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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

#261

Post by mejutoco »

tirant wrote: post #251
wiz21c wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> The problem, I guess, is that a museum is not there to be profitable Well, the most democratic way we have found in the West to understand if a product or an initiative is relevant for the population is to see if it’s profitable (via sales or donations), or in other words, via the free market. Otherwise you are imposing on the citizens the maintenance of an organization based on the criteria from either the politic…

> Well, the most democratic way we have found in the West to understand if a product or an initiative is relevant for the population is to see if it’s profitable (via sales or donations), or in other words, via the free market.

I would say the most democratic way we have found is voting. The free market is efficient, but not concerned with democracy.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#262

Post by specialist »

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…

Double flip the script:

Government(s) levy royalties on IP it protects.

I'd feel a lot less grumpy about ever expanding scopes for patents and copyrights if we got something (directly) in return.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#263

Post by bambax »

aredox wrote: post #208
bambax wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

The Musée Rodin is not an "independent institution" at all, it's an "Établissement public national à caractère administratif"[0]: a government entity. The letters[1] are signed by "Catherine Chevillet, Conservateur général du Patrimoine" -- that's a civil servant. And the RMN, alluded to in the post, is also a government entity.

[0] https://www.pappers.fr/entreprise/musee-national-auguste-rod...

[1] https://cosmowenman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20190426-...

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#264

Post by throwaway_ab »

newaccount74 wrote: post #58
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…

> 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…

What's the website? I'm interested in having a look :)

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#265

Post by enimodas »

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…

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy: In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#266

Post by dagenleg »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #258
dagenleg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

They were already cut in, public funding was specifically used for these scans. There could be an argument that this liberalization means these projects need larger funding, but the museum took a different road.

"Public funding" is usually allocated for a specific purpose, as in, covering the cost of the scanning itself and after a lengthy bureaucratic process too. It's not free money.

The museums are deathly afraid of losing control over their collections, it's their main income generator. Why would the museum admin even bother going through with the 3D scanning projects, if they don't get to keep at least some commercial rights?

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#267

Post by MichaelZuo »

autoexec wrote: post #243
MichaelZuo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is pricing by available time to wait any more fair than pricing by available money to spend? It’s not like the average tourist has unrestricted opportunities to visit any day of the year, usually it’s only a narrow number of dates.

> How is pricing by available time to wait any more fair than pricing by available money to spend? Because its a lot easier to get someplace early on your day off than it is to suddenly get into another tax bracket. Even poor people usually get at least one day off every single week. Restricting access by income level is going to leave most people who don't earn enough locked out for their entire lives because upward…

No? Those who earn less can save up money, it’s not like it will cost millions of dollars either.

And money is a lot more fungible than time, so in literally the dictionary sense, it is just as fair or even better (assuming the pricing stays below say a monthly salary).

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#268

Post by jdiez17 »

bambax wrote: post #105
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…

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…

> 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.

Sounds a lot like Germany. One notable exception to this is when the public tries to interact with the government. Then it is expected that citizens are experts in public administration procedures and can decipher deliberately obfuscated language that abuses the passive voice (among other dark patterns) to sound more abstract and inscrutable.

> If's not corruption, exactly; it's the idea that the interests of the State are paramount, and everything else doesn't really matter.

We have a word for this concept: Staatsräson.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#269

Post by williamdclt »

romwell wrote: post #228
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?

>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!

There’s no public access mold of these statues though? What would a manufacturer cast _from_?

A scan is effectively a digital mold, it’s the same conversation

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#270

Post by williamdclt »

romwell wrote: post #228
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?

>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!

There’s no public access mold of these statues though? What would a manufacturer cast _from_?

A scan is effectively a digital mold, it’s the same conversation

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