Comment by peglasaurus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peglasaurus | Hacker News Reader

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I actually don't think a photo has the same intent as a scan. A scan of the type they made is intended to assist or aid in reproduction. That implies control of the original.

A photo is a view of an item. Angle, lighting, environmental factors chosen by the person taking the photo. These are all choices by that person. Creative/artistic choices in of themselves and in addition to the work being photographed.

A scan intended for reproduction is different. It is a best effort reproduction of an existing item. A copy. The museum made no creative choices. When you do a scan like this the optimal result is the ability to 100% reproduce the item. Molecule by molecule if possible but the exterior is always feasibly easier.

I'd be interested to see where these laws head as the future proceeds. Copyright law is a mess but not as much of a mess as those for patents.

> The museum made no creative choices.

This is not really true. 3D scanners are far from perfect, and getting good useful results does involve making artistic and technical choices. I did my PhD on reconstructing surfaces from laser scan data, and spent long hours comparing different methods and parameter values in minute detail - there's a lot of flexibility, even when the goal is the best possible fidelity.

I do think claiming copyright goes against the purpose of museums, though.

But you are adjusting values to get a more perfect reproduction, not to produce a new work.

Copyright doesn't care how long you worked or how hard it was. It cares if you made a new creative work. What you describe would be more in the domain of patents.

Yes, but I think there are two problems with that idea, and that it can be creative:

1. There is no digital ground truth, so you can't actually objectively tell whether your adjustments are making it more accurate. It relies on subjective comparison and sometimes manual patching up (3D equivalent of photoshopping).

2. There are many different equivalently accurate representations, some of which are better for some purposes. E.g. how the surface is tessellated or otherwise represented, which bits are more important and deserve more fidelity, 3D printing (and what kind) or CNC router or virtual movie prop, etc.

I think it's copyright rather than patents, as it's very manual and subjective (not a well-defined process or algorithm).

Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I don't know how much of what I'm describing is sufficiently creative to count as a new work.

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