Chinese works of art are digitized and sold for less than US$1 after the Taiwanese museum is hacked

A Taiwanese museum that houses some of the world’s most precious Chinese works of art has confirmed that nearly 100,000 high-resolution images of paintings and calligraphy are vacating online – some of which are being sold on a Chinese shopping platform for less than $1.

The Museu do Palácio Nacional in Taipei said at the third fair (14) that it contacted Taobao, a popular shopping site in mainland China, to prevent the images from spreading.

“We are investigating and hiring lawyers to lift Taobao over the intellectual property and damages involved,” says the vice-director of the museum, Huang Yung-tai.

High-resolution digitizations are a common way for artists, galleries and museums will monetize works of art in their possession, issuing digital copies, whether original or original, serving a broader and less wealthy consumer market.

According to the site of the museum, each digitized image can cost between US$ 98 and US$ 850, depending on the resolution.

A research gives CNN I found several sellers on Taobao advertising “high-resolution digital images” of the museum, with prices ranging from just 20 cents to $1.50.

TO CNN I contacted Alibaba, or Chinese conglomerate donating Taobao, for comment.

In its statement, the Museu do Palácio Nacional stated that it identified the vacancy for the first time in June of last year and began an investigation into the matter two months later.

The result of this investigation discovered that a member of the team in charge of reducing the size of two digitized files transferred some of the works of art from the museum’s server in an attempt to speed up the process.

More or private server was hacked, design or museum.

“It is possible for people not related to the museum to search for the images in part before combining them to obtain the complete version,” explained the museum, adding that the official received a notice.

This is the second scandal that the museum has faced in five months.

In November, his director received requests to resign after it was revealed that he broke three precious artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties, reportedly worth US$81 million, not a total.

The collection of the Museu do Palácio Nacional is a major point of contention between Taiwan and China.

Many of his best-known pieces were taken from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan by the Kuomintang’s nationalists when they lost a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949.

A large part of his vast collection of artifacts has already been kept in the Museu do Palácio na Cidade Prohibida de Pequim – treasures that have never survived two wars.

The Communist Party of China, which claims Taiwan’s democracy despite never having been governed, is anxious for the return of two artifacts kept in a museum, as well as many priceless antiquities that have been looted over the decades by colonial powers.

As tensions between Taipei and Beijing escalate, Wu Mi-cha, then director of the museum, told CNN last year that he was training his team on how to evacuate the island’s most valuable relics in the event of war.