Treachery in the Rodin Museum 3D scan verdict
- ID
- 31646
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 04 Oct 2026, 2:01 AM
- Fetched
- 04 Oct 2026, 11:21 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://cosmowenman.substack.com/p/rodin-museum-3d-scan-verdict
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 04 Oct 2026, 11:22 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_startup_founders
What happened
Cosmo Wenman reports that after requesting Rodin Museum 3D scans in 2017, France’s CADA agreed the scans were administrative documents, but the museum director wrote to the Ministry of Culture that she planned to ignore FOI law. In 2019 Wenman and co-plaintiffs Communia, Wikimédia France, and La Quadrature du Net sued in Paris; the Conseil d’État later declined to hear their evidence and advanced arguments the museum had not raised, according to the post. The Hacker News thread drew 251 points and 122 comments.
Why it matters
If you build on digitized public-domain cultural heritage, this case shows that a favorable administrative opinion does not guarantee access: the Rodin Museum ignored CADA and still got court deference. For Malaysian heritage or 3D-asset projects, confirm an explicit license for any museum scans instead of assuming FOI or public-domain status covers the scan itself.
Discussion angle
What should open-data and 3D-scanning projects do when the legal system defers to institutions that ignore FOI? Is it worth fighting for access, or better to build with explicitly licensed scans and avoid museum-controlled data?