High-res Images Stolen From National Palace Museum 故宮10萬張文物圖檔被盜 放拍賣網站販售

In 2022, the National Palace Museum admitted that three national treasures in its archive had been broken. Recently, the media reported that digital images of nearly 100,000 artifacts were stolen in June 2022 and put up for sale or offered for free online. The resolution of the images was even higher than the museum's open data files.

High-res images of artworks are organized by category on the website. These are images of artifacts in the National Palace Museum's collection, and they were available for purchase on Taobao and other online platforms. Some were priced cheaply, and others were free. It's believed these images were stolen.

Huang Yung-tai, Administrative Affairs Deputy Director, NPM: “(An assistant researcher) used a system that they designed to reduce the resolution and convert files and some issues emerged during the file transfer process. They were converted from high resolution to medium to high resolution, and one file could be stolen in just one second. It was very fast.”

The museum is digitalizing its collection so that images can be accessed through digital platforms. An assistant researcher was converting files and transferring them from an internal network to a government system that was open to the public. Hackers then stole about 100,000 images during the transfer process.

Chen Chung-yu, Senior Specialist, Office of Digital Info. Services, NPM: “These high-res images were not publicly available. Only parts of these images were available. The hackers were able to get 1.5 million partial images and used software to piece them together. This means that first of all, the images that are circulating aren't the original high-res images and second of all, there might be marks where they were joined together.”

The museum was embroiled in a scandal just last year when three national treasures were found broken. Now, it's been reported that its digital files were leaked in June 2022. The museum said this was unintentional and it will ask lawyers to study whether its IP rights were infringed upon. It has also asked online platforms to remove the images.

一張張書畫作品畫質清晰，且分門別類整理。來自國立故宮博物院的典藏文物圖檔，卻出現在淘寶等網站販售，有些價格低廉甚至能免費下載，疑似是被盜用及外流。

國立故宮博物院副院長黃永泰表示：「助理研究員用自己設計的降檔系統作轉換，傳檔過程出了問題，有些高檔降到中高低檔，大概1秒鐘左右有心人就可以轉過去了，速度非常快。」

為了讓國寶圖檔能趕快在數位平台公開，故宮進行數位典藏作業。結果有一位助理研究員，在轉檔時因為資料量過大，所以從非公開的內網轉移到公務系統中可對外服務的伺服器處理，才被有心人士截圖，整體影響估計約10萬張圖。

國立故宮博物院數位資訊室專委陳中禹指出：「本來這個高階圖檔是不開放的，但是我們只開放局部的細節，有心人可以抓到150萬局部細節，一張一張擷取並用軟體批次拼湊，所以在外面流的部分圖檔，第一個它並不是原來的高階圖檔原件，第二它有可能有拼接的痕跡。」

去年傳出國寶被摔破事件，現在被發現去年6月有圖檔外流情況。故宮澄清並非是故意外流，目前檔案採用內部的封閉式處理，至於已經外流的高畫質圖檔，故宮正研擬要請律師提出智財權受損，要求各淘寶網下架圖檔。