Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

This is utterly puzzling to me.

I just don't understand how you sit on the museums side of the trial on this, without seriously questioning your own position and conceding immediately.

They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide those scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How can they even reconcile those arguments with preserving the artists legacy/serving the common good?

I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!) court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two month deadline for three months in the new trial... Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

My conclusion is that there is either pure stubbornness or some weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side, because I have no other explanation why they would fight so hard for their position seemingly against all reason.

> pure stubbornness or some weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side

Little people fighting for their big egos are far from uncommon in those institutions.

> Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

The French legal system has been under extreme duress over the last decade or so.

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/04/02/justice-la-c...

> weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side

That's exactly it. I work on a website that makes ancient artefacts accessible. A lot of them are in museums. You wouldn't believe how many museums:

- don't want to show you their archive

- don't want to let you take pictures

- want you to share only low res pictures

- want you to get permission before you can "publish" their artefacts, etc.

It's extremely common for museums to have courtyards or basements with special "unpublished" pieces that they don't let anyone see. You have to be a special friend of the director or something to get to see them.

It's ridiculous. Fortunately, the people working on the website are relentless, and manage to eventually get collection after collection photographed and added mostly by being patient. For some collections it took 20 years before they got access -- but since everyone uses their website, and everyone apart from the local museum director wants the stuff to be in there, eventually they get access to most things.

(Museums in Italy are the worst, allegedly. They really think they own antiquity.)

There is no supreme court in France, this is a gross mistranslation of "Court de Cassation", which is where you bring your case after you have lost your appeal, and is the last court where you can try to argue your point.

One of the things I find really funny about the law is that yeah, just not responding as long as you can or until someone acts to force you to is a common strategy, because it mostly works and adds cost and complexity to holding someone accountable. Some portion of plaintiffs will give up and not pursue even very valid claims if you just make the entire process a slog.

>They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide those scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How can they even reconcile those arguments with preserving the artists legacy/serving the common good?

If the museum folds and the collection gets auctioned off in parts and public access to it is reduced then the common good is not served.

I think this is an asinine argument and they're mostly just protecting their own paychecks but there is a kernel of truth to it.

>I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!) court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two month deadline for three months in the new trial... Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

We all know that justice is only legally blind, not functionally blind. When you're the favorite or you're state adjacent you get a lot more leeway.

Comically, smaller museums generally have a "take a ton of pictures, share them on social, tell everyone" attitude because they want their name out there in order to drive foot traffic and other support.

Trying to pull up the ladder is something people only do once they're on top.

Same thing, different name.

Ah non. They are just being french. They don't need reasons.

Excuse my humor. I'm a huge francophile actually.

That is because the stated goal of "preservation" isn't really their goal. Thats only lip-service.

Their actual goal is getting visitors, and any kind of usable information in the form of photos, videos, 3d-scans, transcriptions or whatever leaving their premises is a problem. Add to that the associated huge business of tourism and you have the explanation why the state and the courts (who are usually good buddies with the state and the upper class, including the cultural elite) also don't want to change that status quo.

So, a supreme court?

Ah, the standard Music Industry response to Napster, alive and well decades later.

"Make the information hard to get! We own it!"

Never realizing that sampling of the information makes it just that much more prestigious and desirable to us, the unwashed masses, willing to pay to visit a museum that has AMAZING ORIGINAL THINGS.

If you start with the assumption that every view is a lost sale, you're going to have a really bad time.

Outside of the Louvre and maybe the Smithsonian, there are no current world-famous museums, simply regionally or subculture-appreciated museums, some with bygone fame that a small portion of the older population would recognize. The Rodin Museum may be popular among a tiny niche slice of people, but if they were to make an internally consistent strategy that they want growth then they'd release more information.

> (Museums in Italy are the worst, allegedly. They really think they own antiquity.)

They are the worst and they do in fact own antiquity: thanks to some idiotic national law, they can claim rights on stuff that has been public domain for centuries before the copyright was even invented. There was a lot of debate about this after a major museum sued a bunch of fashion brands, see this article for example [1].

[1]: https://ial.uk.com/the-perpetual-copyright-protection-of-ita...

Actually, imho, the AMAZING ORIGINAL THINGS are actually useless. You can not touch them, get close, rotate them, look at them properly, take your time. You are just number 29387 that day visiting the Mona Lisa, you get 5s to view it, then the line moves on.

A high-res photo or 3d-scan allows you to do all those things (maybe except really touching them).

So aside from the emotional benefit of having been near the real original piece for a few seconds, all digital derivatives are logically far better.

No need to excuse yourself as a French speaker but not French, the baguettes will indeed unscrupulously bend people over if it serves their own interest without excuses or valid justification.

You’ve just described precisely what a supreme court is. This is definitely the supreme court of France.

There a "constitutional counsil" that has old presidents and people named by the french president

Interestingly enough the last three presidents renounced their seats (I don't know why)

Well the SCOTUS functions are divided among the Cour de cassation (last ditch appeal) and the Conseil Constitutionnel (Checks if a law is in line with the constitution)

Are the Council of State, the Constitutional Council and the Jurisdictional Disputes Tribunal also supreme courts too?

Welcome to France! France is built on the idea that the public can't be trusted, has not really reached adulthood (won't ever) and needs to be coached by an army of civil servants whose job is to protect the State and its finances.

It's not corruption, exactly; it's the idea that the interests of the State are paramount, and everything else doesn't really matter.

If the State sells reproductions of Rodin's work, well then you shouldn't be allowed to, and you certainly aren't entitled to any kind of help.

Five seconds is brutally short.

What painting has the largest area of appreciation, when notoriety or quality is multiplied by time allowed to view it?

> I'm also surprised at how nonchalantly the french supreme (!!) court seems to cope with the museum just ignoring their two month deadline for three months in the new trial...

The conseil d’État is nothing like a Supreme Court. It is an administrative body, not a court of law. This phrase was used because it was easier than explaining how it actually works to a presumably mostly-American audience. France has a civil law system, there cannot be anything like the American Supreme Court.

> Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

It is not a court, and it does not have the powers American judges have. The role of the Council of State (one of them, anyway, and the relevant one here) is to rule on administrative matters. They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in jail. They can decide that a government body was wrong on something and make it change, that’s it.

No, it's different in many many ways. And there are not just one, but four courts of last resort in France:

- Cour de Cassation, for civil matters

- Conseil d'État, for matters regarding the administration / the State

- Tribunal des Conflits: tasked with deciding who's right when the Cour de Cassation and the Conseil d'État disagree

- Conseil Constitutionnel: issues rulings about the constitutionality of laws, both new (before they become law) and existing ones (QPC)

This doesn't stop here however; there are two upper courts in the European Union, than can invalidate decisions issued by national courts:

- Court of Justice (in Luxembourg)

- Court of Human Rights (in Strasbourg)

- - -

Edit: Don't you love the idea of "Tribunal des Conflits"? The original idea was that the State could not be brought to court, its decisions being made by "the people" who is the absolute sovereign.

Then France gradually accepted the idea that State's decision could be challenged, and created a whole different judicial system, the "justice administrative". It took a looong time: from 1800 to... 1980. A much simpler approach could have been to let people try their case against the State before the existing courts, but no... much better to build another system with its own rules, its own judges, etc.

An inevitable consequence of having two different systems is that they sometimes disagree. (Another reason why it would have been so much simpler to just have one system.) Since the two systems are sometimes at odds with one another, we created... a third system! This was in 1872, so quite early in the process.

This Tribunal des Conflits is a referee of sorts whose only job is to stop the fights between the two justice systems. I think that's great and tells a lot about the French way of solving problems: just add a new bureaucratic authority on top of all existing ones.

Absolutely not.

If it's the final court for civil matters in France I would argue it's still a supreme court.

The description was incomplete. The cour de cassation is not supreme at all, there are the Constitutional Council and the Court of Justice of the EU above it. As well as more specialised international courts like the European Court of Human Rights. There is a summary here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_France .

In any case, France has a civil law system; there cannot be a court as powerful as the Supreme Court of the US is. Viewing any of these institutions as similar to SCOTUS is bound to create a lot of confusion.

When we were there, I took a picture of the Mona Lisa strictly for the crowd in the foreground. To capture the memory of the stupid number of people who seemingly only come to the museum to see that one piece of art.

Then we went and spent a few hours enjoying the rest of the museum, where there is plenty of art I appreciated more.

"a" vs "the".

"The" supreme court, if one assumes a US-centric definition, comes with a lot of assumptions on the nature of law and the power structure of the various government branches. Which generally do not hold outside of the US and certainly not in France.

So yes, it is "a" supreme court, but that doesn't really help understanding, because it is not "the" supreme court.

>It's extremely common for museums to have courtyards or basements with special "unpublished" pieces that they don't let anyone see. You have to be a special friend of the director or something to get to see them.

I think people really don't appreciate just how many artifacts museums have that they don't show to the public, don't document, and largely just sit on and gatekeep. It's especially bad when you consider the movement in museum curation from showing large numbers of artifacts with minimal annotation to smaller numbers of highly annotated more "significant" items.

One difference among many: the Cour de Cassation does not issue decisions, exactly; it can only hold or break a decision from a lower court. If it chooses to break the lower court's decision (casser=to break) then the case is sent back to said court to be decided again, with new guidance from the upper court.

It's not exactly that but it's close. It is: the State is always right, you're wrong, and that's that. The reasoning behind it is that "the State" is 66 million people, and you're just one person, so it's really easy to tell who matters more.

It can be viewed as a perverse interpretation of the trolley problem; but it's impossible to understand France without that information.

That's why people selling train tickets are rude and unpleasant: they represent the national railway system, which is an extension of the State, which is 66 million people, and you're just one person, so fuck you very much.

Etc.

For the purpose of this matter, the Conseil d'État is a court, not an administrative body, it is the highest level and last resort of jurisdiction for administrative law, i.e. the law pertaining to relations between citizens and the State or the local governments. It intervenes as the highest appelate court of administrative tribunals. Its members are judges and their decisions are judgement.

But the Conseil d'État has also many other attributions that are non-jurisdictional.

> They cannot decide to fine someone or put someone in jail.

That's because only criminal court can do that. A divorce court cannot fine someone or put someone in jail. That doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court doesn't fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it any less of a court.

This is overreach, the law seems to be pretty much about moral rights, not copyright (which I expected the case to be, with Gauthier's reputation, but actually wasn't?)

I can see how it's inevitable for national symbols to be protected under moral rights, though it becomes tricky when it's foreigners that violate them.

> It is not a court

That's weird because the Conseil d'Etat thinks it is the "supreme administrative judge" [0]. How could they not know that they are not a court?

[0] https://www.conseil-etat.fr/decisions-de-justice/juger-les-l...

Note that the court in question is the Conseil d'Etat. Cour de cassation is completely irrelevant here.

They are judges in that they make decisions, but they are not magistrates; they are civil servants. The way it works is also quite different from the cour de cassation. There is not really a prosecution, a defense, or parties civiles. It’s its own thing, partly for philosophical reasons related to separation of powers, and partly for practical reasons under the Ancien Régime. The kings did not want magistrates to interfere with the State, so they created a different judicial branch. Napoléon modernised it but kept the same principle.

What's your website since you mentioned it?

I don't think we should be missing the forest for the trees.

Yes, because of historical reasons, _technically_ "magistrat" refers specifically to magistrates from the judicial branch and not all judges [0]. This is surely interesting yet administrative judges do the same job of presiding over court proceedings before them and being independent from the political authorities.

Procedure is different between the two branches, but there are also differences of procedures within each branch - for instance between penal vs civil cases.

The Constitutionnal council has ruled that the independance of administrative judges is a constitutional principle in the same way as the judicial judge [1, see point 6].

[0] of course if we need to be really technical, administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives d'appel sont des magistrats [...]' https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... ; but members of the Conseil d'Etat, an administrative court, are not administrative judges - they're conseillers d'Etat.

[1] https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/1980/80119DC...

> Its members are judges and their decisions are judgement.

They are civil servants, not magistrates. They don’t have the same independence and are nothing like American judges.

> That's because only criminal court can do that.

That was specifically addressing the contempt of court issue. The Council of State cannot do that. It can make the public institution do something, but it cannot punish the individual. Once the action was deemed illegal, the individual faces disciplinary action from their institution, but the Council does not decide this.

> That doesn't make it any less of a court. A civil court doesn't fine, it only grants damages. That doesn't make it any less of a court.

What makes it not a court in the American sense is that it does not have any magistrate. Commission would be a better word.

> This is surely interesting yet administrative judges do the same job of presiding over court proceedings before them and being independent from the political authorities.

Not really. The fact that members of the Council of State are not magistrates comes up regularly, because it does limit their independence. It works so far because everyone behaves, but this would cause a serious crisis if France one days ends up with someone like Trump or Boris Johnson, who is willing to stop doing the right thing and just use any weapon they can find. To add insult to injury in this case, the supreme body deciding on disciplinary actions in public institutions is the Council of State itself.

> of course if we need to be really technical, administrative judges are magistrates see: 'Les membres des tribunaux administratifs et des cours administratives d'appel sont des magistrats [...]'

This is about the tribunaux administratifs (lower courts) and cours administrative d’appel (appellate courts, the 2nd layer). The conseil d’État sits on top and is different.

That's what the law say anyway:

    Le Conseil d'Etat est la juridiction administrative suprême.

(see: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...)

Note that's it's not civil matters but matters related to government action (from say, basic rights to labor disputes for State employees or citizenship issues).

I stood in front of it for at least 10 minutes, the trick is to go in the evenings. Being behind a crappy plastic shield didn't help though

> France is built on the idea that the public can't be trusted, has not really reached adulthood (won't ever) and needs to be coached by an army of civil servants whose job is to protect the State and its finances.

I believe the term for that is “nanny state”.

The Scream by Munch can be viewed for several hours at a time. It's actually limited by efforts to conserve the painting, so the museum only expose it to light for a few hours per day.

If you time your visit to avoid the tourist season in den Haag, I think you can also view Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring for essentially as long as you like.

This is an apt description of how things are, sadly. And it all starts at the crib when parents teach their children blind obedience.

You are trying to relate two different legal systems that are don't necessarily have equivalence. The members, although not magistrates, are independent and factually irremovable. When they are in "court" formation as is the case here, they are judges by law, and it is a court. That's where you appeal the decisions of lower judges. Their decisions ("arrêt") are case laws and precedents that affect the entire justice system (in the relations between a citizen and the State).

> That was specifically addressing the contempt of court issue.

There is no such thing as contempt in the US sense, in French courts. The closest would be outrages, which does not apply to the issue in question (delay tactics). Many US legal concepts, even the most basic ones, are simply not transposable to the French system.

What is this rant?

This whole story shows the exact opposite of what you wrote: it is the Rodin museum, an independent institution which prides itself in being self-sufficient (even when it is not completely true), that is misleading the public and trying to manipulate the state ministry to its help, and the State didn't, and another part of the state ruled against them on almost all counts.

This is the complete opposite of what this story describes.

And since when are the French blindly obedient? Is that really their reputation?

That's also typically how the U.S. Supreme Court works, except for those few oddball cases where it has original jurisdiction. The losing party from the lower court files a petition for certiorari (judicial review). The Supreme Court may grant it, hear the two parties' arguments, and reach an opinion which is sent back to the lower courts, who are then responsible for resolving any remaining questions.

"largest area" immediately brought "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" to mind - not for actual impact, just because the physical painting is nearly 10 feet across, which noone seems to expect. Also it's on one wall of an enormous room with plenty of room for people to circulate, in a gallery that has various options for free access (mostly aimed at locals and students, but the art institute doesn't seem too picky about it.)

"Subscribing" to the comment, since I would also like to know. I didn't know this thing exists, and it is such a hot topic for me that I kinda contemplated if I could somehow start it myself.

More complexity, but also each of them having less power. Which itself might be a good thing (separation of powers) or a bad thing (inability to stand up against legislative & executive powers).

The idea that French people constantly fight for their rights isn't true either; they basically just love rioting. Americans interpret this as noble political activity because Americans have an incorrect belief that protesting is an effective method of political change that comes from misunderstanding Civil Rights/Vietnam protests.

But when you actually see interviews with French rioters you find they're all conspiracy theorists who think they've uncovered French QAnon. Or they're farmers who want even more subsidies and want to get rid of climate policy.

To put a darker spin on this, a not-insignificant amount of most museum collections are stolen property. Either stolen from other European countries, stolen from countries the museum's country colonized, or stolen from another European country who stole it from a country they colonized.

And to make things even weirder, China has gone on a little-noticed crusade to steal back artifacts of Chinese origin.

This is just wrong on all levels - French "manifestations" are not limited to the "gilets jaunes", which were a recent phenomenon that already died out. The gilets jaunes were mostly people who never went to a "grève" before, never participated in Labor movements, never joined a "syndicat"...

The Musée Rodin is not an "independent institution" at all, it's an "Établissement public national à caractère administratif"[0]: a government entity. The letters[1] are signed by "Catherine Chevillet, Conservateur général du Patrimoine" -- that's a civil servant. And the RMN, alluded to in the post, is also a government entity.

[0] https://www.pappers.fr/entreprise/musee-national-auguste-rod...

[1] https://cosmowenman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20190426-...

What's the website? I'm interested in having a look :)

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy: In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

> Welcome to France! France is built on the idea that the public can't be trusted, has not really reached adulthood (won't ever) and needs to be coached by an army of civil servants whose job is to protect the State and its finances.

Sounds a lot like Germany. One notable exception to this is when the public tries to interact with the government. Then it is expected that citizens are experts in public administration procedures and can decipher deliberately obfuscated language that abuses the passive voice (among other dark patterns) to sound more abstract and inscrutable.

> If's not corruption, exactly; it's the idea that the interests of the State are paramount, and everything else doesn't really matter.

We have a word for this concept: Staatsräson.

I’ve been told that digital (and analogue) photography still cannot reproduce all the colors in good enough detail, and the screens are still not good enough to reproduce the details that can be seen in person.

Looks like we haven’t quite recovered from Napoleon…

I thought "nanny state" was a derogatory description of welfare policies?

Apparently not

“Nanny state is a term of British origin that conveys a view that a government or its policies are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. The term likens such a government to the role that a nanny has in child rearing.”

That one I have seen, and it is grand. I live in Illinois so have many options for free viewing.

lupa.at

You can click favorite to "subscribe" to the comment without making everyone else have to skim/skip your comment.

If "nanny state" is an important causal factor explaining why the museums are behaving this way, it suggests other nanny states could see similar museum behavior?

So how are museums in Singapore treating 3D scans?