I'd agree with your measurement thoughts...indeed, I'd extend that line of thinking to scans. It is a physical object they own. They can scan it and share those scans all they want, IMO. Now, if they wanted to sell posters of the scans, then you're getting into IP areas.
Not exactly. The ship as a character in the series, and as a sculptural work, would be protected by CBS's copyright. So if you 3D scan it, you're digitally copying the original sculptural aspects of the work, which do not belong to NASM. CBS would probably see it that way, especially since the 9th Circuit Batmobile case last year was very clear on that point.
But if you measure the artifact itself, and then make accurate diagrams of it for display, the
measurements are not covered by CBS's copyright at all (as far as I can see), and the
diagrams would probably fall under fair use. If they sold those diagrams, that would be less likely to be seen as fair use, and they'd probably want to license them. That's my best (educated) guess without actually going and researching it.
CBS - IP.
Funny, when I was there and wanted to photograph the painting of the ship they sad the same thing to me. Our guide, not Margaret Weitekamp, said "no photos this is CBS intellectual property." This tells me they have all been told to say this. I suppose CBS is behind it in some way. Although what their goal might be eludes me.
Sounds more like an abundance of caution to me than an actual legal directive. However, pictures of paintings are rather unique in that they can easily produce infringing images. For example, when we take (millions of) pictures of the model, we're not "copying" it with our cameras. It's more like recording an event. But aiming a camera at a copyrighted 2D image
is seen as making an infringing copy of it. Separately, in the case of photographing the model, there's an aspect of "transformation" to fair use, which frankly I'm unable to explain at 2:30am.
Why am I up now? Because this...
Hey, don't knock it. I'm out of methodone.
