[andreareina]

It's a question of expression vs reproduction. A 3d scan copies the object being scanned, without interpretation or (intentional) embellishment. It's the same with photographs taken for documentation purposes. The skill required doesn't matter.

I used to be a photographer, and a tech at a high-end photo lab (e.g. we had a couple of Condé Nast magazines as clients). A lot of jobs incurred more work from the technically demanding end (high resolution scans, color matching) than the creative end.

It's not always clear-cut, there's usually going to be a bit of both sides. There's the whole idea of derived works, where the changes you've made are yours but the work as a whole is also entangled in the copyright of the original. But the more the new work is (meant to be) a faithful reproduction, the more it's "just" a copy and not a new riff. Again, it's about the intention and the difference in content between old and new, not so much about how much work or skill was required.

[perl4ever]

I'm not experienced in creating complex 3D models, but my passing acquaintance with such things (including trying to write a program to convert points to a mesh once) makes me think the claim there is no interpretation or more than one way to create a model of an object is absurd. This seems like an extreme example of assuming something you haven't done is trivial.

Another separate point, supposing for the sake of argument 3D models are not creative... It is well known that, say, a "white pages" style phone directory was ruled not to be copyrightable. But does that mean it is a copyright violation?

[andreareina]

It's not about how easy it is, or how many ways there are to do the thing. The point of a 3d scan is to reproduce the facts of the object being scanned: there's this surface at this position with this normal, another one there with these properties, etc. Choices to be made might trade accuracy for less cost (in time and/or money), but those choices don't change the fact that the scan's purpose and value rest in the facts being recorded. It's like the quake fast inverse square root vs the pedestrian n => 1/sqrt(n), the skill in writing fast inverse square root doesn't imbue the result of its evaluation with any of that.

WRT your second paragraph, I'm not sure I understand. How could there be a copyright violation on something that can't be copyrighted?

[perl4ever]

Ok, if the facts that are used to make a phone directory can't be copyrighted, then why would the facts that are used to make a 3D scan be copyrightable?

I mean, nobody other than the scanner chose or wrote down all those numbers. The creator of the object made an object. Seems like the same distinction to me as a house vs. its phone number and address which locate it.

[andreareina]

I'm not quite following wrt the phone book/ house / phone number / address.

Per wikipedia[1] copywrite is on "the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work".

The bust is that expression, the scan is a copy of that and therefore subject to the same copyright as the bust itself (in this case, no copyright).

For a house, I suppose the original expression would be the architect's plans, the house itself is a performance of that expression (when you commission plans from architects part of the terms are under what conditions you can build according to those plans; where I'm from standard terms are for a single performance, at the site the plans were originally commissioned for).

A photo of the house (partially) copies the house which (partially) copies the plans, therefore the photo is subject to the same copyright as the plans (depending on what the jurisdiction says about photos of things in public space). However, a photo may also contain creative expression in the framing, lighting, etc, and is therefore also subject to its own copyright. So to distribute the photo you need permission to distribute this original expression, plus permission to distribute the underlying expression. The more concrete example of this is with models -- advertisers need permission from both the photographer and the model being depicted in the photograph.

There's no creative expression in a phone number or an address, so copyright doesn't apply. Even if there were, there are usually exceptions to enable interoperation (AFAIK Oracle including a poem as part of the database wire protocol[2] hasn't been tested in court, but it's basically the same thing as in Sega vs Accolade[3], which didn't go well for Sega).

I hope something in there answered your question.

Again I'm not a lawyer, this is my understanding from my past work both as a photographer in my own name (i.e. I own the copyrights) and doing work-for-hire. And more recently contracting with architects and arguing over the terms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10042572

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade