The Fight Between Sharing Culture And Owning Culture

from the wrong-priorities dept

It seems that museums are finally starting to realize that the digital age represents a real opportunity for them to reach many new people by digitizing their offerings and sharing the culture they represent across a much wider audience than a physical museum allows. It seems that many museums are having trouble figuring out how to digitize their collections, and would welcome help in doing so. However, another story points out how that can cause problems when the people involved get stuck on intellectual property issues. Apparently some people who created 3D digital versions of Michelangelo's David are freaking out that if they share the digitization without some form of copy protection people might (gasp!) share it without permission. Wait a second... isn't that what they should want? That would allow them to share the cultural wonder with many, many more people, and allow them to experience it in ways never possible before. That's a good thing, not something to be worried about. However, in an age where people seem to think that every idea, concept, software or piece of data needs to be "owned" and locked up, apparently it's the natural response -- and that's unfortunate for every culture.