the og scan of book of kells was done by a Swiss publisher in the early 90s. since you can't copyright a scan, and the book itself is in public domain, anyone can then take the scans (if they can get hands on the high dpi originals or whatever, or do a high dpi scan of the reproduction) and publish them as whatever they want. "the complete encyclopedia of human knowledge (only $99.99 if you call now)" "the illuminated authoritative book of kells (comes with your own one of a kind handmade Irish cross)" etc. you can get the scans themselves (afaiu its at matching dpi, if not the same format) from a 2006 trinity college dvd of book of kells.
the op is an announcement of the completed rescan effort, with modern technologies and modern dpis. with a companion iPad app and a website that have consumer grade renditions of those modern research grade scans.
it's a statement of fact, so we can just leave it at that. but the explanation as I understand it and I'm not a lawyer, is that scan or a facsimile is a mechanism of reproduction, and the act of reproduction doesn't give you copyright. work, derivative work, original work, demonstration of originality have all precise definitions, but in laymen terms which is also my understanding, your derivative work has to be creative and original in its own right to have a copyright.
So, if you scan it but add some clever upscaling mechanism, dynamic color curves, hyperspectral data, texture capture detailing the 3D surface, and use all that through some perceptual integration to give you a better reproduction than just a mechanical scan, you might be entitled to not have your case thrown out of court immediately.
Presumably, because it isn’t transformative enough to constitute a derivative work. Otherwise, making a copy of free works would allow one to put those works back under copyright.
the indignity of the entire experience is comedic, and we've come to accept it. the op article is empty aggregation, a little superficial bit of dopamine noise, that's exclusively parasitizing on actual content. the direct link is probably better, but it throws a CAPCHA for me, where I need to click on Indian men on motorcycles to teach an AI what a motorcycle is. sister comment is reporting that the underlying site is down anyway, despite the "protection" provided by the internet muscle services.
which makes one wonder, why even go looking at the book of kells, like, who among the hackernews readership will sit down with an iPad or other high resolution device to peruse the entirety of the book at leisure, inspecting the subtle details of the illumination, taking notes etc.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make and how it relates to what I said.
the book of kell is available both as a facsimile from specialist publishers (/my/ local library has it in extended rotation) and as a 2006 dvd from trinity college library.
why even go looking at the book of kells is the sentiment about the deliberate versus knee jerk information consumption, which was prompted by the reflection on the levels of ugliness and indignity supporting the knew jerk consumption. it wasn't a comment on the value of book of kells, or the effort of making it available to the public.
cloudflare continues to destroy the free web, this time around they are gaslighting you into thinking that an extremely important security feature, that happens to break cloudflare mitm is actually useless and outdated and there's all kinds of solutions, that incidentally all rely on trusting cloudflare, that you should be using instead.
the op is an announcement of the completed rescan effort, with modern technologies and modern dpis. with a companion iPad app and a website that have consumer grade renditions of those modern research grade scans.