[HN Gopher] Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court
___________________________________________________________________
Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court
Author : abetusk
Score : 548 points
Date : 2024-10-18 08:50 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cosmowenman.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cosmowenman.substack.com)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558805
|
| (Same person, same topic, different materials; this is the
| article about the bust of Nefertiti linked in the piece.)
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| also very interesting
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| Bon courage. I hope you get these hypocrites through. Do you have
| a foundation to raise money for lawyers?
| kranke155 wrote:
| _" In response to the museum's nonsensical technological claims,
| we submitted expert testimony from Professor Michael Kazhdan,
| full professor of computer graphics in the department of computer
| science at Johns Hopkins University and co-developer of the
| Poisson Surface Reconstruction algorithm, which is used worldwide
| in 3D scan data analysis. Professor Kazhdan explained to the
| court that documents in plaintext format are fundamentally well
| suited for preserving scan data, and that such documents are
| easily exploitable by experts and amateurs alike."_
|
| Yes. Yes. That must've felt satisfying.
|
| "In response to Musee Rodin's nonsense, we present here the
| inventor of the basic techniques of 3D scanning, Dr. Kazhdan,
| from John Hopkins..."
| Ringz wrote:
| Reminds me of Woody Allen's Annie Hall scene ,,If Life Were
| Only Like This":
|
| https://youtu.be/vTSmbMm7MDg
| kranke155 wrote:
| It's pretty much that!
| zelos wrote:
| _" Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan
| right here... _
| praptak wrote:
| I am okay with public information being free to use commercially,
| with a huge disclaimer though.
|
| Wherever copyright is applicable, the public should retain it,
| that's what public domain is for. Any derived works, commercial
| or otherwise should also be in the public domain.
|
| If you fight for "public access" so that you can make your own
| stuff locked behind a copyright, then you are the hypocrite here.
| geokon wrote:
| an interesting example where this has been problematic is
| OpenStreetMap. They can't ingest a lot of government data b/c
| their project requires a relicense with their attribution-
| requirement (where all users are forced to have an ugly OSM
| bumper sticker on their maps)
| pastage wrote:
| FWIW attribution does not have to be big nor on the map, it
| is just less work to use the default than putting it
| elsewhere.
| stereo wrote:
| What you call an ugly bumper sticker is credit where it is
| due, but also an important recruitment mechanism for new
| mappers, which improves the map. The /copyright page is our
| biggest landing page on the website, even above the base /
| page. Attribution is also a requirement of many proprietary
| map providers.
| geokon wrote:
| yes, I've misclicked the hidden link many times as well
|
| The credit is due to the volunteers or governments that
| created the data, and not the project that collates it
| (their names are not displayed). The logic behind wikipedia
| doesn't translate to OSM b/c OSM is providing data to be
| reused
|
| If this requirement wasn't there in the first place then
| OSM maps would have been the default go-to map and a
| household name like wikipedia. You wouldn't need to force
| an ad in every map to self-promote.
|
| > Attribution is also a requirement of many proprietary map
| providers
|
| the project had the opportunity to do something truly
| different and unique and chose not to... what a missed
| opportunity.
| habi wrote:
| > ugly OSM bumper sticker on their maps
|
| Displaying attribution for free worldwide geodata sounds
| quite good for me.
| cormorant wrote:
| Wait, what? If the government source is public domain, OSM
| (or anyone else) can take it and derive from it and can then
| impose whatever license OSM wants, including an attribution
| requirement. Did you mean the other way around?
|
| Actually OSM's license is so weak on the attribution it
| requires, that OSM does not ingest CC-BY data, because OSM
| believes their further distribution would not satisfy CC-BY's
| attribution requirement.
|
| https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Licence_Compatibility
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| There's nothing to "retain" once copyright is over (aside from
| moral rights, which are forever... which I guess becomes
| questionable after the death of the author ? But moral rights
| are not transferrable anyway).
|
| Instead for calling to basically blow up the whole legal
| framework around derivative works, maybe we should focus on
| bringing copyright terms back to more sane durations (like the
| original 14 years, renewable once) ?
| falcor84 wrote:
| I like the idea of having copyrights renewable indefinitely,
| but with the holders having to pay exponentially larger sums.
| marcinzm wrote:
| That seems to benefit large corporations at the expense of
| smaller artists. Either you focus on making money or some
| large corporation will swoop in the second you can't and
| exploit your work for their own profit.
| immibis wrote:
| Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it
| can't be sold and then reinstated.
|
| I'm okay with large corporations pouring their money at
| the government to keep copyrights for useless things
| alive, even if it means we can't legally copy useless
| things for a bit longer.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Wouldn't they then buy it just before expiration ?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Exactly, if the clock is ticking for them to bid on it,
| to buy it off the small business, it gives the small
| business power, and should also make it easier for the
| small business to get decent loans/investments.
|
| Btw, if I'm not mistaken, I first read about this
| proposal in the book "Radical Markets: Uprooting
| Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society" by Eric A.
| Posner and Eric Glen Weyl
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502
| /ra...
| Jyaif wrote:
| > in private, RMN admits it won't release its scans because it
| wants to protect its gift shops' sales revenue from competition
| from the public making their own replicas.
|
| Sounds like a pretty good reason
| frereubu wrote:
| Understandable perhaps, "good" enough to completely ignore
| copyright law, no.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What copyright law? If I possess an out-of-copyright
| document, nothing requires me to make a copy for you when you
| ask me.
|
| They're ignoring the French freedom-of-information law;
| copyright law doesn't even touch the issue.
| frereubu wrote:
| My point, perhaps badly made, was that copyright law has
| expired, therefore it should be in the public domain.
| immibis wrote:
| Being in the public domain doesn't mean someone has to
| give you a copy.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| No, that's why the author is using freedom of information
| laws to accomplish his goals. If you are a government
| institution - and these museums are - in a country with
| freedom of information laws, then it follows that you can
| be compelled to comply with them by the courts.
| tupshin wrote:
| The article is long, but from TFA
|
| _The court ruled that the museum's revenue, business model,
| and supposed threats from competition and counterfeiting are
| irrelevant to the public's right to access its scans, a
| dramatic rejection of the museum's position..._
| poizan42 wrote:
| As if it would be more difficult to just buy the thing from the
| gift shop and make copies of that. With a physical object you
| can make molds directly from that without having to figure out
| how to turn a point-cloud file into a physical object.
|
| It's a pretty bad argument even besides the lack of legal
| relevance.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Except it turns out they also make basically no money from this
| right now - it's not a meaningful portion of their funding or
| other monetary support.
|
| This is actually true of most large art museums. SF MoMa makes
| only 7% of revenue (not actual dollars in funding) from their
| gift shop and that number only goes in one direction over the
| years.
|
| Smaller art museums often depend more but that is also
| changing.
|
| So It's just another nonsense argument
| bombcar wrote:
| It's also an argument, that _even if you granted all there
| premises_ - could be quantifiable.
|
| If the gift shop makes $x per year in toto, and some
| percentage is (or could be) 3D scans, you now have a maximum
| dollar amount that they can possibly be worth (by calculating
| the cost of a perpetual annuity). Can't be more - and so even
| in the worst case you've changed it from a "we will never" to
| a "we want $x before we do" question.
| mmooss wrote:
| _Anyone in the world with an internet connection can view,
| interact with, and download the British Museum's 3D scan of the
| Rosetta Stone, for example. The public can freely access hundreds
| of scans of classical sculpture from the National Gallery of
| Denmark, and visitors to the Smithsonian's website can view,
| navigate, and freely download thousands of high-quality scans of
| artifacts ranging from dinosaur fossils to the Apollo 11 space
| capsule._
|
| Has anyone used these in games? They would be great easter eggs
| and they have artistry and design that is far beyond almost
| anything DIY.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Potentially cooler than The Teapot, though there are also other
| considerations I guess...
| diggan wrote:
| > Has anyone used these in games?
|
| No doubt someone has put some of them into games. However, most
| likely not in it's original shape/form, as the scans usually
| produce highly inefficiently (but high resolution, great for
| renders) meshes. The meshes from scans tend to be a mess, and
| when inserting a 3D model for games, you care a lot about how
| optimized the meshes are, and that the mesh has a low polygon
| count as otherwise you'll tank the performance quickly.
|
| So since a developer couldn't just copy-paste the model into
| the game (requires a prepass to fix issues/optimize before
| import), it'll take valuable time from other things for just
| this easter egg. Again, no doubt someone has done this at one
| point or another, but that's probably why it isn't as common as
| someone could think.
|
| As an example, take a look at the wireframe of the Rosetta
| Stone (https://i.imgur.com/rtpiwjZ.png | https://github.com/Bri
| tishMuseumDH/rosettaStone/blob/master/...) and you'll see what
| I mean. For a high quality rock-like object, you'd probably aim
| for 2000-5000 triangles, while the Rosetta Stone scan seems to
| have 480,000 triangles straight from the scanning software.
|
| Sadly, it's simply too much detail to be able to import
| straight up. Luckily, Nanite ("Virtualized Geometry") and
| similar implementations starts to give us tools so we can stop
| caring about things like this and let the game engine optimize
| stuff on the fly.
| permo-w wrote:
| so it wouldn't be easy because these scans are highly
| detailed and so would require too many polygons to be loaded
| at once
|
| would this remain true for modern higher end graphics cards?
| diggan wrote:
| > but you have to compress the scan
|
| A bit simplified but yeah. In the industry I think it's
| commonly referred to as "cleaning up the topology" or
| "simplifying the topology" where "topology" is the
| structure of the mesh essentially. You'd put the scan/model
| through something like this: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/co
| mmunity/retopologise-3d-scans-...
|
| > is this true with top spec machines too?
|
| Games frequently feature 100s (sometimes 1000s) of models
| at the same time, so the optimization of each model is
| important. Take a look at the launch of Cities Skylines 2
| for an example of a game that launched without properly
| optimized 3D models, the performance was absolutely abysmal
| because the human/resident models were way more detailed
| than justified for a city simulation game.
| AlunAlun wrote:
| For rendering an individual piece, maybe not; but as part
| of much larger scene with many objects, animation, and
| rendering effects, it would place an unnecessary burden on
| the GPU.
|
| It would be much easier to simply have a 3D artist create
| the object anew from scratch, in a format and resolution
| that best fits the game.
| tomooot wrote:
| Even modern high end graphics cards use abstractions of the
| base data to create vast amounts of the final output's fine
| detail. For example tessellation and other techniques used
| for complex geometry like compound curves, which allow
| millions or billions of polygons can be visually simulated
| without needing to be present as polygon data, increasing
| opportunity for processing parallelization, while reducing
| load on communication busses and VRAM.
|
| As an example, you could probably represent something like
| the grip of this FLIR camera in a couple hundred polygons
| and surface/curve definitions to help the rendering engine
| tesselate correctly. On the other hand, this overall scan
| is 357000 vertexes. Sure you can simplify it and bake a
| bunch of the texture into a normal map, but that then
| requires manually reworking the texture map and various
| other postprocessing steps to avoid creating a glitchy
| mess.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/aAwoiXU.png
| krisoft wrote:
| > it wouldn't be easy because these scans are highly
| detailed and so would require too many polygons to be
| loaded at once
|
| In practice a a 3d artist could very easily create low poly
| models for these objects. For that low poly replica the
| high poly model can serve as a useful reference. (But to be
| honest many artist can just look at images of the object
| and do the same.)
|
| This is not even hard, on the order of minutes (for
| something like the Rosetta Stone) or days (for something
| seriously detailed).
|
| In this case where there is a will, there is a way. In fact
| this "reduction" step very often part of the game creation
| pipeline already. Monsters/characters/objects very often
| get sculpted at a higher resolution and then those high
| resolution meshes are reduced down to something more
| manageable (while they bake the details into a bump map
| texture, or similar).
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Maybe I'm buying into the marketing too much, but it's my
| understanding that Unreal engine 5 can do this
| automatically.
| diggan wrote:
| Not too much, it does actually work :) The concept is
| generally called "virtualized geometry" and Unreal's
| implementation is called "Nanite" but others are starting
| to pop up too, like the virtualized geometry
| implementation in Bevy.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Higher end graphics cards probably also mean more detailed
| scans being available.
| mmooss wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense, thanks.
|
| Still, let's not forget that the detail, the last nuances, is
| what makes great art so powerful. Lots of people can paint
| sunflowers or a cathedral (or make a typical computer game).
|
| Working that into a computer game is of course a big
| practical issue, as you say; also, unless the players will
| zoom way in for some reason, possibly the maximum effect is a
| resolution that's still less than what the museums provide.
| But maybe for the ultimate prize at the end, a close look in
| the treasure chest, when all the other on-screen action is
| done? It's hard to provide a visual reward that lives up to
| the moment, or exceeds it, after 100 hours of play.
| gorkish wrote:
| The published British Museum Rosetta stone is not even what I
| would consider a high quality scan today. In a proper scan
| you would be able to easily discern the carved writing just
| from the geometry. At 1mm faces, it's actually a pretty good
| candidate to dump straight into UE5 nanite so I disagree
| fundamentally that it is not able to be used in games. The
| only real question for the modern developer is whether it
| makes sense to spend ~50MB budget to put the thing in.
| diggan wrote:
| > it's actually a pretty good candidate to dump straight
| into UE5 nanite so I disagree fundamentally that it is not
| able to be used in games.
|
| Yeah, obviously the new virtualized geometry approach
| modern engines are taking kind of make that argument less
| valid. I thought I was doing a good job ending my comment
| with mentioning this recent change, but maybe I didn't make
| it clear enough :)
| gknoy wrote:
| I sincerely hope more games allow virtual interactions with
| culturally significant art. Hell, I'd love a virtual tour of
| major art institutions!
|
| It's not Rodin, but the game Horizon: Forbidden West has a
| segment where you get to view + interact with renderings of
| some paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt. I've seen some of
| these in person at a museum in San Francisco, but somehow the
| experience was more meaningful in the game, despite having
| comparative potato quality compared to real life. I think
| what made the difference was that in the game, each painting
| had several lines of dialogue about what the painting
| represented, or elements thereof represented, about what was
| going on when the artist created it, etc, and the dialogue
| choices included questions I would never have thought to ask
| about in person.
|
| I know that museums have virtual tours that have ausio
| descriptions like that about the art pieces, but I've never
| managed to take advantage of them. Can you imagine being able
| to take a high-detail virtual tour (even if not in VR) of a
| museum like the one in the article, or the Louvre, where you
| could spend as long as you want looking at every painting,
| zoom in at details like brushwork or how the light hits it,
| and have an expanding set of accessible narration (or
| readable text) about each item?
| amatecha wrote:
| 3d scanning is a pretty common technique to get some example
| geometry for stuff in games. It's not difficult to
| retopologize the scans to work better in a game engine. I
| don't know much about those pipelines though, but either way
| 3d scanning is super popular in the industry. Check this for
| example https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/retopologise-3d
| -scans-...
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Path of Exile has some fountains and sculptures in it that are
| based on publicaly available scans iirc.
|
| Edit: best source I can find on this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPy74M9FNpY&t=690s
|
| and here's one from the Louvre:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8b6f54/nice_de...
| mmooss wrote:
| The Louvre sculture is the sort of thing I mean. Wow.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The kind of person who's good at making games and is excited
| about ancient artifacts makes their own 3D assets that make the
| most sense for their game.
| mmooss wrote:
| > excited about ancient artifacts
|
| It depends what you mean: If you mean, they like the idea of
| 'ancient' and 'artifacts', they may make up their own. If
| they like the actual history, then the whole point of the
| ancient artificats in the museums is that they are actual
| things from actual ancient civilizations - making something
| up would defeat the purpose.
|
| Also, as I said, almost certainly they lack the artistry to
| match what's in the museum, simply because what's in the
| museum is often the pinnacle of human creativity over
| millenia.
| h1fra wrote:
| Rosetta Stone is an item in Animal Crossing, it's very similar
| to the original I wonder if they used the model as starting
| point.
|
| https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Informative_statue?fi...
| m463 wrote:
| This makes me think about old racing games. (Maybe it was Gran
| Turismo?)
|
| I remember the racing games had likenesses of some major
| manufacturer cars, but I believe the license terms said that
| the cars could not look bad. So not show crash damage,
| modification, etc..
|
| Basically, the license terms protected the brand.
|
| Now what if you put some country's national/cultural artifacts
| in a game... then let them get weapon or explosive damage?
|
| Something to think about.
| glimshe wrote:
| What I feel about this is similar to what I feel about
| government-sponsored research institutes and universities not
| releasing their research to the public...
|
| If you get money from the government, society is paying for your
| work so it's entitled to it.
|
| Oh, you want to keep the data for yourself? DON'T ask or accept
| money from us the people.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| There was an interesting project from the Natural History Museum
| using a syncatron particle accelerator to 3d scan some part their
| the famous 300 year old insect collection and make it openly
| available but that announcement was 2021 and I can't seem to find
| the results let alone see if they were released to the public.
|
| https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/july/high-resolutio...
| foobar1962 wrote:
| Maybe the delay has been caused by bugs.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > The court ruled that the museum's revenue, business model, and
| supposed threats from competition and counterfeiting are
| irrelevant to the public's right to access its scans, a dramatic
| rejection of the museum's position
|
| It would have helped the museum and government ministry if this
| had been clear before the government-funded scanning program was
| started. (Maybe it was, I don't know.)
|
| I was initially sympathetic to the museum, as it's common for
| public funding to be tight, and revenue from the gift shop or
| commercial licencing of their objects can fill the gap. I don't
| know about France, but I expect the ministry has been heavily
| pushing public museums to increase their income in this way.
|
| However, that doesn't justify the deception described by the
| article.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| In the previous story over the Nefertiti bust, the German
| museum tried to use this gift shop defense, but then when
| pressed, you could see that they made almost no money from it.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This the law of unintended consequences in action. I suspect
| that neither the government nor museums thought there was any
| legal obligations to make 3D scans public and I'd wager that
| the legislator did not have that in mind when they drafted the
| freedom of information laws.
|
| But then, suddenly (as per linked article): " _The Commission
| on Access to Administrative Documents (CADA) ... had never
| before considered any dispute about 3D scans. It affirmed my
| request that musee Rodin communicate copies of its scans to me,
| determining for the first time that public agencies' 3D scans
| are in fact administrative documents and by law must be made
| available to the public._ "
|
| A decision which has been going up the chain of courts since
| and is apparently close to the possibly dramatic climax.
|
| Indeed, the commercial argument is therefore irrelevant to this
| and the museum was clutching at straws there, really...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Good laws try to be future-proof. Transparency of government
| is a big deal in liberal democracies.
|
| It's incongruous for a museum to resist something like this,
| when exhibiting artifacts to the public is one of the main
| reasons for their very existence.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Legislators are human beings. "Future-proof" is one thing,
| guessing all possible cases is quite another and perhaps
| their aim simply wasn't things like 3D scans at all, as
| mentioned, because freedom of information laws came about
| to tackle a completely different issue (which was indeed
| transparency, not scans of sculptures...)
|
| That's how it is and key to this case, and not really
| discussed in any comments. I am not commenting on the
| museum's actions to defend against this, which they must
| think is in their interest. So I don't understand the
| hate... it's getting difficult to discuss on more and more
| topics.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Ok, I guess "transparency" doesn't begin to cover all
| potential cases, CADA's role is to ensure the freedom of
| access to administrative documents, but also to public
| archives and to the re-use of public information.
|
| And any document created during a public service mission
| is concerned, regardless of whether it's in a text,
| visual, audio, etc. format, the law specifically
| abstaining from giving an exhaustive list or even type of
| documents, considering their variety.
|
| And why would point clouds of statues be exempt when
| point clouds of buildings or landscapes are not ?
|
| Legislators are human beings indeed, not computers, they
| are able to try to convey "the spirit of the law", and
| hope that their successors will be able to understand
| them.
|
| The "hate" is from, yet again, taking taxpayer money,
| while basically doing the opposite of their job.
|
| P.S.: Something to cheer you up :
| https://youtu.be/sQ9I4t0kJxg
| myrmidon wrote:
| How is the publication of the scans an unintended
| consequence, if it was stated as intention in the grant
| application?!
|
| I also dont see at all how this is even a problem for the
| museum: Their gift shop is basically a rounding error in
| their revenue stream in the first place, availability of
| cheap replicas online would only marginally affect gift shop
| sales anyway, and what person would _ever_ go like "oh no
| lets cancel the trip to the museum because there is a good 3d
| model of their main exhibit on thingiverse"?!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| As per quote in my previous comment the crux of the matter
| is that 3D scans were deemed "administrative documents" in
| the sense of the freedom of information laws. This might be
| why they are fighting tooth and nail because if that is
| ultimately upheld this will apply to all scans in all
| public institutions, which all become accessible.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >This might be why they are fighting tooth and nail
| because if that is ultimately upheld this will apply to
| all scans in all public institutions, which all become
| accessible.
|
| Which is a pretty sweet comeuppance for not handing over
| these specific scans when asked.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >How is the publication of the scans an unintended
| consequence, if it was stated as intention in the grant
| application?!
|
| Perhaps it's unintended in that they never thought they'd
| be called on it. Requests for public funding almost always
| claim it's for the betterment of the public despite almost
| never being so and no one ever gets called out on it.
| rkangel wrote:
| I very quickly had no sympathy at all with the museum. It
| obtained funding to do the scans with the express purpose of
| providing to the public, and then decided not to.
| thfuran wrote:
| That's ISP-tier behavior that I wouldn't except from a
| museum.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| This same person fought for years to get the Berlin Egyptian
| museum to release 3D scans of the famous Nefertiti bust. The
| museum also claimed it would undermine its revenue streams
| through the gift shop, but as the case progressed, that turned
| out to be very misleading - the museum had made less than 5000
| EUR over ten years from 3D scans.
|
| https://reason.com/2019/11/13/a-german-museum-tried-to-hide-...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Why would they lie about it then? These museums are
| subsidized by tax payers, not only just local money but often
| with additional EU funding as well. The scans were paid for
| by the public. This seems comically evil for no apparent
| reason.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > This seems comically evil for no apparent reason.
|
| _Gervais Principle_
| wiz21c wrote:
| Although I agree(stuff bought with tax money should go to
| tax payers), you do realize that many people don't see it
| that way. Especially when their career rely on withholding
| the stuff in question.
|
| Another example: if people have access to 3D scans, then
| they might come to the museum anymore because they can make
| a virtual tour... (I doubt of that, but well, it's an
| example)
|
| But, of course, as a tax payer, I wanted these 3D scans
| (somebody voted for that at some point). So now the
| pandora's box is open.
|
| The problem, I guess, is that a museum is not there to be
| profitable. Unfortunately, "modern management" crept in
| there and now they have to be somehow profitable or at
| least make an effort to be so. And so, information
| withholding is a way to achieve that goal.
|
| As a society we have to choose: we keep museums so that
| everyone can enjoy art, or we think they have to be
| profitable first...
| grahamj wrote:
| > a museum is not there to be profitable
|
| This is so important. Museums (should) exist because the
| artifacts are rare and must necessarily be protected and
| confined. They should be overjoyed that scans allow
| everyone to enjoy these artifacts, even without visiting
| a museum.
|
| Anything else is corruption.
| bombcar wrote:
| Bureaucracies _always_ argue for the continuation of the
| bureaucracy and its funding, no matter how insane or small.
| It 's what they naturally _do_ and you have to explicitly
| fight against it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Maintaining the status quo is almost always the path of
| least resistance for organizations like this. Saying no to
| something new is easy, to say yes puts you out on a limb
| with uncertain strength.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Why would they lie about it then? T
|
| Because among copyright/IP maximalists, the whole point is
| that they own an idea or a picture or a look or a fashion
| and deserve to keep it to themselves forever. It's not a
| rational attitude, but it's a real one and unfortunately
| rather common.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| And what is the alternative? How do we get it applied to
| software copyrights?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Flip the script and make everything public unless it has
| a sort-of "license" which explicitly restricts access.
| People can proactively restrict access to their work,
| which would allow for lawsuits, and others can see the
| potentially very restrictive licenses which some will put
| on their stuff and possibly learn to avoid such licenses.
|
| Hard to say how that would look or happen in practice but
| it's interesting to think about.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Hard to say how that would look or happen in practice
|
| It's essentially how art worked up until last couple of
| hundred years, it worked just fine. During most of the
| most important periods of art history, copyright wasn't a
| thing.
| stavros wrote:
| What also wasn't a thing: Copying an artwork in two
| seconds with a cost less than a cup of coffee.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The person who created the art has been dead for a long
| time.
| stavros wrote:
| Not when they were alive, which is the period we're
| talking about.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| This suggestion reminded me of the ad-hoc open access
| decrees (aka "letters patent" (aka H-1B visas)) that
| might have supercharged modern Venice : whether for
| _inventions_ of glassmaking, _inventions_ of new books,
| or _inventions_ of the Americas :
|
| https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-
| origin...
|
| This involved lobbying the local rulers though... so was
| restricted to few chosen, and I am not certain that the
| situation would be much different today, because it's
| hard to imagine enforcement working for widespread ad-hoc
| licenses ?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It seems that with the advent/improvements in AR/VR that
| measuring the direct sales of scan data is the wrong way to
| look at the losses.
|
| If many people can experience a 75% compelling viewing of the
| bust (or the pyramids, Galapagos, Chichen Itza, etc.), the
| losses in tourism to those sites is far more than the lost
| sales of scan data.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This doesn't seem likely, the major tourist destinations
| during the busy season are so crowded, or slot limited,
| that it's a pretty unpleasant experience.
|
| If anything it would reduce overcrowding .
| thfuran wrote:
| Unless you're suggesting that they'll increase prices
| proportionally, how would that not result in loss of
| revenue?
| ipaddr wrote:
| If the place is packed you should raise prices.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I doubt it. People go to see the original Mona Lisa when
| they can own a reproduction for less than the cost of the
| flight. I don't see why those who would have gone to see it
| would suddenly accept a reproduction just because it's
| AR/VR.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There are hundreds of places I'd like to experience in my
| lifetime. I probably have the time left to go to perhaps
| 50 of them (max). Surely being able to experience some of
| those 300 in VR will affect my lifetime travel plans and
| I highly doubt that I'm alone.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| That's my point. Your top 50 are going to stay your top
| 50. If you've always wanted to see the Mona Lisa in
| person you're not going to change your plan because you
| saw an image of it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| My top 50 to see in person would definitely change if 25
| of them can be experienced in VR. (I might still go in
| person to my top 3, but there's a lot of nearly even
| exchange among spots 4-100.)
| ruthmarx wrote:
| VR isn't that amazing yet, you may as well just sit close
| to a big screen curved TV with earphones if going in
| person isn't ultimately that important.
|
| If the smells, sights, people you meet, experience
| including entering the country and flying, food, traffic,
| general cultural things etc are not important, why even
| have it on your list?
|
| Travel should be about the journey as much as the
| destination, when possible.
| yardstick wrote:
| Devils advocate:
|
| Maybe they were worried about sales of photos of the bust,
| and other products of the bust but not created using the
| scans? Could one take all the scans and produce a coffee
| table book of photos similar to what the gift shops often
| sell?
|
| Honestly the whole gift shop argument is weird. I have no
| sympathy for them. You can get plenty of knockoffs now if you
| wanted: the world is full of Statue of Liberty, Big Ben,
| Eiffel Tower, etc keychains and trinkets even without scans.
| Gift shops already have to compete with those.
| bhickey wrote:
| Approximately no one is going to buy a museum gift shop
| coffee table book anywhere other than at a museum gift
| shop.
| yardstick wrote:
| Exactly! The amount of worry they have is stupid and
| nonsensical and ultimately used to disguise their real
| reasons of just not wanting to share anything.
| y-curious wrote:
| Moreover, these museums get public funding for their
| operation AND the 3D scanning initiatives. It's not like
| the gift shop is the defining feature here.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They're afraid of losing out on the revenue from selling
| replicas, etc. which is probably a very reasonable fear given
| that the guy filing suit and writing this blog post runs a
| company that creates replica artwork?
| squigz wrote:
| The huge piles of revenue?
|
| > SPK confirmed it had earned less than 5,000 euro, total,
| from marketing the Nefertiti scan, or any other scan for
| that matter. SPK also admitted it did not direct even that
| small revenue towards digitization, explaining that it was
| not obliged to do so. In the nearly 10 years since it had
| created the Nefertiti scan, SPK had completely failed to
| commercially exploit the valuable data idling on its hard
| drives.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Not sure if you are intentionally missing the distinction
| I'm making? Your comment just restates the GP
| squigz wrote:
| I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make, no.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Revenue from "marketing the 3d scans" is not the same as
| "revenue from selling replicas" and it is the latter that
| they are trying to protect, not the sale of the scans
| directly
| squigz wrote:
| My impression from that article was that '3D scans' and
| 'replicas' were grouped together.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, I agree the article very intentionally tries to give
| that impression, true
| mandevil wrote:
| Right, no one is buying the digital scans. But tons of
| people buy physical replicas- I have been a volunteer at
| a different museum and our physical models of our most
| famous artifacts were very nice money makers for us, so I
| presume they would be for them as well. And using that
| digital scan you can make your own competing physical
| replica. Which is why the museum doesn't really want to
| make it easy for any 3D printer to compete with them.
| josefx wrote:
| That is 500EUR a year they could spend on random crap. From
| my limited experience with the German government any actually
| viable income stream would immediately result in politicians
| cutting public funding and overcompensate significantly.
| ballenf wrote:
| What's to stop a replica maker from scanning a replica bought
| from the gift shop? I am very skeptical that a trinket
| purchaser will care about or be able to identify any scanning
| errors introduced.
| cormorant wrote:
| > In an ironic development, the judges specifically reasoned
| against musee Rodin's trade secrecy claim by citing its 3D
| digitization funding applications to the Ministry of Culture,
| in which the museum stipulated its commitment to publishing its
| scans. The museum had attempted to hide these funding
| applications from us and the court, telling the court they did
| not exist.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| The Rodin museum is my favorite. They sell a very limited
| selection of his sculptures at the gift shop and some of the
| sculptures. You literally just can't get near them. They're
| in the middle of a fountain. I would certainly 3-D print the
| scans and have them at my house. I don't know how that would
| take any income away from the museum.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I've not been to the Rodin museum, but this summer I
| visited the Hirshhorn sculpture garden in DC. One of their
| exhibits is one of the 12 original casts of Rodin's
| "burghers of Calais".
|
| Except this summer they were doing some maintenance work,
| so this wonderful huge bronze sculpture was moved off to a
| corner, fenced off and surrounded by picnic tables where
| people sat to eat ice cream. The contrasting juxtaposition
| was just incredible to observe.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Data *should* be free, but in an age where predatory corps crawl
| the web to train models they hide behind paywalls, having control
| over your data means being able to explicitly give them to those
| that serve the common good.
|
| I used to be sympathetic to causes such as this, but in the
| advent of the plunder of our digital cultural heritage I have
| become skeptical.
|
| Why should proprietary AI get data payed for by the french tax
| payer?
| adrianN wrote:
| States do a lot of things with taxes that benefit commercial
| interests. Why should this data be an exception?
| kranke155 wrote:
| That's the thing, this data is in public domain, since Rodin
| died a long long time ago.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Just regulate AI, don't mess with freedom because some abuse
| it.
| myrmidon wrote:
| This is utterly puzzling to me.
|
| I just don't understand how you sit on the museums side of the
| trial on this, without seriously questioning your own position
| and conceding immediately.
|
| They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide those
| scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How can they
| even reconcile those arguments with preserving the artists
| legacy/serving the common good?
|
| I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!)
| court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two month
| deadline for three months in the new trial... Is there no
| equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?
|
| My conclusion is that there is either pure stubbornness or some
| weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side,
| because I have no other explanation why they would fight so hard
| for their position seemingly against all reason.
| gyomu wrote:
| > pure stubbornness or some weird, jealous hoarding mentality
| happening on the museums side
|
| Little people fighting for their big egos are far from uncommon
| in those institutions.
|
| > Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law?
| Is this typical?
|
| The French legal system has been under extreme duress over the
| last decade or so.
|
| https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/04/02/justice-la-c...
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums
| side
|
| That's exactly it. I work on a website that makes ancient
| artefacts accessible. A lot of them are in museums. You
| wouldn't believe how many museums:
|
| - don't want to show you their archive
|
| - don't want to let you take pictures
|
| - want you to share only low res pictures
|
| - want you to get permission before you can "publish" their
| artefacts, etc.
|
| It's extremely common for museums to have courtyards or
| basements with special "unpublished" pieces that they don't let
| anyone see. You have to be a special friend of the director or
| something to get to see them.
|
| It's ridiculous. Fortunately, the people working on the website
| are relentless, and manage to eventually get collection after
| collection photographed and added mostly by being patient. For
| some collections it took 20 years before they got access -- but
| since everyone uses their website, and everyone apart from the
| local museum director wants the stuff to be in there,
| eventually they get access to most things.
|
| (Museums in Italy are the worst, allegedly. They really think
| they own antiquity.)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Comically, smaller museums generally have a "take a ton of
| pictures, share them on social, tell everyone" attitude
| because they want their name out there in order to drive foot
| traffic and other support.
|
| Trying to pull up the ladder is something people only do once
| they're on top.
| holowoodman wrote:
| That is because the stated goal of "preservation" isn't
| really their goal. Thats only lip-service.
|
| Their actual goal is getting visitors, and any kind of usable
| information in the form of photos, videos, 3d-scans,
| transcriptions or whatever leaving their premises is a
| problem. Add to that the associated huge business of tourism
| and you have the explanation why the state and the courts
| (who are usually good buddies with the state and the upper
| class, including the cultural elite) also don't want to
| change that status quo.
| tomrod wrote:
| Ah, the standard Music Industry response to Napster, alive
| and well decades later.
|
| "Make the information hard to get! We own it!"
|
| Never realizing that sampling of the information makes it
| just that much more prestigious and desirable to us, the
| unwashed masses, willing to pay to visit a museum that has
| AMAZING ORIGINAL THINGS.
|
| If you start with the assumption that every view is a lost
| sale, you're going to have a really bad time.
|
| Outside of the Louvre and maybe the Smithsonian, there are
| no current world-famous museums, simply regionally or
| subculture-appreciated museums, some with bygone fame that
| a small portion of the older population would recognize.
| The Rodin Museum may be popular among a tiny niche slice of
| people, but if they were to make an internally consistent
| strategy that they want growth then they'd release more
| information.
| holowoodman wrote:
| Actually, imho, the AMAZING ORIGINAL THINGS are actually
| useless. You can not touch them, get close, rotate them,
| look at them properly, take your time. You are just
| number 29387 that day visiting the Mona Lisa, you get 5s
| to view it, then the line moves on.
|
| A high-res photo or 3d-scan allows you to do all those
| things (maybe except really touching them).
|
| So aside from the emotional benefit of having been near
| the real original piece for a few seconds, all digital
| derivatives are logically far better.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Five seconds is brutally short.
|
| What painting has the largest area of appreciation, when
| notoriety or quality is multiplied by time allowed to
| view it?
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| The Scream by Munch can be viewed for several hours at a
| time. It's actually limited by efforts to conserve the
| painting, so the museum only expose it to light for a few
| hours per day.
|
| If you time your visit to avoid the tourist season in den
| Haag, I think you can also view Vermeer's Girl with a
| Pearl Earring for essentially as long as you like.
| eichin wrote:
| "largest area" immediately brought "A Sunday Afternoon on
| the Island of La Grande Jatte" to mind - not for _actual_
| impact, just because the physical painting is nearly 10
| feet across, which noone seems to expect. Also it 's on
| one wall of an enormous room with plenty of room for
| people to circulate, in a gallery that has various
| options for free access (mostly aimed at locals and
| students, but the art institute doesn't seem too picky
| about it.)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| When we were there, I took a picture of the Mona Lisa
| strictly for the crowd in the foreground. To capture the
| memory of the stupid number of people who seemingly only
| come to the museum to see that one piece of art.
|
| Then we went and spent a few hours enjoying the rest of
| the museum, where there is plenty of art I appreciated
| more.
| mavhc wrote:
| I stood in front of it for at least 10 minutes, the trick
| is to go in the evenings. Being behind a crappy plastic
| shield didn't help though
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| > (Museums in Italy are the worst, allegedly. They really
| think they own antiquity.)
|
| They are the worst and they do in fact own antiquity: thanks
| to some idiotic national law, they can claim rights on stuff
| that has been public domain for centuries before the
| copyright was even invented. There was a lot of debate about
| this after a major museum sued a bunch of fashion brands, see
| this article for example [1].
|
| [1]: https://ial.uk.com/the-perpetual-copyright-protection-
| of-ita...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| This is overreach, the law seems to be pretty much about
| moral rights, not copyright (which I expected the case to
| be, with Gauthier's reputation, but actually wasn't?)
|
| I can see how it's inevitable for national symbols to be
| protected under moral rights, though it becomes tricky when
| it's foreigners that violate them.
| some_random wrote:
| >It's extremely common for museums to have courtyards or
| basements with special "unpublished" pieces that they don't
| let anyone see. You have to be a special friend of the
| director or something to get to see them.
|
| I think people really don't appreciate just how many
| artifacts museums have that they don't show to the public,
| don't document, and largely just sit on and gatekeep. It's
| especially bad when you consider the movement in museum
| curation from showing large numbers of artifacts with minimal
| annotation to smaller numbers of highly annotated more
| "significant" items.
| geuis wrote:
| What's your website since you mentioned it?
| thrance wrote:
| There is no supreme court in France, this is a gross
| mistranslation of "Court de Cassation", which is where you
| bring your case after you have lost your appeal, and is the
| last court where you can try to argue your point.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Same thing, different name.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Are the Council of State, the Constitutional Council and
| the Jurisdictional Disputes Tribunal also supreme courts
| too?
| bambax wrote:
| Absolutely not.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| So, a supreme court?
| tshaddox wrote:
| You've just described precisely what a supreme court is. This
| is definitely the supreme court of France.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Well the SCOTUS functions are divided among the Cour de
| cassation (last ditch appeal) and the Conseil
| Constitutionnel (Checks if a law is in line with the
| constitution)
| bambax wrote:
| No, it's different in many many ways. And there are not
| just one, but four courts of last resort in France:
|
| - Cour de Cassation, for civil matters
|
| - Conseil d'Etat, for matters regarding the administration
| / the State
|
| - Tribunal des Conflits: tasked with deciding who's right
| when the Cour de Cassation and the Conseil d'Etat disagree
|
| - Conseil Constitutionnel: issues rulings about the
| constitutionality of laws, both new (before they become
| law) and existing ones (QPC)
|
| This doesn't stop here however; there are two upper courts
| in the European Union, than can invalidate decisions issued
| by national courts:
|
| - Court of Justice (in Luxembourg)
|
| - Court of Human Rights (in Strasbourg)
|
| - - -
|
| Edit: Don't you love the idea of "Tribunal des Conflits"?
| The original idea was that the State could not be brought
| to court, its decisions being made by "the people" who is
| the absolute sovereign.
|
| Then France gradually accepted the idea that State's
| decision could be challenged, and created a whole different
| judicial system, the "justice administrative". It took a
| looong time: from 1800 to... 1980. A much simpler approach
| could have been to let people try their case against the
| State before the existing courts, but no... much better to
| build another system with its own rules, its own judges,
| etc.
|
| An inevitable consequence of having two different systems
| is that they sometimes disagree. (Another reason why it
| would have been so much simpler to just have one system.)
| Since the two systems are sometimes at odds with one
| another, we created... a third system! This was in 1872, so
| quite early in the process.
|
| This Tribunal des Conflits is a referee of sorts whose only
| job is to stop the fights between the two justice systems.
| I think that's great and tells a lot about the French way
| of solving problems: just add a new bureaucratic authority
| on top of all existing ones.
| cinntaile wrote:
| If it's the final court for civil matters in France I
| would argue it's still a supreme court.
| bambax wrote:
| One difference among many: the Cour de Cassation does not
| issue decisions, exactly; it can only hold or break a
| decision from a lower court. If it chooses to break the
| lower court's decision (casser=to break) then the case is
| sent back to said court to be decided again, with new
| guidance from the upper court.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| That's also typically how the U.S. Supreme Court works,
| except for those few oddball cases where it has original
| jurisdiction. The losing party from the lower court files
| a petition for _certiorari_ (judicial review). The
| Supreme Court may grant it, hear the two parties '
| arguments, and reach an opinion which is sent back to the
| lower courts, who are then responsible for resolving any
| remaining questions.
| addcommitpush wrote:
| That's what the law say anyway: Le
| Conseil d'Etat est la juridiction administrative supreme.
|
| (see: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEG
| IARTI0000...)
|
| Note that's it's not civil matters but matters related to
| government action (from say, basic rights to labor
| disputes for State employees or citizenship issues).
| kergonath wrote:
| The description was incomplete. The _cour de cassation_ is
| not supreme at all, there are the Constitutional Council
| and the Court of Justice of the EU above it. As well as
| more specialised international courts like the European
| Court of Human Rights. There is a summary here:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_France .
|
| In any case, France has a civil law system; there cannot be
| a court as powerful as the Supreme Court of the US is.
| Viewing any of these institutions as similar to SCOTUS is
| bound to create a lot of confusion.
| hotspot_one wrote:
| "a" vs "the".
|
| "The" supreme court, if one assumes a US-centric
| definition, comes with a lot of assumptions on the nature
| of law and the power structure of the various government
| branches. Which generally do not hold outside of the US and
| certainly not in France.
|
| So yes, it is "a" supreme court, but that doesn't really
| help understanding, because it is not "the" supreme court.
| cassepipe wrote:
| There a "constitutional counsil" that has old presidents and
| people named by the french president
|
| Interestingly enough the last three presidents renounced
| their seats (I don't know why)
| addcommitpush wrote:
| Note that the court in question is the Conseil d'Etat. Cour
| de cassation is completely irrelevant here.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| One of the things I find really funny about the law is that
| yeah, just not responding as long as you can or until someone
| acts to force you to is a common strategy, because it mostly
| works and adds cost and complexity to holding someone
| accountable. Some portion of plaintiffs will give up and not
| pursue even very valid claims if you just make the entire
| process a slog.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide
| those scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How
| can they even reconcile those arguments with preserving the
| artists legacy/serving the common good?
|
| If the museum folds and the collection gets auctioned off in
| parts and public access to it is reduced then the common good
| is not served.
|
| I think this is an asinine argument and they're mostly just
| protecting their own paychecks but there is a kernel of truth
| to it.
|
| >I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!)
| court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two
| month deadline for three months in the new trial... Is there no
| equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this
| typical?
|
| We all know that justice is only legally blind, not
| functionally blind. When you're the favorite or you're state
| adjacent you get a lot more leeway.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Ah non. They are just being french. They don't need reasons.
|
| Excuse my humor. I'm a huge francophile actually.
| Wololooo wrote:
| No need to excuse yourself as a French speaker but not
| French, the baguettes will indeed unscrupulously bend people
| over if it serves their own interest without excuses or valid
| justification.
| bambax wrote:
| It's not exactly that but it's close. It is: the State is
| always right, you're wrong, and that's that. The reasoning
| behind it is that "the State" is 66 million people, and
| you're just one person, so it's really easy to tell who
| matters more.
|
| It can be viewed as a perverse interpretation of the trolley
| problem; but it's impossible to understand France without
| that information.
|
| That's why people selling train tickets are rude and
| unpleasant: they represent the national railway system, which
| is an extension of the State, which is 66 million people, and
| you're just one person, so fuck you very much.
|
| Etc.
| bambax wrote:
| Welcome to France! France is built on the idea that the public
| can't be trusted, has not really reached adulthood (won't ever)
| and needs to be coached by an army of civil servants whose job
| is to protect the State and its finances.
|
| It's not corruption, exactly; it's the idea that the interests
| of the State are paramount, and everything else doesn't really
| matter.
|
| If the State sells reproductions of Rodin's work, well then you
| shouldn't be allowed to, and you certainly aren't entitled to
| any kind of help.
| willy_k wrote:
| > France is built on the idea that the public can't be
| trusted, has not really reached adulthood (won't ever) and
| needs to be coached by an army of civil servants whose job is
| to protect the State and its finances.
|
| I believe the term for that is "nanny state".
| gabaix wrote:
| This is an apt description of how things are, sadly. And it
| all starts at the crib when parents teach their children
| blind obedience.
| aredox wrote:
| This is the complete opposite of what this story describes.
|
| And since when are the French blindly obedient? Is that
| really their reputation?
| aredox wrote:
| What is this rant?
|
| This whole story shows the exact opposite of what you wrote:
| it is the Rodin museum, an independent institution which
| prides itself in being self-sufficient (even when it is not
| completely true), that is misleading the public and trying to
| manipulate the state ministry to its help, and the State
| didn't, and another part of the state ruled against them on
| almost all counts.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme
| (!!) court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their
| two month deadline for three months in the new trial...
|
| The _conseil d'Etat_ is nothing like a Supreme Court. It is an
| administrative body, not a court of law. This phrase was used
| because it was easier than explaining how it actually works to
| a presumably mostly-American audience. France has a civil law
| system, there cannot be anything like the American Supreme
| Court.
|
| > Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law?
| Is this typical?
|
| It is not a court, and it does not have the powers American
| judges have. The role of the Council of State (one of them,
| anyway, and the relevant one here) is to rule on administrative
| matters. They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in
| jail. They can decide that a government body was wrong on
| something and make it change, that's it.
| rtsil wrote:
| For the purpose of this matter, the Conseil d'Etat is a
| court, not an administrative body, it is the highest level
| and last resort of jurisdiction for administrative law, i.e.
| the law pertaining to relations between citizens and the
| State or the local governments. It intervenes as the highest
| appelate court of administrative tribunals. Its members are
| judges and their decisions are judgement.
|
| But the Conseil d'Etat has also many other attributions that
| are non-jurisdictional.
|
| > They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in jail.
|
| That's because only criminal court can do that. A divorce
| court cannot fine someone or put someone in jail. That
| doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court doesn't
| fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it any less
| of a court.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Its members are judges and their decisions are judgement.
|
| They are civil servants, not magistrates. They don't have
| the same independence and are nothing like American judges.
|
| > That's because only criminal court can do that.
|
| That was specifically addressing the contempt of court
| issue. The Council of State cannot do that. It can make the
| public institution do something, but it cannot punish the
| individual. Once the action was deemed illegal, the
| individual faces disciplinary action from their
| institution, but the Council does not decide this.
|
| > That doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court
| doesn't fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it
| any less of a court.
|
| What makes it not a court in the American sense is that it
| does not have any magistrate. Commission would be a better
| word.
| rtsil wrote:
| You are trying to relate two different legal systems that
| are don't necessarily have equivalence. The members,
| although not magistrates, are independent and factually
| irremovable. When they are in "court" formation as is the
| case here, they are judges by law, and it is a court.
| That's where you appeal the decisions of lower judges.
| Their decisions ("arret") are case laws and precedents
| that affect the entire justice system (in the relations
| between a citizen and the State).
|
| > That was specifically addressing the contempt of court
| issue.
|
| There is no such thing as contempt in the US sense, in
| French courts. The closest would be outrages, which does
| not apply to the issue in question (delay tactics). Many
| US legal concepts, even the most basic ones, are simply
| not transposable to the French system.
| addcommitpush wrote:
| > It is not a court
|
| That's weird because the Conseil d'Etat thinks it is the
| "supreme administrative judge" [0]. How could they not know
| that they are not a court?
|
| [0] https://www.conseil-etat.fr/decisions-de-justice/juger-
| les-l...
| kergonath wrote:
| They are judges in that they make decisions, but they are
| not magistrates; they are civil servants. The way it works
| is also quite different from the _cour de cassation_. There
| is not really a prosecution, a defense, or _parties
| civiles_. It's its own thing, partly for philosophical
| reasons related to separation of powers, and partly for
| practical reasons under the Ancien Regime. The kings did
| not want magistrates to interfere with the State, so they
| created a different judicial branch. Napoleon modernised it
| but kept the same principle.
| addcommitpush wrote:
| I don't think we should be missing the forest for the
| trees.
|
| Yes, because of historical reasons, _technically_
| "magistrat" refers specifically to magistrates from the
| judicial branch and not all judges [0]. This is surely
| interesting yet administrative judges do the same job of
| presiding over court proceedings before them and being
| independent from the political authorities.
|
| Procedure is different between the two branches, but
| there are also differences of procedures within each
| branch - for instance between penal vs civil cases.
|
| The Constitutionnal council has ruled that the
| independance of administrative judges is a constitutional
| principle in the same way as the judicial judge [1, see
| point 6].
|
| [0] of course if we need to be really technical,
| administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres
| des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives
| d'appel sont des magistrats [...]' https://www.legifrance
| .gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... ; but members
| of the Conseil d'Etat, an administrative court, are not
| administrative judges - they're conseillers d'Etat.
|
| [1] https://www.conseil-
| constitutionnel.fr/decision/1980/80119DC...
| kergonath wrote:
| > This is surely interesting yet administrative judges do
| the same job of presiding over court proceedings before
| them and being independent from the political
| authorities.
|
| Not really. The fact that members of the Council of State
| are not magistrates comes up regularly, because it does
| limit their independence. It works so far because
| everyone behaves, but this would cause a serious crisis
| if France one days ends up with someone like Trump or
| Boris Johnson, who is willing to stop doing the right
| thing and just use any weapon they can find. To add
| insult to injury in this case, the supreme body deciding
| on disciplinary actions in public institutions is the
| Council of State itself.
|
| > of course if we need to be really technical,
| administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres
| des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives
| d'appel sont des magistrats [...]'
|
| This is about the _tribunaux administratifs_ (lower
| courts) and _cours administrative d'appel_ (appellate
| courts, the 2nd layer). The _conseil d'Etat_ sits on top
| and is different.
| iterance wrote:
| I suspect the true rationale may be more deeply based on art
| history than either the museum or this article are letting on. To
| understand why, I think it's important to reckon with what
| happened to "art" as an institution when the processes of
| reproduction became cheap and readily available during the 1900s.
| I can only sketch and I won't fully do it justice.
|
| Before the 1900s, some methods of mechanical reproduction did
| exist. These methods could be used to mechanically reproduce the
| written word and very specific forms of visual media. But one
| factor governed the creation of reproducible works: the work had
| to be made in a format that permitted reproduction. Put another
| way, the author of a work must have designed their work for
| reproduction, implicitly or explicitly consenting to it.
|
| For example, a Japanese wood block carver chooses to make a wood
| block rather than draw directly on the page; this deliberate
| choice _creates the means_ of mechanical reproduction. Even when
| this is done, the choice to do so often comes at prohibitive
| cost, and while the cost of reproduction is reduced, it remains
| nontrivial.
|
| But for the rest of art and artists, exclusivity was not just
| implied, it was an expected standard. There is only one Mona
| Lisa. It was made in so-and-so year by so-and-so. Around this
| grew a nearly occult tradition of reverence for the individual,
| as expressed through their work - their _true_ work, the one in
| front of you, unique and inviolable.
|
| Through the 1900s artists were reckoning with the creation of
| film, and later, digital media. I won't rehash all these
| arguments. Suffice it to say that one main challenge was to the
| ethos of art itself. If the work is infinitely reproducible, then
| where has the artist gone? Today, anyone who wants to see the
| Mona Lisa has already done so. The original is a mere novelty,
| except to certain very rare specialists. This has only grown more
| true with digital media, as the ease of reproduction and fidelity
| have both increased dramatically.
|
| Among a certain type of art culture enthusiast, or maybe
| dogmatist, there remains a belief that art has lost something
| material as a result of its reproducibility. And it is undeniably
| a reasonable belief that if people are provided the requisite
| data, they will, eventually, reproduce the artwork to a
| satisfactory degree.
|
| To many of these people, call them any jeers you want, sculpture
| remains one of the last bastions where the occult value
| surrounding the artist, who made the work, has not been
| diminished, because no one has yet figured out how to
| mechanically reproduce a sculpture to a high degree of fidelity.
|
| Certain museums hold this as a guiding principle, because it is
| their interpretation of what "art" is supposed to culturally
| mean. A 3D scan of a sculpture destroys that final bastion of
| sanctity against the oncoming tide of reproducible devaluation.
|
| Now, I don't believe this argument is a good one. Frankly I think
| it's a bit Pollyanna, but I have to acknowledge I set it up so I
| could be strawmanning it a bit. But the reason we're not likely
| to hear it here is because, despite (what I suspect to be) its
| central importance to the Rodin, it is not, at its core, a
| legitimate legal argument.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| You are trying to insist on the "reproduced for cheap", I
| guess, because I'm pretty sure that expensive reproductions
| (whether legal or illegal, frauded as "real" or not) of
| paintings and statues have existed for a long time ?
| toolslive wrote:
| > ... are in fact administrative documents and by law must be
| made available to the public.
|
| They can still utterly frustrate you in the way they do this.
| They could fe print them out layer by layer and only show these
| in a specific "viewing room". I have seen my government (Belgium)
| use this strategy when it comes to architectural plans. In
| essence, it's public (you can access them) but it's also rather
| useless.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Do they offer an explanation as to why it's set up that way?
|
| It seems too comically slow and inconvenient.
| toolslive wrote:
| I guess they want to limit your time with them. If you could
| study them whenever you want with whatever tools you have,
| you can easily find conflicts between the plans and the
| building regulations. This would allow you to block the
| planned construction works.
|
| Even with the current protocol people find ways to block
| "progress". For example, the Oosterweel Link [0], which has
| been postponed multiple times.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterweel_Link
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| '"But the plans were on display..."
|
| "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find
| them."
|
| "That's the display department."
|
| "With a flashlight."
|
| "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
|
| "So had the stairs."
|
| "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
|
| "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom
| of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
| sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard." '
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Great read and an important battle for an open society.
|
| It strongly reminds me of universities and their model to sell
| papers to the public after the public already paid for their
| creation. Hopefully this ruling will somehow help in that regard
| to open up publicly funded work.
| rendall wrote:
| > _...I approached musee Rodin with a strategy to illicit a full
| airing..._
|
| Minor typo: if the author or anyone who knows him is reading
| this, the word wanted there probably is _elicit_.
| dTal wrote:
| That jumped out to me as well, particularly given the otherwise
| high quality of the writing. It's an example of what I perceive
| as a more general phenomenon - spelling errors, particularly
| confusion of uncommon homonyms[note], appear to have increased
| in frequency. I previously attributed it to the internet simply
| lowering the bar for "publishing" to the less educated, and the
| greater proportion of text that makes it to our eyeballs
| without the intercession of an editor - but seeing such a
| glaring mistake in a text clearly written by someone with
| otherwise very good command of the language makes me wonder if
| there are other factors, perhaps the rise of verbal media such
| as audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube channels.
|
| [note: I see "fazed" spelled as "phased" more often than I see
| it spelled correctly now. I suspect its proper spelling will
| eventually die out.]
| hotspot_one wrote:
| or speech-to-text systems. The person might not be typing the
| text.
| rendall wrote:
| It has taken me a long time to let go of "to beg the
| question" as exclusively meaning "to employ circular
| reasoning" and not cringe when I see it used to mean "to
| raise the question".
|
| What gave me calm to accept such changes is understanding
| that the language we use today is a result of such changes.
| _Awful_ once meant full of awe and now means very bad or
| unpleasant. _Nice_ no longer means foolish and now means
| pleasant. _Girl_ referred to a young person of either gender
| and now specifically means a female child. _Silly_ once meant
| happy or fortunate and now means foolish or absurd. _Meat_
| once referred to food of all kinds, not just animal flesh. I
| imagine there were people who experienced these changes with
| some despair. But everything 's okay. English is still
| expressive and meaningful. The sky has not fallen. The center
| holds.
| dekhn wrote:
| Note also the different meaning to "to table" (in a
| political context) between England and the US. One means
| "to put on the table for consideration" while the other
| means "take out of consideration and set it aside on the
| table"
| JofArnold wrote:
| I love this and applaud it.
|
| It's also very timely: next week I have arriving a portable 3D
| scanner (an Einstar Vega) precisely because as a hobbyist
| sculptor the only way I can analyze these works to inform my
| practice is to go to galleries and scan the works myself
| (sometimes very surreptitiously!). It's crazy that I need to buy
| a PS2000 piece of equipment and produce have a tonne of CO2 just
| to be able to look at a piece of art from x00 years ago on my
| computer.
|
| Bravo.
| AyyEye wrote:
| Photogrammetry is well established and you can do that with any
| camera and a few hours of cpu time.
| mapt wrote:
| Photogrammetry is great with textured, consistently lit,
| opaque objects.
|
| Blank white plaster, less so. You really want some kind of
| microtexture to grab on to for it to be anywhere close to a
| structured light scanner. That may mean you want a macro lens
| and a thousand exposures because you're grabbing on to
| microscopic surface roughness or dust. Not necessarily easy
| to do surreptitiously.
| AyyEye wrote:
| Yes they are different things and photogrammetry isn't a
| replacement for a "real" 3d scanner. But this is about
| museums which largely aren't unlit plain white surfaces.
| Getting models of museum objects is generally doable by
| anyone without thousands in specialised equipment. Taking a
| video or pictures is a lot less weird than pulling out any
| scanner.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Do you have any software recommendations? I tried a few
| photogrammetry apps to capture small items (e.g.,
| keycaps) and bigger ones (e.g., my face) but the results
| were never good enough. Ideally, I would like to open
| such models in Fusion, make a few edits, and 3D print
| them.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I've been to an art museum with a large collection of ancient
| Greek and Egyptian statues. A lot of the statues are damaged, or
| were painted and the paint has long since worn off.
|
| I'd love to walk through a VR recreation of what they believe the
| statues looked like when they were new. It balances the need for
| preservation of what remains, and the need to preserve the
| subjective interpretation of what the art was meant to be.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I love the idea of preserving history through 3D scans. When I
| learned about Gobekli Tepe a few years ago it caught my heart,
| and since then I've been wishing that someone would produce a
| detailed 3D scan of the site. Does anyone know if there's any
| company, group, or non-profits trying to make this happen for key
| historical landmarks? Most people are unlikely to be able to
| visit such locations, and they probably can't handle that many
| visitors, so making a digital version seems like a great
| compromise.
| chime wrote:
| Not a non-profit but Ubisoft has been doing significant 3D
| scanning and sharing (unsure under what license) for their
| Assassins Creed franchise:
| https://mocapsolutions.com/blogs/news/assassin-s-creed-unity...
|
| I haven't played all the games but the recent ones I tried had
| a historical tour mode where you get to explore day-in-the-life
| of an Ancient Greek city or Viking village, with people going
| about their routines working, trading, farming, gathering. With
| VR it would be the closest thing to time travel we currently
| have.
|
| And they do have many of the historical landmarks in pretty
| stunning detail, with drapes and paintings of what it most
| probably looked like back then.
| rpigab wrote:
| I am a French taxpayer.
|
| This is not the most outrageous thing about taxpayer money at
| work that I learned today.
|
| That would be the fact that local branches of the ministry of
| agriculture require wind turbine builders to put blue dyed water
| in concrete to make it friendly to all life or something, I'm not
| sure I understand, it's called Pneumatit(r), and I'm not making
| this up.
|
| It's biodynamics, it's biogeology (neither biology nor geology,
| not an actual science, it's more like dowsers). It's not only
| about wind turbines, it's in so many buildings now, but because
| it's not only approved but required on some public projects,
| it's... interesting. It's homeopathy for concrete, and like
| homeopathy in France, it'll receive government subsidies for far
| longer than it should.
| RansomStark wrote:
| > It's homeopathy for concrete
|
| you're really not joking
|
| Pneumatit(r) is a liquid additive that permanently anchors a
| fine biological activity (liveliness) in the concrete Many
| people experience adverse effects that come from concrete -
| regardless of the design. This ranges from slightly subliminal
| discomfort to irritability, inner cold sensations, joint pain,
| exhaustion and organic disorders. Underlying such sensations is
| a reality, because the production of cement breaks through the
| bottom of the natural processes of life. Result: a lifeless
| building material with an absorbing effect on our organism [0].
|
| [0] https://www.lehm-laden.de/en_GB/shop/pneumatit-
| pneumatit-50-...
| rpigab wrote:
| Oh how I wish I was joking.
|
| This stuff is apparently made from small bird femurs and
| nautilus shells grounded into powder, then add water, then
| diluted a million times so that they can sell olympic pools
| of the thing without running out of raw material. It's
| textbook homeopathic dilution.
| jjcm wrote:
| There's even more:
|
| > The end product, ready for use, has the homeopathic format
| D7. This is another reason why Pneumatit(r) does not have any
| physical or chemical influence on the building material.
|
| https://www.lehm-laden.de/en_GB/pneumatit
|
| They even state that it doesn't have an effect on the
| physical properties of the material.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Cui bono?
|
| I just did some initial snooping, thinking the manufacturers of
| the product would be some French people with some backdoor
| connection with the ministry of agriculture, but as far as I
| can tell, it is provided by some seemingly unrelated German
| company.
|
| Is this something that is distasteful, but needs to be done to
| prevent some group from picketing the installation of the wind
| turbines?
| krick wrote:
| I was slightly annoyed starting to read your comment, because
| "who cares what this guy learned today? these people are
| obstructing aggregation of knowledge, let's focus on that!",
| but after googling this "Pneumatit(r)" stuff...
|
| > Concrete with Pneumatit(r) is different. The experience of
| Pneumatit(r) rooms is described as warm, wide, free, soft,
| relaxing, breathing. Because Pneumatit(r), a liquid additive,
| permanently anchors a fine biological activity (liveliness) in
| concrete - and in all other building materials based on cement
| and anhydrite.
|
| I don't even know, what to say, this is the most absurd thing
| I've seen in a long time. I'm chuckling right now, but the
| fact, that some country enforces using it... It's truly
| mindblowing.
|
| P.S.
|
| Could you please source some regulation or something where it
| says you have to use Pneumatit(r)? Cannot find it myself, and
| the fact that French ministry of agricultureenforces it is a
| bigger part of the story than the product itself.
| t43562 wrote:
| There has to be a point where seeing things in the virtual world
| becomes "good enough" that we won't fly thousands of miles to do
| it.
|
| When I see some of the virtual reconstructions of Ancient Rome or
| Pompeii, I wonder if the real thing will be of less interest than
| the reconstituted, repaired one.
|
| I think this is normal - there are now billions of people in the
| world and only so much "great art". I was in a huge crowd looking
| at the Mona Lisa. There was nothing magical about the experience.
| I'd rather have my own copy or put my VR glasses on and enjoy it
| in, say, the house where it was first displayed.
|
| I can see museums fearing the loss of visitors or at least
| fearing that someone else will make billions out of virtualising
| it and they won't. I mean, search engines make billions out of
| the knowledge other people built over centuries. AI takes open
| source information and code and makes billions selling the
| embodied knowledge that was given away for free. It's not as if
| corporations aren't happy to rape the commons and call themselves
| heroes for doing it.
|
| This isn't a good reason for the museum's attitude but I don't
| look to the future free exploitation of public information with
| unalloyed optimism.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > There has to be a point where seeing things in the virtual
| world becomes "good enough" that we won't fly thousands of
| miles to do it.
|
| For certain things, I could see that. But for many things I go
| see, it's being there that is part of the point. Knowing that
| I'm seeing or touching the actual thing the artist saw and
| touched, or standing in a place where the builders worked build
| it, etc. Seeing a perfect representation misses that.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| It probably depends a lot on personality. For myself, I
| obsessively studied space exploration history as a child.
| When I was much older, I toured National Air and Space Museum
| in District of Columbia and found it terribly boring, no new
| knowledge, nothing I hadn't read about before.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I can see your point of view. It definitely is going to
| depend on what you are going for. I've never gone to a
| museum for knowledge. I enjoyed the Smithsonian (though,
| aside from a few specific artifacts, I really prefer Udvar-
| Hazy to the museum on the mall) solely because of the
| feeling I got being in the presence of the actual machines
| that I've learned so much about. Reading about Glamorous
| Glennis or the Enola Gay is one thing, but to stand in
| front of it and think "that right there is the _actual_
| plane Chuck Yeager flew past mach 1 " is 100% of why I go
| to the museum.
| t43562 wrote:
| I half agree, but I've been to a few of these things and it's
| all somewhat debatable because you're not really supposed to
| touch, or there are millions of people and you can't just sit
| and enjoy, or you don't know enough about them to understand
| deeply what you are seeing.
|
| Ruined cities really don't look or feel anything like what
| they were. You miss an incredible amount by not being able to
| see them as the inhabitants would have. On the other hand you
| see the countryside and when that hasn't changed (e.g. the
| sea moving out) you get a feeling of context but .... even
| that is odd when the original people that lived there are
| long gone and a totally different culture has supplanted
| them. You smell the smells of the plants at least and that's
| good.
|
| OTOH I can imagine the virtual part of this becoming
| incredibly good - with smell and touch even. Imagine lying in
| your Roman house in Pompeii and eating dinner while
| reclining. Listening to the street noise outside while
| enjoying the garden in your courtyard? I can imagine putting
| yourself inside the historical context to a degree that would
| require an extreme feat of imagination in the real place.
|
| With paintings it's just the crowd, often being on your feet
| and the comical way in which one's favorite painting turns
| out to be tiny in real life and much worse than the print for
| that reason.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Ruined cities really don't look or feel anything like
| what they were. You miss an incredible amount by not being
| able to see them as the inhabitants would have.
|
| Oh I totally agree with this! And I'd say it applies
| similarly to modern cities. I find it sort of hilarious to
| go somewhere like London which has a huge amount of
| historical architecture, but so surrounded by modernity
| that you get a little whiplash every time you turn around.
|
| I have to get as close as I can to what I'm looking at,
| preferably close enough to mostly shut out the existence of
| everyone around, the noise, etc.
|
| I think you make very good points. I would _love_ the
| virtual experience that tried to show what it was really
| like at the time these artifacts were created. I 'd still
| enjoy the part about seeing it all in person, though,
| because that's just me -- being in the presence of the
| physical object really sparks my imagination. So ... I want
| both options, please.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Some people have of course tried to do something like this.
| I specifically remember some video about getting street
| noise right... I think it was for that Assassin's Creed
| game set in Paris ?
|
| Related :
|
| https://youtu.be/NbETq6owNmc
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341280/NotreDame_de_Par
| i...
| dagenleg wrote:
| Why exactly is non-commercial open access problematic?
|
| I think the author is going overboard by framing this as some
| kind of righteous crusade for the public access. After all, he is
| interested in making profit from this. Sure, public funding paid
| for it, so then why should the profits be privatized?
| kardos wrote:
| There is no privatization here (moving the scans from public
| domain to private), the author is seeking the opposite,
| shifting the scans to the public unencumbered.
| dagenleg wrote:
| Yes, to be commercialized and privatized by the author.
| Somehow all of the "open access projects" on the authors
| website seem to be concerned with releasing 3D models scanned
| by others, and not you know, his own projects. I don't see
| any commitments to publish derived work and such.
|
| I know that the story of an independent artist fighting a big
| bureaucratic public institutions is something that would get
| a lot of sympathy here, but this really isn't that much of a
| "David and Goliath" kind of tale. French heritage and
| research entities are underfunded and understaffed, they
| don't have competent lawyers, or indeed funding to afford
| those, as we can clearly see from this case. One litigation-
| happy American can run circles around them and profit from it
| too.
|
| If as soon as the heritage work gets 3D scanned with French
| public funds, it will immediately get scooped and monetized
| by private sector, wouldn't the ultimate outcome be that less
| objects get scanned? Why would the museums even bother
| fighting for the digitization grant funds?
| kardos wrote:
| > Yes, to be commercialized and privatized by the author.
|
| privatize: "transfer (a business, industry, or service)
| from public to private ownership and control."
|
| The outcome here does not include privatizing the scans by
| the author! I'm not sure we read the same article
| dekhn wrote:
| The author posts STL files under CC-Attribution so it's not
| being privatized.
| djoldman wrote:
| > The court noted that musee Rodin had obviously created its 3D
| scans in the context of its public service mission .... the
| judges specifically reasoned against musee Rodin's trade secrecy
| claim by citing its 3D digitization funding applications to the
| Ministry of Culture, in which the museum stipulated its
| commitment to publishing its scans. The museum had attempted to
| hide these funding applications from us and the court, telling
| the court they did not exist. However, in the course of the trial
| we obtained those applications by forcing a parallel documents
| request directly to the Ministry of Culture -- which the museum
| complained to the court was a "crude maneuver" -- exposing the
| museum's deception and badly wounding the defense on this
| critical issue.
|
| Wow. If this went down as depicted, I'd be pretty disgusted with
| the museum if I was a citizen there.
| lucasverra wrote:
| at the end of the article there is emails addresses of the actors
| in this.
|
| Will be programming an email for next week :)
|
| Contacts
|
| Cosmo Wenman cosmowenman.com cosmo.wenman@gmail.com
|
| Alexis Fitzjean O Cobhthaigh Attorney at the Paris Bar
| afocavocat.eu afoc@afocavocat.eu afoc.avocat@protonmail.com
|
| Hugues Herpin Head of Service, Musee Rodin herpin@musee-rodin.fr
| +33 (0)1 44 18 61 10
|
| Helene Pilidjian Head of the litigation office, Ministry of
| Culture helene.pilidjian@culture.gouv.fr +33 (0)1 40 15 80 00
|
| Caroline-Sarah Ellenberg Deputy Director, in charge of legal
| affairs, Reunion des musees nationaux caroline-
| sarah.ellenberg@rmngp.fr +33 (0)1 40 13 48 00
|
| Pierre Vigneron Head of Grand Palais Rmn Photo
| Pierre.Vigneron@rmngp.fr agence.photo@grandpalaisrmn.fr +33 (0)1
| 40 13 48 00
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Given that the museum has ignored all court orders and deadlines
| and faced no repercussions, what exactly do they expect will
| happen when the Supreme Court too rules against the museum? Until
| these court rulings have teeth, it just makes a fun article to
| read.
|
| A short jail term for the person who heads the museum might
| motivate them to act better
| t_luke wrote:
| The British art journal has run a long campaign to establish that
| (a) museum photographs of out of copyright works cannot be
| copyrighted and (b) the schemes to sell such reproductions don't
| even break even financially
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ah, France. Where the gov't can decide that you are _dead_ , and
| mere reality is not a valid counter-argument:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/woman-declared-dead-2017-is-alive...
| rendall wrote:
| This is an astonishing account. I should no longer be amazed when
| governmental, or quasi-governmental, bodies abuse their authority
| in defiance of the law or reason, but it's absolutely baffling.
|
| Peripheral, but related: one of my favorite genre of YouTube
| video is that of people who quietly assert their civil rights to,
| e.g., stand in front of City Hall with a cardboard sign, or
| record video _inside_ City Hall or a public library or other
| public building, or record anything at all on video from a public
| sidewalk, or criticize the mayor at a town meeting, all
| completely legal and protected activity in the USA. Astonishing,
| the number of times a civil servant or police officer will
| attempt to run these people off under threat of arrest, exposing
| themselves and their town to a federal lawsuit.
|
| Invariably, without an ounce of self reflection, they frame these
| people as troublemakers, as no doubt does the Rodin Museum to
| Cosmo Wenman, even as the courts thump them.
| krick wrote:
| This is kinda amazing that one has _fight_ for it. I would like
| to think any museum should be immensely grateful to anyone
| willing to put in his time to either do the scanning himself or
| at least to provide an open platform to distribute the scans.
|
| Honestly, I am less sympathetic about this particular case (I
| mean, who cares about accurate representations of Rodin's
| sculptures anyway?), but making an open catalog of all digital
| copies of all ancient stuff found this far really should be #1
| priority for history as a research discipline at this point, IMO.
| It is absurd that anyone would actively prevent that. Yet, at
| some sites you aren't even allowed to take a photo (yes, w/o a
| flash), even if it is accessible. Most important sites and
| archives, obviously, aren't accessible to normal people at all.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Anyone in the world with an internet connection can view,
| interact with, and download the British Museum's 3D scan of the
| Rosetta Stone, for example.
|
| Attempting that just now from the linked page:
| https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-rosetta-stone-1e03509704...
|
| Note that Sketchfab is a 3rd party crowd (not the British
| Museum), and trying to download that model requires signing up
| for a Sketchfab account.
|
| So while it's kind of "public access", that's only while
| Sketchfab is still around and still requires giving this random
| place your details.
|
| It's better than nothing, but not exactly fantastic for a public
| institution to be doing.
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