Added Dimension: The Need for Open Access in Museum-Based 3D Data
A set of carefully maintained plaster casts almost perfectly imitating the famous Parthenon Frieze have resided in the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford since the late 1800s. The original frieze is in the British Museum and forms most of what are known as the Elgin Marbles, a set of famous friezes taken from the Parthenon in 1812 by an English diplomat to the Ottoman Empire. It is key to note that the details of the plaster casts in the Ashmolean are virtually indistinguishable from those of the original, and the existence of these casts enables the Parthenon Frieze to essentially exist in two places at once.
For centuries, we’ve made 3D reproductions of antiquities in multitudes of materials to do exactly what the Ashmolean casts of the Parthenon Frieze were made to do: to allow a singular object of great value to be accessible through replication to more people. In the past, when we’ve specifically wanted accurate reproductions that imitate the original as much as possible, we’ve turned to plaster and resin casting. Now, with 3D technology having progressed to the point where we can create extremely accurate digital 3D models of real objects, plaster and resin are no longer the only materials we can rely on for accurate 3D reproductions of antiquities. Most of the 3D data being produced by museums are 3D models made through scanning or photogrammetry to be as accurate a depiction of the original object as possible. Unlike resin or plaster, 3D models capture information in a durable medium easily distributable online. They can also contain more accurate and specific information — like the visual texture of surfaces or the color of paint — than resin, plaster, or hand-painted reproductions ever could.
With this new tool available to them, museums ought to take full advantage of the potential that 3D data presents to not only to preserve artifacts, but also to significantly improve Internet-based access to their collections. Making 3D models can be difficult, but disseminating them is relatively easy because 3D data is just digital data, easily posted and shared through the right platforms. As digital data, 3D data is also a “nonrivalrous good,” something that can be distributed without depleting a stock or limited number of copies. In the same way that, say, I could duplicate a file for a friend without giving away my own copy, 3D data is potentially distributable to an infinite number of parties without depriving anyone of a copy.
But museums wishing to display their 3D data on the Internet must face questions of how exactly they want their data to be distributed, like whether they’d like their data to be downloaded or remixed, or accessible only after the payment of a fee, or freely redistributable in any format.
With this in mind, museums should consider using open access (OA) policies as a way to share their data. These policies aim to improve education and scholarship by making access to digital data as barrier-free as possible. OA principles align well with the general goals of museums — that is, to improve education and cultural heritage preservation — because improving access to their collections is so key to promoting those goals. Ideally, museums should to make their 3D data collections as openly accessible as possible (but as closed as needed; some collections are reasonably unique, sensitive, or unable to be digitized due to privacy, legal, or cultural reasons) in order to create maximal access and therefore maximal distribution. It would be best for no barriers to be in place — whether it be fees, restrictions on downloading, remixing, sharing restrictions, commercial use, or otherwise.
What “Access” Would Mean for Museum-Based 3D Data
Access itself exists on a spectrum, defined by the presence or absence of barriers. In the context of museum 3D data, access is most commonly restricted by barriers to downloading and remixing because these are the easiest barriers to put in place and to justify putting up. To be clear, this same argument may be made for commercial use barriers as well, but this article aims to mostly discuss just download and remix privileges, as the conversation on whether commercial use barriers are justified exceeds the scope of this article. A clearer way to look at the issue of download and remix within this context might be to consider gratis and libre open access, the former of which provides straight access to content and the latter of which allows not only access, but also remixing privileges. Libre open access is the type of access this article generally advocates for.
The issue of whether museums can put up barriers of any type depends upon the particular circumstances of ownership governing the relationship between the museum and the object it plans to digitize. For museums that completely own the objects, they may exercise full control over not only the object itself, but also reproductions of it. It is legally within the rights of these museums, with this kind of ownership over their items, to withhold whatever use privileges they see fit; however, this would exclude objects that are under public domain. Museums that choose to put up barriers to accessing the digitized forms of objects they completely own are not technically doing anything illegal by restricting download and remix privileges, but just because they can do so does not mean that they should.
Restricting download and remix privileges actively harms access because it ultimately restricts interactivity with the object; within the context of this article, the term “interactivity” in refers to visual, tactile, and creative interaction (such as using photographs or models of the object in artwork or education) with the object. In more concrete terms, interactivity would encompass actions such as viewing, studying, zooming, panning, rotating, printing, and so on. If museums are truly committed to improving access and serving the public through doing so, then they should also commit to improving interactivity with digitized objects, taking full advantage of the flexibility of the medium.
3D digital data uniquely allows the public to access all of those levels of interaction when historically, members of the public can really only interact with a valuable museum object visually through photographs or visiting it. Through accessing 3D data, visitors can gain not only more visual interaction than they would normally, but also virtual-tactile interaction through manipulating an object in 3D space, such as rotating it or zooming in to see angles that would be difficult to see through photos or in a display case.
With downloading privileges, visitors can even print the object so that it can be handled outside of the virtual space. It allows people to not only see, touch, and physically hold the object, but also makes it possible for people to build or create new things with it, or “creative interaction.” When people have full access to the material through download, it opens up a virtually infinite number of possible uses for the data.
Addressing the Risks: Remix and the Specter of Misuse
Although the majority of those uses are likely positive ones, the risk inherent in making something completely open for remix, generally understood to mean changing or altering the material somehow and using the material in something new, to the public means that there are certainly also potential negative uses, like the usage of open access data in offensive artwork or other similar creative works. The question of how to regulate the ways the public may remix material falls under how museums want to define the remix conditions regulating the data they choose to distribute.
This is more complex than the question of whether to allow download privileges because remix encompasses so much more than just whether or not someone can download a given set of data. There’s no way museums, or anyone working with data like this, can anticipate all the forms that remixing can take — but they can at least figure out what rights they would like to keep reserved, and decide what kind of licensing (usually Creative Commons licenses) that they would like to use to protect those rights.
The general idea of misuse is vastly paranoia-inducing because it frames the issue as one in which infractions are ultimately impossible to anticipate and impossible to stop. It calls to mind Napster-esque situations in which users abuse the data en masse and create black markets for valuable digital goods as authorities stand by, unable to effect any meaningful law enforcement. It’s true that licensing 3D data and withholding privileges is only useful if the license is enforceable, and it’s also true that if people were to abuse the data en masse, legal enforcement on that scale would be difficult. But luckily, the incentive structure that motivates users to illicitly download MP3 files — namely, getting a digital good for free instead of paying for it through legitimate channels — is not the same one regulating museum-based 3D data as long as that data adheres to open access principles and remains as barrier-free as possible. Plus, the people interested in museum 3D data are most likely to be academics, lay scholars, tourists, or other parties interested in history and cultural heritage. There’s just not much incentive for this kind of audience to abuse the data en masse, for profit or otherwise.
Among the possible instances of abuse that could occur, the most obvious ones arise from uses of openly accessible data in offensive art, like alt-right meme use or other similarly problematic creative works. It’s happened plenty of times before in the past with photographs and 2D imagery made publicly available by museums. Some would argue that such misuse reflects badly on the museum for making that data openly available for alteration, and that museums are responsible for enabling the creation of offensive content.
But with an open access policy, people are accountable for what they do with the data made available to them. The potential of misuse and the possibility of the data being used to facilitate blasphemy, immorality, or hatred is always going to exist; but when the nebulousness of that potential is weighed against the concrete positives that museum 3D data can bring to the table, like better interaction, education, and creativity, those positives outweigh.
Out of all of the museums currently displaying their 3D data online, the collection of created by the British Museum, currently hosted on the platform Sketchfab, contains some of the highest-quality models of museum artifacts on the Internet. The Museum allows most of its models to be downloaded (the ones that cannot have their downloading restricted because of their being on touring exhibition or other extraneous but legitimate factors) and licenses them with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license, or CC BY-NC 4.0, which means that users are free to share and adapt the material as they wish and in any format they want, but to do so only with attribution to the Museum and for non-commercial purposes. As a casual user visiting the site, I could potentially download and remix any of these models as I interact with them.
There are shortcomings to 3D museum data, of course, with the biggest one being that they’re not the real thing; but that doesn’t really matter when the viewing public is looking to not only look at the pieces, but also to interact with them. In this, digital 3D galleries surpass the real ones. One of my favorite museum 3D models is one made by the British Museum of a queen piece from the Lewis chessmen, carved from walrus ivory and dating from the 12th century. It’s one of the few surviving complete medieval chess sets in existence.
On a screen, I can manipulate the model in 3D space: I can spin it to whatever angle I want to, zoom in on the adjacent leaf scrolls and folded cloth carved on the back of the chair, turn it and go in closer to catch the spots of damaged, darkened ivory on the edges of her floriated crown. It’s true that the detail on this particular model isn’t as clear as it might be if I had seen the piece in person, but as technology progresses and as standards for resolution and scan quality are set, that might no longer be a problem in the future; and in a face-to-face context, there’s no way I could have interacted with the piece in the way I have in the digital forum. In terms of bettering access to the piece and the history it contains, the 3D model of it allows for significant improvement not only because it solves for the issue of my being unable to travel to the British Museum at will, but also because the digital experience offers interactivity that would be impossible for the average layperson to achieve in a real museum visit.
3D technology in the context of museum practice holds a lot of potential. It can help preserve deteriorating artifacts, raise awareness of cultural heritage, further academic research, and so much more; but the most important benefit that 3D data brings to the world of museums and cultural preservation projects is better access, not only for specialized academics or those who can afford to visit museums but for the general, global public, who can now interact with the data and the cultural heritage it represents in a diversity of meaningful ways. Museums as institutions have a responsibility to educate and preserve, and this mission is best served by making their collection as open and with as few barriers — especially download and remix restrictions — in the way as possible.
