
|
| Yes and the taxpayers will be happy, that they hired one of
| the most expensive law firms, to protect their amazing 5000
| euro revenue.
|
| "SPK confirmed it had earned less than 5,000 euro, total,
| from marketing the Nefertiti scan, or any other scan for
| that matter"
|
| "Instead, SPK made arrangements for me to inspect the scan
| at the Los Angeles office of the law firm WilmerHale, one
| of the most expensive, well-connected law firms in the
| world."
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I wonder if a FOIA would show the lawyers cost more than
| the revenue?
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| Anonboxis wrote:
| This is great! Has it been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons yet?
| rippercushions wrote:
| Commons does not permit works that have the NC restriction.
| mod50ack wrote:
| Commons does, however, allow scans of 2D public domain works
| that have "scarecrow" copyright claims in light of Bridgeman
| v. Corel (which ruled that such scans/photos can have no
| copyright in the US due to a lack of original creative
| content).
|
| Commons doesn't accept 2D photos of 3D works because these
| photos' lighting, positioning, etc. choices can give them
| original creative content. But a 3D scan isn't likely to
| contain such creative choices. It may be annoying to make
| one, but the US does not have "sweat of the brow" copyright.
| rippercushions wrote:
| The Nefertiti Bust is a 3D work, and as you can see
| yourself, its scans are not available on Commons:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nefertiti_Bust
|
| To be clear, I think the copyright claims are bullshit and
| it totally _should_ be there, but Commons is very, very
| conservative in what it allows.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Previous:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26935781
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558805
|
| 3D stl model @ Archive.org:
| https://archive.org/details/NefertitiHack3D
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _What the "Nefertiti Hack" Tells Us About Digital Colonialism_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978089 - Oct 2021 (2
| comments)
|
| _A Museum Tried to Hide This 3D Scan of an Iconic Egyptian
| Artifact. (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26935781 - April 2021 (4
| comments)
|
| _The Neues Museum claims copyright over 3D-printing files of
| the Nefertiti bust_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21670786 - Nov 2019 (92
| comments)
|
| _Official scan of Bust of Nefertiti released after three years
| of stonewalling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558805 - Nov 2019 (13
| comments)
|
| _The Making of Nefertiti 1kb (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18869904 - Jan 2019 (20
| comments)
|
| _There's Something Fishy About the Other Nefertiti_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11238921 - March 2016 (91
| comments)
|
| _Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data
| for Free Online_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11141840 - Feb 2016 (84
| comments)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Feel free to delete my comment you replied to (with yours
| superseding it) as well as this one, and take the archive org
| link for your own comment if desired. Merry Christmas! Thank
| you!
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I remember trying to photograph the real bust (no flash of
| course) and a guard stepping in the way telling me it's
| prohibited.
| Daub wrote:
| I was once forbidden to even draw in an art museum. I thought
| it was some mistake, an over zealous interpretation of the law.
| But the museum director herself confirmed it. Still can't
| believe it.
| jbgreer wrote:
| That's funny: I remember seeing it in the mid-to-late 90s and
| being amazed at how lax the security was. I took several pics
| and walked all around it.
| meibo wrote:
| When was this, I wonder? I definitely was able to take pictures
| when I visited in 2019.
|
| Might depend on the person watching it, as museums tend to
| go... I witnessed someone nearly being ejected from the vatican
| museum recently, when they were visibly but not disrespectfully
| amused about a painting that was clearly made to elicit that
| response. Another person tried to take a picture and had to
| give their phone to the guard, who then proceeded to delete it
| and check if they took any others. I would've loved to watch
| that room for a while longer to see what else that guy was up
| to.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Where is the jail time for the apparatchiks who perpetrated this
| nonsense on the side of the museum?!
| pjlegato wrote:
| In the United States, there is case law[1] establishing that an
| exact replica of artwork that is itself in public domain is not
| eligible for copyright protection, because "originality" is a
| necessary element for copyright protection to exist. Works that
| lack any originality are therefore public domain even if they
| require effort or technical skill to produce, such as
| photographing a public domain painting, or presumably scanning a
| public domain bust.
|
| Is there any similar law or regulation in Germany?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....
| rtkwe wrote:
| Ah but you see it's not an exact replica they carved a
| copyright notice and their name on the bottom! Clearly that
| qualifies it for the copyright notice itself.
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(page generated 2022-12-24 23:01 UTC)