News Piracy warning over digitised fine art

If it's not to cultured for you lot p Kidding), There's an interesting story over at New Scientist:

A scheme to digitise famous paintings that was unveiled last week by the National Gallery in London, UK, may be placing the collection at risk of digital piracy. Now music and movie makers are warning the world of fine arts to act quickly if it wants to prevent the same kind of high-tech piracy that is crippling their industries.

The National Gallery has been working with computer giant Hewlett-Packard for eight years on a scheme to digitise all of its 2300 paintings. The images have been captured with a digital camera that steps backwards and forwards over the painting, a technique that improves the resolution of the image to 100 megapixels, 20 times that of the best consumer cameras.

When someone places an order, a six-colour printer in the gallery's shop will print out a high-quality copy in just five minutes. The gallery hopes to generate extra revenue by allowing accredited print shops around the world to sell copies as well.

"The music industry has gone digital. We want to see the same process in the world of fine arts," says Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice-president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group. This will mean sending the images over the internet, giving pirates a chance to make illegal copies.

Full article here

Well, I can see why they wouldn't want a visible watermark on the image - I can't imagine anyone would want a copy of say - The Madonna and the Pinks with a big National Gallery logo in the corner. But surely thay can embed a invisible watermark? something that could only be seen if put through a colour filter? Or a code fragment buried in the pictures image data (much like some cryptographic methods use)?

 

I love the way they over exaggerate it.

 

but there making more money than ever now, so which is true. what they tell the press "the industry is being crippled by piracy" or what they tell their share holders "massive increase in profits compared to ten years ago"

 

Doesn't the '50 years after death' (or whatever it is) copyright rule apply to art then, like it does to classical music?

 

that depends on the country, curently in iraq it's 25 years and the US are changing it to 75 years

 

It's not as if many of us mere-mortals could afford to actually but these multi-million dollar paintings, and I can't imagine the National Gallery being too keen on selling them.

I can imagine some unscrupulous criminals making prints and selling them, but i doubt it would be a massive money spinner or damage their revenues much!

 

They wont be selling the originals:

Just prints.