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Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

cosmowenman.substack.com

71–80 of 315 posts

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#71
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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#72

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…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#74

> ... 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.

Do they offer an explanation as to why it’s set up that way?

It seems too comically slow and inconvenient.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#75
post #9

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 th…

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#76

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-...

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.

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 .

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#77

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-...

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.

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.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#78

> ... 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.

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterweel_Link

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#79

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…

[deleted]

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#80
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 £2000 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.

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