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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

#161

Post by mytailorisrich »

myrmidon wrote: post #156
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…

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…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#162

Post by addcommitpush »

thrance wrote: post #62
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…

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.

Note that the court in question is the Conseil d'Etat. Cour de cassation is completely irrelevant here.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#163

Post by y-curious »

yardstick wrote: post #83
ACS_Solver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

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…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#164

Post by idunnoman1222 »

cormorant wrote: post #113
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…

> In an ironic development, the judges specifically reasoned against musée 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.

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#165

Post by Suppafly »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #138
warkdarrior wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the alternative? How do we get it applied to software copyrights?

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…

>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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#166

Post by Suppafly »

myrmidon wrote: post #156
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…

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…

>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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#167

Post by djoldman »

> The court noted that musée Rodin had obviously created its 3D scans in the context of its public service mission .... the judges specifically reasoned against musée 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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#168

Post by Suppafly »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #161
myrmidon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

>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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#169

Post by kergonath »

addcommitpush wrote: post #160
kergonath wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

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 Régime. The kings did not want magistrates to interfere with the State, so they created a different judicial branch. Napoléon modernised it but kept the same principle.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#170

Post by josefx »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #42
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 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-...

That is 500€ 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.
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