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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

#221

Post by justinclift »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #219
justinclift wrote: post #217

> 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…

At least you can download it. They can't undownload it once you have it, and people can distribute from what they have.

Yeah, thus my "better than nothing" wording. :)

Interestingly, also from the article:

  I’m much less interested in half measures, whereby the public might be granted access
  to scans only for, say, educational purposes, but be improperly prohibited from using
  them commercially.

  Those kinds of compromises undermine the public’s right to reuse public domain works
  and can lead to people hesitating to use them in any way because they are unsure of
  their rights and fear unknown punishments.
Whereas the licence on that Rosetta Stone scan by the British Museum is indeed "non commercial" only:

  License: CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikeCC

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#222

Post by BlueTemplar »

bambax wrote: post #111
tshaddox wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve just described precisely what a supreme court is. This is definitely the supreme court of France.

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'État, 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'État disagree - Conseil Constitutionnel: issues rulings about the constitutionality of laws, both n…

More complexity, but also each of them having less power. Which itself might be a good thing (separation of powers) or a bad thing (inability to stand up against legislative & executive powers).

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#223

Post by dagenleg »

kardos wrote: post #159
dagenleg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're quite right, actually "privatization" would be a wrong term here, but I feel like my point still stands.

I am completely supportive of the release of the cultural heritage digitisations into the public domain, and I think mandating a release under the non-commercial license would be a good solution. Equally, I think it should be possible to license these for commercial use, at a reasonable price.

What I was trying to say with my "privatization" bit, is that the author did not intend to buy the scans from the museum, but definitely intends to monetize them, and sell the derived work, without commitment to put that work into the public domain. For me this very obvious profit motive seems incompatible with the image of the defender of the public rights that the author tries to cultivate.

And once again, I think we have to take into account that forcing the public institutions to give away their 3D scans, without cutting them in at least a little bit, will simply put a stop to the scanning campaigns.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#224

Post by cortesoft »

mandevil wrote: post #153
squigz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 printe…

You could just buy one replica and scan it yourself.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#225

Post by javawizard »

whimsicalism wrote: post #147
squigz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression from that article was that '3D scans' and 'replicas' were grouped together.

Yes, I agree the article very intentionally tries to give that impression, true

Am I to understand that impression is incorrect then? Where might one look to ascertain the actual revenues involved?

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#226

Post by MichaelZuo »

toolslive wrote: post #78
MichaelZuo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they offer an explanation as to why it’s set up that way? It seems too comically slow and inconvenient.

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://…

Are exceptions to buildings regulations not typically documented somewhere in Belgium?

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#227

Post by astrange »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #46
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-...

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.

If you hire a lawyer, they're going to try to make the strongest argument for your case, even if it's not good.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#228

Post by romwell »

whimsicalism wrote: post #117
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-...

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?

>They’re afraid of losing out on the revenue from selling replicas

You're aware that you don't need a 3D scanner (much less a 3D scan) to produce a replica of a sculpture (..or a replica of a replica), right?

There's this ancient technique, known as casting, still in use today - which was used to produce some of the very sculptures being scanned in the first place!

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#229

Post by romwell »

astrange wrote: post #227
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you hire a lawyer, they're going to try to make the strongest argument for your case, even if it's not good.

And the meta-question of "why did the museum choose to waste money on lawyers that way" is "bureaucrat X decided that the scans belong to the museum, so no further logic or rational thinking will be applied unless absolutely forced to".

That's a common property of all large institutions: the reasons why a decision is made may as well be arbitrary, but by golly will they stick to it and die on the hill, if they can.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#230

Post by astrange »

aredox wrote: post #209
gabaix wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an apt description of how things are, sadly. And it all starts at the crib when parents teach their children blind obedience.

This is the complete opposite of what this story describes. And since when are the French blindly obedient? Is that really their reputation?

The idea that French people constantly fight for their rights isn't true either; they basically just love rioting. Americans interpret this as noble political activity because Americans have an incorrect belief that protesting is an effective method of political change that comes from misunderstanding Civil Rights/Vietnam protests.

But when you actually see interviews with French rioters you find they're all conspiracy theorists who think they've uncovered French QAnon. Or they're farmers who want even more subsidies and want to get rid of climate policy.

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