
Official scan of Bust of Nefertiti released after three years of stonewalling - thaumasiotes
https://reason.com/2019/11/13/a-german-museum-tried-to-hide-this-stunning-3d-scan-of-an-iconic-egyptian-artifact-today-you-can-see-it-for-the-first-time/
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gumby
I have friends who work for WilmerHale. The SPK likely spent more than the €5
000 they'd taken in on the scan on the legal fees alone.

It's a shame to read this because the SPK does support good scholarship (I own
a number of their publications) but Germany in particular seems to have a
tight-fisted zero-sum view of copyright. And these kinds of games, where they
say "yes we know we have to follow the law but we don't feel like it" are
surprisingly common in both German and France.

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philpem
Not just Germany and France. It's surprisingly prevalent in the UK too.

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NKosmatos
Many of the big and well known museums have their most famous exhibits stolen
or “bought”. These global heritage artifacts are kept under closed doors to
generate revenue for the museums and not returned to the countries they
originated from. The least they could do is to provide high resolution/detail
digital scans freely available to everyone.

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nwallin
It's hilarious to me they're claiming copyright over it. The original
copyright holder, Nefertiti, died over three millennia ago, and she sure as
shit wouldn't have transferred the copyright to the German government.

I wonder if their copyright claim has any relevance to the ongoing demands for
repatriation to Egypt. If the German government claims copyright, certainly
the Egyptian government has a better copyright claim. There's probably some
sort of legal gotcha! in there but I don't know what it is.

Certainly the fact that the German government is claiming copyright protection
for a 3,000 year old Egyptian artifact they stole 80 years ago should clue us
in that copyright law is fucking broken.

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philpem
I wonder if their argument is somewhat similar to the "database right" \- the
common example being a telephone directory. There's no copyright in the
mapping between names and phone numbers, but there is in the specific database
of them. (IANAL, don't take this as gospel!)

So while the original artefact may be long out of copyright, are they under
the impression that their scan is somehow a new work or some kind of
copyrightable derivative?

I do love the way this came about -- first an bland statement that they derive
profit from licensing, followed by (legitimately) asking for the data to
support that claim under FOIA. Fantastic!

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thaumasiotes
A telephone directory is the standard example (in the US) of a work in which
there is no intellectual property right at all. Are you thinking of something
else, or perhaps a different country?

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm](https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co).

Reading the wikipedia summary, it looks like the key points of the decision
are:

\- The association between an individual phone number and an individual name
is an uncopyrightable fact.

\- A collection of uncopyrightable facts may nevertheless be copyrightable,
given the editorial creativity involved in compiling those facts.

\- But the phone book involves no editorial discretion whatever; it is a list
of every subscriber to the company (no discretion over what data is or isn't
included), in alphabetical order (no discretion over what order the data is
presented in), which the company is legally required to produce.

~~~
philpem
I think I've picked a bad example!

I was thinking along the same lines you explained -- that the facts wouldn't
be copyrightable, but the overall work might be.

To that effect - the scan produces a point-cloud. If you repeated the scan,
you'd get almost the same point-cloud. Thus, the point-cloud is a fact.

But the process of taking that point cloud produces a work, given the
creativity involved in cleaning it up and checking accuracy, then making it
into a model fit for release.

I was under the impression that the phone book's appearance and layout might
be copyrightable (trade dress/look and feel), though that's more likely a
trademark issue than a copyright one.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> given the creativity involved in cleaning it up and checking accuracy

This opinion isn't informed by anything, but I feel like the more effort you
put into making sure your point cloud is _accurate_ , the more fact-like and
therefore uncopyrightable the point cloud becomes.

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memetichazard
Linked[×] via that article is a similar story of obtaining access to the
official scan of Rodin's Thinker. It's an interesting tale told in the form of
email and official letters...

[×]
[https://cosmowenman.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/20190911-cos...](https://cosmowenman.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/20190911-cosmo-
wenman-rodins-thinker-3d-scan-access-effort.pdf)

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alexfromapex
There’s so much data that could benefit the public that is hidden away it’s
mind boggling

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aaron695
> SPK confirmed it had earned less than 5,000 euro, total, from marketing the
> Nefertiti scan, or any other scan for that matter.

This is a fundamental issue in NGO's

They are there, in theory for humankind. But they are staffed by humans who
are there to justify their wage.

This is not a small thing, NGO's spend their days re inventing a broken wheel
because no one will share.

