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Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

cosmowenman.substack.com

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Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#151

Post by mytailorisrich »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #137
mytailorisrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

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.

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#152

Post by falcor84 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #128
immibis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't they then buy it just before expiration ?

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...

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#153

Post by mandevil »

squigz wrote: post #139
whimsicalism wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 idlin…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#154

Post by sokoloff »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #148
sokoloff wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.)

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#155

Post by bambax »

yard2010 wrote: post #86
myrmidon wrote: post #48

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 surpri…

Ah non. They are just being french. They don't need reasons. Excuse my humor. I'm a huge francophile actually.

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#156

Post by myrmidon »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #34
Symbiote wrote: post #24

> 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…

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 di…

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"?!

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#157

Post by rtsil »

kergonath wrote: post #110
myrmidon wrote: post #48

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 surpri…

> 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’État 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…

For the purpose of this matter, the Conseil d'État 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'État 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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#158

Post by BlueTemplar »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #90
newaccount74 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 extre…

> (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]: ht…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#159

Post by kardos »

dagenleg wrote: post #149
kardos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 symp…

> 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

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#160

Post by addcommitpush »

kergonath wrote: post #110
myrmidon wrote: post #48

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 surpri…

> 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’État 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…

> 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...

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