British Museum is digitizing its entire collection in response to recent thefts | All of that scanning will cost over $12 million.::The British Museum is digitizing its entire collection of more than eight million pieces, at a total cost of over $12 million. This move was announced after the museum experienced a theft back in August.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    1 year ago

    Only 12 million? Sounds like a steal. The British museum has everything. That’s really good

    • sramder@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Higgs is suspected to have taken uncategorized items and selling them on the e-commerce website eBay. One item worth $64,000 was offered for online auction for as little as $51 and listings for artifacts from the museum’s collection appeared online as early as 2016, according to a report in the Telegraph.

    • Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Lol that was my first thought when I read this too. Nonetheless, there’s zero chance of any of the historical artifacts being repatriated to their countries of origin now. It’s a big loss.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    So the museum famous for stealing its artifacts is complaining about said stuff being stolen from them?

  • DeadWorld@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why is the cost a problem. 12 mill might be a lot of money for like, some guy, but the government is responsible for the artifacts and deal with national budgets in the trillions.

    If they dont want to pay for security storage and backups, send the peices back to their countries of origin. Maybe they can find some way of protecting history, cause England sure doesn’t want the responsibility

  • db2
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    After they’ve scanned it all will they be returning it to the countries they stole them from?

    • Cave@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Of course not. People can’t be trusted to take care of their own historical artifacts. Britain will take better care of them. If they want to see it, they can just pay to fly across the world to see them. It’s surely better this way.

  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why the fuck is anyone writing an article about $12M dollars?

    Do people not understand what rich people make from passive investments? Literally just repurpose a single rich person’s passive investment and you can pay to digitize a library’s worth of artifacts every year for eternity.

    Society is absolutely fucked in the head if anyone is allowed to build a yacht without getting crowbarred in the back of the calf while we’re considering whether or not “we can afford to pay” to preserve priceless historical artifacts.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Cost of securing your intangibly and financially valuable physical assets for all time and ease of “sharing” losslessly with other museums?

    Priceless.

  • moipe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    A virtual version of the museum in 2029? What would be the point in going? I can look at a picture of a picture on the internet for free.

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I get what you mean, like there’s definitely some stuff you can just look at a picture of it on the internet, but I guess for others it’s about the sense of space, connection, grouping, narrative, context etc that’s present with a well put together Museum or Gallery display.

      Without all that, you’ve just got a car boot sale of random things - wheras the text, maps, illustrations, audio, video or 3d recreations etc that sits alongside - or simply the placement of things next to one another, or following through the room in a particular order is what really makes that stuff interesting.

  • caboose2006@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    It only took a couple hundred years for them to respond to all the theft they did? Better late than never I guess.

  • WallEx@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    What does it cost? How much of their collection?

    I just read it 3 times in the feed, first post title, then preview of link, then op comment :D