3-D Printing's Legal Morass
wired.com
wired.com
The only bottleneck to providing material objects for free or next to free should be in finding raw materials that can be printed out, and as a start, there's lots of that filling up the world's landfills.
Where sharing music and movies was pretty much zero real gain for file-sharers (you can live without the latest Lady Gaga album or Transformer movie), having access to super cheap working replicas of things like refrigerators, water purifiers, clothing, house-building materials, etc., can dramatically affect countless lives, especially in developing countries.
The rug absolutely must be pulled out from under the feet of the manner in which material objects are created and distributed, hopefully diminishing the number of have-nots in the world.
^ Not necessarily real energy->matter conversion, but something nearly as cheap and elaborate.
I don't necessarily agree with this statement. I believe that even though overpopulation IS a pressing issue at the moment, its effects aren't as devastating because half of the world's population does not have access to a lot of materials.
If everyone in developing nations suddenly manufactured their own parts, we would see a huge strain on non-renewable resources really quickly.
I'm still curious if we have enough copper available to keep up with the demand for housing, electrical components and all the wires we are using to power our devices.
With a plastic chipper, feedstock extruder and a suitably stocked waste dump, this becomes less of an issue.
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocknail/filabot-plastic...
The plastic darling of 3D printing is PLA, which is as renewable as it get, and as non polluting as it gets.
Nah, that's faith-speak. We don't have any idea if this technology will go much further beyond what is currently possible. This could be the "flying car" of the next 100 years that never fulfills its promise.
While you declare it a "moral imperative" and we bend all laws and societal rules to accomodate it, what suffers? What great technologies and solutions are killed because you (and other true believers) have decided that this is the thing we should all worship and sacrifice everything to achieve? What of our liberties go away because you have a vision?
3D printing is very cool and I see great things coming from it, but it's not Star Trek. It's not Star Wars. It's not the Matrix. It is what it is and we'll see where it goes. In the meantime, my interest is in protecting the free market principles that have consistently created the greatest good for the most people. That means respecting some level of Intellectual Property rights in other markets and not just steam-rolling some game-making company because a guy with a 3D printer wants to use this humanity-saving tool to print out some versions of legally trademarked action figures.
Although I understand your point here, I thought I'd point out that this is a weak analogy because the problem with the flying car isn't that it's not technologically possible (it is, relatively trivially these days in fact) the problem is that it's a stupid idea. People have bad enough accidents when dealing with the two dimensions on a road, there's no way to make the technology safe enough to achieve the kind of market penetration the traditional automobile has. Without that the market forces for scaling the infrastructure necessary to produce and maintain such a 'fleet' don't exist.
>While you declare it a "moral imperative" and we bend all laws and societal rules to accommodate it, what suffers?
Those that want to continue to rely on a market model that is obsoleted by shifting the means of productions to individuals.
>What great technologies and solutions are killed
Those that are not pursued because there is not enough money in them under the new system. As opposed to those that are not pursued because there is not enough money in them in the existing system.
>What of our liberties go away because you have a vision?
The ability to make a bet that your creative work will be a success without the danger of someone in a better position to make money from the idea doing so. In fact we are already seeing the beginnings of a return to the modes of commerce prior to intellectual property laws such as an artisan being commissioned ahead of time to produce something by way of tools like Kickstarter which finally attempt to solve the discrepancy between our ability to produce and distribute and our ability to communicate.
>my interest is in protecting the free market principles that have consistently created the greatest good for the most people
My interest is in creating even greater good for even more people. Now, I'm not so arrogant to claim I know these new modes of commerce are better outright, I'm just saying that we don't actually know and we should give them their fair shot. Why should we settle when we could do even better?
wow did I get off topic and start ranting or what?
That's a huge and unfounded assumption, both on where this technology is going and on its impact on society.
For the foreseeable future, 3D printing only reshapes raw materials. It doesn't create matter from energy. It doesn't transmute elements. It will allow people with the means to purchase 3D printers and the raw materials the ability to print new forms of those raw materials. It will be really neat to see what people do with them, but it's kind of like saying that Home Depot should have eliminated capitalism since it gave the means of production to many individuals who didn't have it before.
Plus, you have to remember that the "means of production" is a moving target since what people need to produce is relative. As the 3D printer is able to create some base consumer goods, people will find new "needs". In Africa, people talk about food as a "need". In Western countries, people talk about access to the Internet as a "need". As some base needs are taken care of through technology, more will open up. There will always be new ways for industrious individuals to satisfy wants and needs through entrepreneurialism.
> flying car...
As for 3D printing, it is going to have growing pains (anything with moving parts is going to require assembly, at least for the forseeable future), but it will surely go far.
I don't understand this statement, unless you count brushing/rinsing off, and tapping with a hammer as "assembly" (which is a rather wide definition), then it doesn't seem true.
Gears can be printed on their axles and with their teeth already inter-meshed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eojAdYMT0g. Ball bearings can be printed with the balls inside: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7h09dTVkdw. Hinges can be printed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xr-H4dH71k. Interlocked chain-mail can be printed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys8v1UqOBl0.
Using those as elements in larger designs seems to allow for things with moving parts to me.
For the most part, the point is to prevent the laws from changing for these, rather than fixing current law. There is already no reason why you can't print those things. There are some reasons you can't just copy existing things, but in the end that's not a problem anyhow because we probably need to significantly modify the designs to account for being easily printable anyhow. Raw copying is just a bootstrapping note.
Though I suppose the next generation of "X, but on a computer" patent will be "X, but printed via 3D printer".
Just to let you know, for desktop 3D printers like makerbot, you can print in either ABS or PLA. PLA is biodegradable and made from corn starch (iirc). While ABS (the plastic that legos are made from) smells like death when you melt it, PLA smells like popcorn. It doesn't have as wide as adoption as ABS at the moment since it's a little bit harder to work with. It tends to gunk up your extruder.
For instance, you mention 3D printing up a refrigerator. You'll still need some sort of compressor gas for the actual cooling sections. You're also not going to be able to print the permanent magnets for your compressor motor. The 3D printer will help you make the doors and shelves, but the parts that actually make the refrigerator worthwhile have material properties that you can't simply print out.
You also mention clothes. Now, this is a possibility, if you're willing to clothe people in plastic shirts and pants. Effective, but highly uncomfortable and they're going to get pretty sweaty, especially in the developing countries where you want to do this. Now, if we want cloth clothes, things suddenly become much more difficult. First, the printer will still need plain fabric for input. Thus, all the machine is saving us is the cost of dying, cutting, and sewing the fabric. Considering that the jobs of cutting and sewing fabric have been shipped out to developing nations precisely because they have so much cheap expertise in those areas, it's not likely that a 3D printer is going to change much there. To put it differently, how would access to a 3D printer change things that their current access to a sewing machine hasn't?
Don't get me wrong. I love 3D printing and can't wait to own my own. There's a lot of neat stuff that can be done with these. However, it will ultimately be a joint approach. Third world amputees won't be printing off prosthetic limbs. They'll be printing off adapter cups that connect to a mass manufactured limbs. There's just too much material science for most things to just be printed.
It sounds to me like this guy had a clear case of DMCA abuse. If he designed the models himself, from scratch, then the best claim Games Workshop could have against him would be trademark infringement, and that's not what the DMCA is for. Therefore, all he has to do is send Thingiverse a counter-notification and, unless Games Workshop files a lawsuit (which they almost certainly won't), Thingiverse will restore the content in 14 days (they are required to do this in order to receive safe harbor protection under the DMCA).
Chilling Effects even has a page for automatically generating these counter-notifications, so there's really no excuse for not protecting yourself from abuse: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf
But to answer your rhetorical question, if they do sue, you contact groups like the EFF and ask for help. (Better yet, contact them before filing the counter-notification). They would likely be happy to work to establish a good precedent in a novel situation like this.
Also, contrast this story with the outcry over EA's alleged copying of GW models albeit digitally.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/s4s7f/tank_in_new_cc...
It's interesting because the whole point of the models is that they have specific attributes and fits in with the codexes.
Surely if someone is making a separate design, it would be beneficial in terms of fostering increased support and take-up of the GW models. Although of course it all depends on the similarities between the two!
3D printing totally upends their business model.
Not entirely sure what you're getting at with static material costs? Are you taking into account inflation and saying retail costs have increased at a greater rate? In any event, home printing would reduce their own costs and hopefully foster greater uptake.
You probably should read the article. Even if there were similarities it wouldn't matter.
Physical objects can be protected by (normal) patents, which protect physical functionality or design patents[1]. Even if GW did have a design patent (which is fairly rare) then it would only protect against identical copies. The standard of proof for design patent violation is that the new object could be mistaken as the original (not "has some similar features"), so provided they weren't copies of GW models then he was probably safe.
The article says "so Valenty decided to design a couple of his own Warhammer-style figurines: a two-legged war mecha and a tank", which sounds to me like he was on very safe grounds.
My only point was from a factual perspective, it would be interesting to compare the two designs, rather than making assertions that Valenty was on 'very safe grounds'. That may of course very well be the case, however in the absence of the side-by-side comparison, I can't say either way.
In terms of similarity, there will obviously be a sliding scale where at some point, the level of similarity will be sufficient to constitute an infringement (certainly this is the case under EU copyright/design right law, and I believe would be the case under the test you refer to). If infringement could take place only where there was identity, this would obviously leave it wide open for third parties to add capricious additions to get around the test.
In contrast, design patents only apply to functional items. The classic example is the Coca-Cola bottle. Coke's patent on that is not on the invention of a bottle, or on a useless bauble, but on the ornamental design of a functional item. If the bottle were not intended to hold liquid, but were just a pretty object, it would be eligible for copyright, but not a design patent.
I think it would be hard to argue that Warhammer miniatures are functional items. Rather, they are non-functional works of art, and therefore fall under the jurisdiction of copyright. So if you make your own figures based sufficiently on those made by GW, you are creating a derivative work, and violating their copyright.
The price of machines, especially for plastic printing, can and will probably go down (1000$ seems high, I think the small ones are more in the 400/500 range right now). The price of material ? I don't see that happening.
Years ago, the same thinking was applied to music and movies. "Well, this isn't a big problem, because duplicating the content is expensive and time consuming." The technology advanced, and now copying digital goods is very nearly free from a time and money standpoint. Should we wait for things to get as sideways as they are with music and movies before we put some weight behind reform?
Those costs will probably come down over time, of course, but nowhere near as fast as the cost of digital duplication has. The price of plastic doesn't obey Moore's Law.
One could say the same for CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burners...one needs energy to run the burner and a laser to inscribe the data onto the physical media.
I think the same logic applies to 3-D printers.
How? In the one case, you have a situation where it is no longer necessary to have (or produce) the "thing" in order to use it. That is to say that you no longer need the CD/DVD or other physical medium in order to use the bits they carried.
Printed (or otherwise rapidly prototyped) physical artifacts are quite a different thing. Having the 3D model or CNC cutting paths of a physical thing is in no way equal, or even equivalent, to having the thing itself. If the time and cost involved in making a replica is greater than the time and cost of popping down to the shop to pick up the genuine article or of ordering it online and waiting for delivery, then printing's not at all cost-effective.
That's not to say that 3D printing (or subtractive RP) has no utility at all. One of its advantages is that it can be used as a relatively cheap substitute for maintaining parts inventories over extended periods of time—but only for some types of parts. And it is a good way of distributing low-volume decorative works, since the print price is not much higher than the per-unit price of low-volume tooling. (Or at least it will be when the resolution is sufficiently high, since most users are not likely to want to spend a lot of time chasing and filleting their print results.)
There are still a lot of parallels with digital media, because the cost for a media provider to duplicate digital media is the same as it is for a consumer: free. The costs to the media provider are in production, marketing, and promotion. Additionally, media rights holders sell their content at a healthy profit (far exceeding the total costs of all the production cost components) because they're able to artificially limit supply. Scarcity is enforced only by legal frameworks, not by limits of production. The consumer avoids these costs by duplicating the content on their own, which just happens to be free. That is the disruption.
The same factors apply to many physical goods. The significant costs are in design, marketing, and logistics (moving things around). Manufacturing the physical product is frequently an equal or smaller cost component in the greater scheme of things. This is especially true of simple physical goods that are sold at a high price because of trademark exclusivity or brand value (action figures are a great example). The consumer can avoid the design, marketing, and trademark/brand costs by 3D printing their own physical product. Logistical costs are offset somewhat by the fact that bulk material is easier and cheaper to transport than a finished product.
This mechanism of disruption -- avoidance of major cost components through self-production -- is very similar to the one we see in digital media. 3D printing costs don't need to drop to free, they only need to beat the retail price, which includes many non-manufacturing related costs.
Yes, compared to content, duplicating physical goods is expensive.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/scottdecarlo/files/2011/08/Cu...
I think your information is out of date.
This is how Microsoft got to be one of the richest
companies on the planet and IBM and Apple did not.
The amount of resources we waste and pollute on packaging today is an atrocity, and 3D printing will go a long way to destroying that.
Printing a figurine is also faster than getting it delivered, or even than going to a brick and mortar shop unless it's really close.
So for decorative stuff 3D printing is already there (if the design is printable and if you can live with limited choices in material), but the real revolution will be when you can print replacement parts to fight planned obsolescence, entire industries may crumble.
What happens when you don't just torrent a model to print, but you distribute your job to hundreds of printers? We have all seen what happens when you network a bunch of cheaper and lower quality things relative to a monolithic system, and I can see this happening with digital fabrication as well.
The 3D printing battle will be bloodier than the digital copying battle, precisely because there is much more to lose.
Looking around the room right now, the number of objects here that could be cranked out with any 3D printer is pretty darn small. For those that could, I doubt it would be any cheaper for me to 3D-print the darn thing, even if I already had the 3D printer, than it was for me to buy the real mass-produced deal.
The article's example of "little figurines" is the only example I can think of, and the little figurine industry isn't large compared to music or movies.
I think this is a gross over-simplification of the matter as if I were advising a manufacturer I would prefer to go down the route of copyright infringement as it would be a cheaper option than full-scale patent litigation.
Although this would be with the slight caveat that copyright infringement requires evidence of actual copying and will not succeed if independent creation can be shown.
I think it essentially still boils down to whether copying in this instance has actually taken place. In the instant case, I would love to see a comparison of the Games Workshop creations and the third party's creations. My guess is the third party works were inspired by GW rather than being substantially the same. In any event, it seems heavy handed of GW.
I would say overall that patent references are a red herring. In the instant case, GW will not hold a patent over each of the models of course. The focus on 3-D printing is interesting, but again it boils down to whether copying has taken place.
I would also add that under UK law, this would also be potentially dealt with under design rights law where protection is far more limited. In fact, because of mass production nature of the models, a claim would have to based on design right law rather than copyright, as they would not qualify as sculptures in my view.
How long to "iTunes Match" for MakerBot et al? 3D-scan all your stuff, your rough scan is "matched" to an existing high-res model on an all-licensing-settled server, so you can download and "print" all the copies you want for private use.
If we're already scanning it, why not just replicate the original?
This may be true in relation to fair use/fair dealing exceptions, but not as a general statement.
> 3D model is effectively a drawing of it
They may hold the copyright in it, but it can still infringes a pre-existing third party design right.
> Copyrights can be infringed, but only where there is copyrighted detail
I don't understand what you mean by this. If something attracts the protection of copyright, it will be infringed if the usual tests are satisfied - where does 'copyrighted detail' come into it?
AND get cloud storage of all scanned items.
Yes, you could just scan & copy it yourself. For some of us, $25/yr is cheap assurance all issues are covered and we get a reliable rendition. iThings Match would be a hit.