Should National Gallery Be Concerned About Digital Piracy?

The movie and music industries are warning London’s National Gallery that the museum’s digitization project is an open invitation to image piracy. “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.”