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persons, objects, and activities
the high speed and low cost of digital reproduction, once such a digital image has been replicated and widely downloaded, no single digital copy of the artwork would be protected by this Rule. This is because protection of cultural property is afforded based on the value and irreplaceability of the original work of art, and on the difficulty, time, and expense involved in reproducing faithful copies of that original. The logic underlying this Rule does not apply in cases where large numbers of high-quality reproductions can be made. 7. In the digital cultural property context, the term ‘respect and protect’ prohibits any alteration, damage, deletion, or destruction of the data, as well as its exploitation for military purposes. For instance, the use of digitized historical archives regarding a population to determine the ethnic origin of individuals with a view to facilitating genocide is clearly unlawful. Merely temporarily denying or degrading access, for example by affecting the functioning of electronic devices used for such access, is beyond the ambit of the protection of cultural property. 8. Like its physical counterpart, digital cultural property may not be used for military purposes. As an example, steganographically modified pieces of digital art lose any protection as cultural property in light of their use for military ends. 9. Article 16 of the Cultural Property Convention establishes a distinctive emblem for marking cultural property. It is appropriate to use such markings on qualifying digital cultural property. Additionally, use of a digital marking equivalent that places attackers on notice that the digital items qualify as protected cultural property is appropriate. Whilst no such marking has been formally established, multiple technological solutions are possible, including file-naming conventions, the use of tagging-data with machine-interpretable encoding schemes, published lists of IP addresses of digital cultural property, or generic top-level domain names. 10. Although cultural property may be attacked if it qualifies as a military objective, a decision to conduct such an attack must be taken at an appropriately high level. Parties to the conflict must give due consideration to the fact that the target is cultural property. Moreover, an attacker is required to provide an effective advance warning when feasible and may only conduct an attack when the warning remains unheeded after a reasonable period for compliance.101
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Second Cultural Property Protocol, Arts. 6(d), 13(2)(c)(ii); AMW Manual, Rule 96.