Basically, the museum's defenses are: 1. In Germany, photographs of public-domain art are copyrightable. They assert that this extends to 3D scans, which are s

Basically, the museum's defenses are: 1. In Germany, photographs of public-domain art are copyrightable. They assert that this extends to 3D scans, which are similar in nature, and that the scans are not in the public domain. The situation on this is very clear in the US (copies of public domain art are always public domain), but not so in Germany, where no such law exists. Article 14 of the new EU Copyright Directive will fix this, but this has not yet made its way into German law. EU Directives are basically templates for national law, but are not laws themselves, and the process can and usually does take years. The article mentions that it's not yet implemented, but then goes on to claim that the institution might commit "copy fraud", which cannot be the case if it's not yet the law. Perhaps this is why the museum caved in so quickly? 2. Most German institutions that are funded by tax payer money have an obligation to generate profits where they can, to reduce the taxpayer burden. They cite an example of €2M of profits from their commercial picture licensing deals. Without being able to copyright their pictures, this would be taxpayer money spent, or a cut in funding. Obviously, there's an argument to be made that this would be a very good use of taxpayer money, but it's a valid point to make. The foundation is a non-profit entity - any money they make will go towards conservation efforts. There are other similar examples - the German national weather service does not make its high-resolution Cosmo-D2 weather model available for free, and neither does the national land survey office publish all of its maps or its millimeter-resolution AGPS data feed for free. The reason is that those are worth a lot of money to commercial weather forecasting services or survey companies and licensing the data funds the data collection efforts. The weather service (DWD) actually used to publish its high-resolution weather forecast for free as a smartphone app (DWD WarnWetter) and got sued by a free ad-supported online weather service (WetterOnline) on antitrust grounds and was forced to discontinue its free service - this lawsuit is still going on[1]. > The scary language has real-world consequences. These 3D scans could be used by people who want to 3D-print a replica for a classroom, integrate the 3D model into an art piece, or allow people to hold the piece in a virtual reality world. The Creative Commons license in question is widely used and not scary at all - many artists use it themselves, and given how widespread and accepted it is, it's the exact opposite of a "keep out" sign. Very interesting situation, and great work by the activist who made it happen and the German professor supporting him. The article could have used a little less exaggeration. Personally, as a German tax payer, I'm happy about my tax money being put to good use by making such copies public domain in the future, and I hope that the new law will not deter such 3D scanning efforts in the future. [1]: http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bgh&Art=pm&pm_nummer=0039/19 http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/doc...