Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

Why exactly is non-commercial open access problematic?

I think the author is going overboard by framing this as some kind of righteous crusade for the public access. After all, he is interested in making profit from this. Sure, public funding paid for it, so then why should the profits be privatized?

There is no privatization here (moving the scans from public domain to private), the author is seeking the opposite, shifting the scans to the public unencumbered.

Yes, to be commercialized and privatized by the author. Somehow all of the "open access projects" on the authors website seem to be concerned with releasing 3D models scanned by others, and not you know, his own projects. I don't see any commitments to publish derived work and such.

I know that the story of an independent artist fighting a big bureaucratic public institutions is something that would get a lot of sympathy here, but this really isn't that much of a "David and Goliath" kind of tale. French heritage and research entities are underfunded and understaffed, they don't have competent lawyers, or indeed funding to afford those, as we can clearly see from this case. One litigation-happy American can run circles around them and profit from it too.

If as soon as the heritage work gets 3D scanned with French public funds, it will immediately get scooped and monetized by private sector, wouldn't the ultimate outcome be that less objects get scanned? Why would the museums even bother fighting for the digitization grant funds?