Mark Neel took this photo of Michelangelo’s David and uploaded it to his Flickr.com account under a Creative Commons license.

Mona Lisa or the Elgin Marbles do; it is merely in the way that budding Florentine sculptors learn
the temporary stewardship of a museum that cares their craft is by hacking out copies of the David.
for it so that all of us may someday see this magnifi- Every creator stands on the shoulders of giants:
cent sculpture and understand a little more about so said Sir Isaac Newton. The sciences and the arts
what it means to be a member of the human race. are built on copying, on observing, on measuring,
A wise steward of David would make it his busi- on the public disclosure of facts and discoveries.
ness to see to it that every conceivable measure The difference between alchemists (who didn’t
was taken so that this piece of world heritage is publish their results) and chemists (who did) is
spread to every corner of the globe. The surest that every alchemist had to learn the hard way that
way to do that would be to use Stanford’s high- drinking mercury was a bad idea, while chemists
resolution scan to print millions of these at the read their colleagues’ papers on mercury, skirted
highest quality possible, distributing them to danger, and devoted their energies to making
every school, park, museum, city hall, and public genuinely useful new discoveries.
bath in the world. In an era of cheap, accurate 3D No curator of human knowledge has the moral
scanning and reproduction, there should be no right to restrict the recording of our shared history.
person alive who lacks the opportunity to confront The next time you find yourself at a museum —
Michelangelo’s masterpiece in living physical reality. generally funded by your own tax dollars — where
Instead, the stewards of David and innumerable the rules say you have to keep your camera in your
other works of art take it as their duty to restrict pocket, seek out the curator and ask him why he’s
access to their charges, all to sell a few tawdry turned traitor to history.
postcards, to preserve their station and power
as gatekeepers.

I’ve been to Florence. I’ve seen the David. Not ^{only that, I’ve seen about a squillion copies of the Cory Doctorow ( craphound.com) works for the Electronic} _{There’s a David on practically every street-} Frontier Foundation ( eff.org) and co-edits boingboing.net. _{David. Doctorow’s most recent novel is Someone Comes to Town,} corner in Florence, because for the past 500 years, Someone Leaves Town, from Tor Books.