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from the let-the-industrial-espionage-begin dept.
In February, two artists, Nora al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles – claimed to have scanned the bust of Nefertiti in a German history museum using a handheld Kinect Sensor. They then posted the digital files online.
Their goal, they said, was to free the statue from its imprisonment inside the walls of Berlin's Neues Museum by enabling anyone with access to a 3D printer to make their own near-perfect replica – a Nefertiti for all.
Al-Badri and Nelles saw their caper as an act of cultural liberation. It was a gesture against what they believe to be a legacy of colonial theft and appropriation, in which the goods of one nation or culture – in this case, Egypt – ended up in the museums and storerooms of another.
But the stunt illustrated another possibility: the indirect heist. Instead of stealing the thing itself, you can just pilfer the set of parameters – the metadata – that define it.
Why steal the actual bust of Nefertiti when you can instead easily nab the measurements to fabricate a new one? You would not have the original but you would have the peculiar wealth that comes with possessing a potentially infinite number of exact copies.
[Related]: Cosmo Wenman has been scanning and releasing digital files of artefacts housed in the British Museum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:56AM
Then all the words we have typed and code we've written is worth less than a carved stone? Don't let a price tag indicate real value.
There was a museum curator scanning and photographing items near the expanding borders of ISIS. He paid for it with his life; a true martyr of civilization.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:02AM
There was a museum curator scanning and photographing items near the expanding borders of ISIS. He paid for it with his life; a true martyr of civilization.
Bad guys du jour are bad guys. Bad bad guys, guys.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:01PM
RIP Khaled al-Asaad [wikipedia.org]... That man was incredibly brave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:43PM
He was a fucking Muslim to boot. And he was doing his best to protect Middle Eastern cultural heritage, whether Muslim, Christian, or other.
If more people had done the same (standing against injustice), perhaps he would not have had to pay with his life.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday May 13 2016, @07:02AM
A brave man indeed.
Ironically, the only surviving artifacts of the current Middle Eastern uproar may be those previously stolen or hidden.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.