[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...

[Nikola Smolenski]

wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> wjhonson at aol.com wrote:
>> The image is in the public domain.  That's the point.
>> Public means all public, not limited to the whims of what the boundary of a certain
>> country might be today.
> 
> Suppose someone goes into the Louvre not with a camera but with a laser
> scanner. they digitize the entire statue, convert the point cloud into
> surfaces, and then from the surfaces into CNC program files. Finally
> they slap a block of marble on a milling machine and mill out an exact
> copy of the original. Whilst they don't get to obtain any copyright on
> the copy YOU don't get to claim that the CNC files are yours of right.

If the original statue is in public domain, then its digital 3D copy is 
in public domain too. Some person may have physical ownership of the 
copy and you can not legally compel the person to give a copy to you. 
But were you somehow to obtain this digital copy, even by illegal means, 
there is nothing the person could legally do to prevent you or anyone 
else to copy it further. Physical ownership of an actual work 
(electronic or physical) is completely independent to copyright 
ownership of the work.