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Comment by tvanantwerp | Hacker News Reader

When I was teaching myself 3D modeling for fun, I made a little blue mailbox like you'd normally see outside on American streets. Nothing fancy--it was low-poly and lacked any text or textures. It was just a blue box on four tiny legs with a rounded top. I uploaded it to SketchFab, because why not?

One day I get an email that the US Postal Service had my mailbox taken down from SketchFab via DMCA complaint. Apparently they hold at least two trademarks on the color and shape of their mailboxes. While I think my crappy art fell under fair use, it wasn't worth it to try and fight that.

What really makes me angry about the whole ordeal is that the USPS is a consistent money loser. So why are they wasting cash issuing DMCA notices to 3D modelers on SketchFab?

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Can I just point out the insanity of 3D models being subject to trademark and copyright? You can take/paint/draw a picture of a mailbox and post it but if you make a 3D model all of the sudden the legal system loses it's goddamn mind. It's been a huge issue in the video game space where companies are suing for licencing whenever someone includes something in a game, including FOSS game efforts (Honda Jet removed from Flight Gear).

Why can't we just leave art alone?

Convince companies they'll make more money by encouraging unexpected product placement, instead of defending their current income streams by any draconian measure they can devise... /s

IANAL, but you do have to protect your trademarks from being genericized, or they can be invalidated.

Let me just google that

> Can I just point out the insanity of 3D models being subject to trademark and copyright?

Not sure if I agree. If a song is included in a game without license, it wouldn't fly either. Designs can be copyrighted and may not be copied by others without permission. If (game) designers want to use a mailbox in a game, why not make one themselves? Why use others' work without permission?

I thought the poster was implying that the USPS was enforcing ownership even though they didn’t create or provide the content, so making your own mailbox wouldn’t help at all.

Yes. If I make an exact (3D model) replica of a mailbox, or analogously, a re-recording of a song that sounds exactly the same, the original designer of the mailbox or song can exert authorship rights through copyright action.

The fact that you did the effort of making the mailbox in a drawing program or re-recording the song doesn't mean its suddenly free of copyright.

This is not what I'm saying.

Stealing models byte for byte is obviously a copyright issue, as is stealing music

The issue is that companies can trademark the "form" of their products and therefore demand licencing fees so no, they couldn't just make their own mailbox because USPS would attempt to sue them for violating their trademark on the shape of the mailbox. Basically, it's become a shitty way of getting a forever-patent as well as rent seeking within totally unrelated industries.

Some common examples:

Model a tractor and make it green -> John Deere sues you

Model a car with no badges that looks vaguely like a Porsche -> Porsche sues you

Model a military jet designed entirely with taxpayer money -> Lockheed Martin/Boeing/Textron/Mikoyan/Sukhoi/etc sue you

Model a tube with some fins and add literally any military AGM/MIM/AIM/etc name -> Raytheon sues you

Model a AR style rifle and make the filename 'm4' -> Colt sues you

Mind you none of the above affect the respective industries of the listed companies.

> This is not what I'm saying.

Sorry if I misunderstood. I'm not entirely sure what you didn't mean but here's my best-effort attempt.

I think my confusion came from the example you cited in your previous post, about the Honda Jet that was removed from a game. The game, as I understand from [1], essentially includes a model of the Honda Jet which is an accurate 3D model of the real-world Honda Jet. It also bears the same name. None of your "common examples" go this far, they do 'resemble' the product that is allegedly sued over, but they are not 1:1 3D (computer model) renditions of the real-world products and are not named the same.

> Stealing models byte for byte is obviously a copyright issue, as is stealing music

Glad we agree.

> The issue is that companies can trademark the "form" of their products and therefore demand licencing fees

This is where we disagree. As a (hypothetical) "creator", I would like to exert control over what I produce, in line with the law, except when I decide to licence it in some liberal fashion (GPL/MIT/CC whatever). How is replicating a 3D model of a plane, along with the name, not an infringement of the rights of the creator? If you want to respond, please keep in mind that we are talking about current copyright and trademark law, not some utopia in which new laws can be enacted willy-nilly.

> they couldn't just make their own mailbox because USPS would attempt to sue them

Really? There is not a single mailbox design that doesn't violate USPS' copyright?!

I will concede that copyright terms are long, but not indefinite (although for practical purposes they may appear indefinite).

Finally, I would like to discuss this claim:

> Model a military jet designed entirely with taxpayer money

On the surface it seems ridiculous. But why would the government (1) outsource the contract to the listed companies and then (2) agree to terms which state that the copyright/trademark belongs to the outsourcing companies? If you think about both (1) and (2) it's either a major flaw in how government contracts work (could be...) or the companies want the intellectual property and have "priced it in" into the dollar value of the contracts. Essentially, if the IP was government property, the military jet would cost more taxpayer dollars. What do you think? Honest question.

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/honda-takes-copyright-infringing-je...

I think you get what I'm saying then.

> If you want to respond, please keep in mind that we are talking about current copyright and trademark law, not some utopia in which new laws can be enacted willy-nilly.

This is the problem though. I don't disagree with anything you said as far as what the state of current copyright/trademark law is, I just disagree with the laws and think they're immoral.

I consider the mailbox issue especially egregious. Lets say you want to make some content like the infamous American suburb map in Hitman 2. You want to create an environment that's relatable to your audience so you model a typical American subdivision with houses and roads and all the detail you could dream of. Then you get hit with C&D letters from USPS because you put down a letterbox that you'd see on any street corner, Ford for a Mustang you put in a driveway, another because an NPC was wearing a Polo shirt and so on until you have to totally neuter your concept. Meanwhile if hollywood wants to do the same thing for a movie, nobody bats an eye.

Nobody designed any of this stuff sitting in the conference room saying "...and here's how much video game licencing revenue we can expect for this letterbox..."

> companies want the intellectual property and have "priced it in" into the dollar value of the contracts

Trust me... they do no such thing. I've been involved with this several times.

At the end of the day, it's just leveraging a broken legal system for rent seeking because...they can!

> if you make a 3D model all of the sudden the legal system loses it's goddamn mind.

This isn't a proof that you can't do it, a DMCA takedown is a way to avoid going to court to prove that you can't do it.

I guess you wouldn't get DMCA takedown over a drawing because it's probably clear that they would lose in court, while a 3D models hasn't been proved in court yet, thus you are less likely to want to push it to court.

It's a clear abuse of power. They don't do it because they are right, they do it because they can.

>What really makes me angry about the whole ordeal is that the USPS is a consistent money loser.

Insofar that the the USPS is a subsidized service, I don't agree that it is a money loser. Considering that the mail is the way that nearly all bills have been collected, historically, I'd say it has far more than paid for its self.

It's not that easy to qualify USPS as a money loser but a popular point that is repeated a lot. Usually the ones that promote that argument have an interest to privatize USPS and allow one of their rich donors (the ones able to acquire USPS) a license to print money.

Because not enforcing trademarks means you can lose them.

DMCA is for copyright, not trademarks

That’s an oft repeated myth, but it’s not quite true, certainly not as broadly as stated.

From an article by the EFF:

> The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide […] is very rare […]. Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not....

To be fair, it's really cheap to issue a DMCA notice—that's even part of the problem with them, one might argue...

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