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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: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:40PM
We can't have plebs having access to their cultural heritage. That would mean less money for our palaces and lazy bums. We will put gesta^H^Hsecurity at the entrance and around the museum. Anyone caught will be bea^H^Hexpelled. Those evil countries harboring free scans will be invad^H^Hdemocratized! and all infringers will shoo^H^Hprosecuted for profi^H^Hcopyright violations.
//Drrrr StrangeLove
On a more serious note. Museums probably want to keep as much as they want within their domains as to create a artificial scarcity and force people to visit them. There has been some controversy and legal gray area regarding photos of old paintings. And they are likely not prepared for this kind of 3D scanning on the spot. I suspect there will be counteractions. But there's one advantage for any discreet scanner. It's possible to scan without it being obvious that is what's going on.