As 3D Printing Becomes More Accessible, Copyright Questions Arise
npr.org
npr.org
Businesses need to wake up: new technologies mean changes to the market. Governments need to stop trying to stave off the death of old businesses, and just let those businesses die. Greater harm is done to society when we try to stop the progress of technology than when we let obsolete businesses kick the bucket.
Times have changed, and businesses need to change with the times. Kodak went out of business because they failed to adapt when digital cameras became small, cheap, and easy to use. New businesses now exist that make money because of digital photography.
New businesses will rise to prominence because of 3D printing, assuming we do not kill 3D printing because of laughably dated concerns about copyright. Someone is going to sell you the raw materials that your 3D printer uses. Someone is going to run a search engine that finds the 3D models you are looking for and will tell you what materials you need (hopefully there will be many search engines competing with each other). Until we can manufacture integrated circuits in our homes, we will depend on Intel, AMD, TI, and others to make the electronics that run our 3D printers.
Sometimes we just need to accept that the old ways of doing things are not profitable anymore. If we always worried about the businesses that are harmed by new technologies, we would still be using Roman numerals:
http://www.storyofmathematics.com/medieval_fibonacci.html
(Edit: the ban on positional number systems was issued mainly due to pressure from businessmen who favored Roman numerals and general doubts about a numbering system that allows values to be inflated by tacking digits onto them:
I'm going to copy and paste a block of text from "A Economic Analysis of Copyright Law" by Richard Posner. He's a highly respected judge amongst tech geeks at the moment due to his publicly declared war against patents. Please, please read this entire block of text.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection."
"...once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies..."
On the one hand, he is saying that once people get copies, they are inclined to make more copies. On the other, he says that the price charged by the author will somehow influence whether or not people make copies. That second statement basically ignores the reality of both modern life, with computers and the Internet, and ancient life, where books were frequently copied regardless of what the author of the book wanted to be paid. People receive files at exactly the marginal cost of copying this files all the time, but that in no way discourages them from making more copies; people routinely make copies of creative works that are freely distributed by their authors.
In reality, copyright has only ever been about authors at a superficial level. The first copyright law, the Licensing of the Press Act, was passed for the purpose of censoring authors by giving a specific guild a legal monopoly on printing, allowing the government to control the legal distribution channels of written work. When that law expired, the printers whose income was inflated by it began a lobbying campaign to restore their monopoly position, which was helped by a few authors; this led to the first modern copyright law, which served as the model for US copyright law (ironically copied from the English law). For all the claims about copyright paying the creators of copyrighted works, the biggest financial beneficiaries of US copyrights have been the businesses that sell copies of those works; that is as true today as it was 200 years ago. It was only recently that authors and musicians even gained the ability to distribute copies of their works without those industries.
The public good served by copyright is not the entertainment or research works being created, but the distribution of those works. The point is not to pay authors, it is to ensure that printing remains a profitable business. The most extreme example of this is academic publishing, where not only are authors volunteers, but so are reviewers and editors. It is overwhelmingly common for authors, musicians, and actors of all kinds to have "day jobs" despite the financial success of their creative work; only a handful can live on royalty payments alone. Even if the point of copyright is to reward creative work and encourage its creation, the system as it exists today is a monumental failure.
The article you link to actually combines the publishers and the authors of creative works into a single hypothetical entity:
"To simplify the analysis, we ignore any distinction between costs incurred by authors and by publishers, and therefore use the term "author" (or "creator") to mean both author and publisher."
My point here and elsewhere is this: the publishers are not needed anymore. We have much better ways to distribute creative work to the general population; we should be encouraging their use rather than trying to legislate them out of existence. Creative work is not dependent on profit (if it was, there would be almost no music in existence right now), nor is a market system strictly necessary to fund creative work (e.g. scientific research, which is funded by grants given to researchers or institutions regardless of the profitability of the work).
In economics, as well as many other area of study like sociologicaly, security, businesses, and hundred of area more, a key aspect is doing cost-benefit analyzes. It is a core tool, and often the first tool used when deciding what is public good, what is a good regulative action, what is an good incentive for further production of goods.
Copyright lack such cost-benefit analyze. It lacks even the discussion of doing one. The government gives out an state enforced protection again copying (ie a monopoly), and it doesn't even ask the question if it cost society more than it gives.
I agree with Richard Posner. Copyright is a trade off. however, as it is currently implemented, no such trade off is actually made. That is using 19th century government procedural being still used in the 21th.
Last to quote Eben Moglen, a professor in legal history: "The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?"
Are you kidding me? The world would be so much better if supply went to infinity.
I am not sure I like that so many businesses is in such defendant relationship with the government. Especially when that state enforced monopoly is enforced again private people in their own homes. I think the government should have better things to do.
Maybe part of that shift is selling designs for a reasonable price. Allow the consumer to become the manufacturer and the internet to become the distribution chain.
It was held not to be a sculpture. So if you're in the UK, you can 3D-print stormtrooper armour without worrying about being sued by Lucasfilm.
The court didn't give a concise definition of 'sculpture' - they listed some relevant factors, but mostly left it to the common sense of the trial judge. Quote: "it is inappropriate to stray too far from what would normally be regarded as sculpture. ... Not every three dimensional representation of a concept qualifies".
http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/decided-cases/docs/UKSC_2010_...
(Emphasis: this is under UK law, not US. I think the opposite result was reached in the US, but don't quote me on that. IANAL).
I'd be more interested in the answer to the question, "what are you going to do about it". Sue someone who made Yoda into a vase? Sue Thingverse for letting people copy your precious, precious innovations? Sue Makerbot for being popular enough to register on your radar, even though 3D printing and CNC machines have been available for decades?
It should be interesting to see. But like creators of music and movies, creators of physical items may be disappointed with the law's effectiveness in this area.
The article is reasonably balanced. We don't know yet if the courts see this as fair use or illegal because it hasn't been tested yet. But the DMCA notices are working; Thingverse has had a few and they've taken things down. So, "as 3-D printing becomes more accessible, copyright questions arise".
Rights holders may try a big grab early on to attempt control and to influence concepts of what's acceptable. "Want a Yoda? Buy this plan. But you're not allowed to transform it."
As you say it's not likely to work. I'm pleased that 3d printing got started with no DRM. But it's sad that rights-holders are not recognising the power of the masses to create and develop their properties. "Here's a model of X. Let's see what you can do!" and then putting the results on a website would generate sales.
Or, I can get a machine to make me a resin model. Why should there be a difference?
I get the need to make news interesting by presenting counterpoints, but if there isn't one yet, why are they positing on it? That's the place of opinion pages, not news reporting...
Recasting and the legal issues around 3D printing is close to, or is exactly the same thing. Thus listening to someone who has copying stuff from movies as a hobby, work professional with people who produce movies, and who's income is depended on creating stuff on the screen, its a very interesting podcast to listen to.
The CAD files that serve as the input to the 3D printers are closer to deserving patent or trade secret protection than copyright. Copyright protects "creative, intellectual, or artistic forms", not inventions or tangible things. (Don't get me started on "design patents").
We're definitely in new territory here, but 3D printers dont change anything other than the speed/ease by which a "thing" can be created. Before the Internet, there was tape-dubbing and the Xerox machine. Are there fewer songs or shows now? Fewer Books? Why are 3D printers any different?
A little primer on intellectual property law for the laymen would be instructive here.
- Sculpture is generally protected by copyright in Berne convention countries.
- Copying includes reproducing a work in any material form. The fact that the process of making a copy involves CAD files isn't relevant: the result is a material reproduction of yoda.
- Speed & ease isn't relevant either - hewing a copy of a copyrighted sculpture one from stone over a decade is just as much an infringement as 3d-printing is. A copy is a copy.
(The difficult legal issue is what exactly a sculpture is. E.g. the UK has a narrower definition than the US, and in the UK yoda may not qualify as a sculpture - see my other comment).
IANAL, just a UK law student
For instance, it might be infringement to "print" a copy of Michelangelo's David, but not a part of a handle to a door. In the latter, it's not a work of art, so merits no protection vs. design protection that it might get if it was a patentable invention.
Which of course is an issue if, like me, you totally would copy a car.
You could stop piracy almost completely - deep packet monitoring, extensive web filtering, fast and harsh penalties and the complete cooperation of the government probably could cut it to essentially zero. I think most governments (and even rights holders) recognised that taking it to that level wasn't worth the consequences. Maybe 3D printing will be different, but I'd imagine that like with music, there will be very little public appetite for harsh penalties for downloaders, and so they probably won't happen.
The biggest threat to the RIAA and MPAA was fully decentralized peer to peer (e.g. Gnutella); those systems could not just be sued out of existence like Napster or removed from existence by government action like Megaupload. By scaring everyone away from such systems and towards Bittorrent (with its trackers) and cloud storage, the industries contained the threat. Just centralizing the search systems was a big victory for them -- they can effectively use the DMCA to make it harder to even find the files you are looking for. Cultivating a producer-consumer mindset, even if it involves TPB, is good for the RIAA and MPAA: it makes it much easier to introduce their own download services.
To put it another way, the copyright industries have always had to deal with infringement. What they feared most in the early 2000s was not infringement, but infringement that did not require any heavy-duty equipment. Coypright, the DMCA, and related laws are designed to be used against businesses, not hoards of individual people. "Happy Birthday to You" is routinely heard in homes and offices, but never in restaurant chains or movies, for that reason: the copyright on it cannot be effectively enforced against small gatherings of people, but it is easily enforced in the case of business use.
I don't think the RIAA/MPAA are advanced enough to "cultivate a producer/consumer mindset". Their actions in the last 10 years against all sorts of infringement methods (napster, kazaa, TPB, suprnova, Jammie Thomas-Rasset and others) are demonstrative of a rights organisation which didn't really know how to react to the huge piracy increase in the early 2000s. The record companies realised that their business model (sell CDs) was being obliterated by piracy. It took them years (and the lobbying of Apple and Amazon) to get to a point (todays DRM free digital download market) that they could compete. It wasn't so much that they managed to get rid of piracy, but that they provided a more convenient solution to consumers' demand (getting music) than piracy.
My original comment was made because, in reply to "You can't stop the signal", gtt said "With enough money, you can. Unfortunately". I would consider the results of the last decade of music piracy to be a fairly good indication that in fact you truly can't stop the signal. The only way that rights organisations have made any progress against piracy is by providing their own, higher quality, signal. That is something that I believe will translate into the 3D printing domain.
The reason you saw Gnutella and the like die was the wave of lawsuits from the RIAA, which led to people being terrified to upload anything. Peer to peer does not work if people are unwilling to share. The RIAA also successfully killed the companies that were trying to make peer to peer more usable by developing spam filters and improving robustness (e.g. Limewire).
It is not as though the concept of people downloading music was introduced to the RIAA by Napster. Several months before Napster started, the RIAA began work on SDMI, an attempt to thwart music downloading. The RIAA knew that people were downloading music over the Internet: anonymous FTP, IRC, Usenet, etc. It is not that the RIAA did not know how to react to the increase in copyright infringement; they were already working on a way to fight downloading.
The record companies did not think for a moment that their business model was being "obliterated" by downloading. They were working on DRM because they believed that downloading was the next technological change that they would need to exploit to stay in business. Home taping had been dealt with years earlier, after all, so why do you think they were afraid of downloading in and of itself?
What the RIAA was really afraid of was peer to peer. The RIAA's executives view the world in terms of one-to-many interactions: one producer serving the needs of many consumers. What made them panic was the idea that music could be spread without any centralization at all. With nobody to sue, buy out, tax, or otherwise deal with, the RIAA was basically left with none of the weapons it previously wielded. The only strategy left to them was to kill the idea of peer to peer sharing, by scaring people away, and get people to think like customers again. The point of suing college students, grandmothers, and other people whose net worth was not even a blip on the RIAA's RADAR was to scare people away from peer to peer, and back to systems that allowed the RIAA to use its legal weapons.
That they eventually managed to create competitive download services is a separate issue; they were going to do that anyway, just like they eventually exploited FM radio and eventually exploited cassette tapes. They understood that computers could be music players long before peer to peer, they just needed a few years to figure out how they could make money from that. As long as people believe they require the services of some industrial-scale operation to obtain their music, the RIAA is not afraid.
As for stopping the signal with sufficient money, I think you absolutely can do that, and I think you are going to see it happen within your lifetime. Eventually, you are going to buy a locked-down device that can only connect to your ISP's movie and music streaming sites, and a few other "approved" websites, and only use "approved" protocols; in exchange, you'll pay less for an Internet connection (anyone who wants more will be directed to "business class service," which will cost twice as much for half the throughput). Your computer will not allow you to download anything you did not get permission to download, and will not be able to upload anything audio or video related. You will not be allowed to run unapproved software. Shortsighted people will say it is more secure and will say that their grandmother does not need anything else. Yes, there will be jailbreaks, but you'll have to know someone who has a computer that can even download and run the jailbreaking software (think mod chips).
That's what money can buy. Lots of corporations with lots of money are working to make that a reality, and in the absence of a "killer app" for uninhibited Internet use (like, say, a peer to peer network) it will only be matter of finding the right price point and features.
What I see 3D printers doing is replacing foreign labor for the production of cheap parts. "Made in China" will be as old-fashioned as sending a letter via postal mail. Toys will be printed at home, that obscure nut that your car maker insisted on using will be printed in your garage, etc. Your home decorations will be printed, and you'll be able to replace them at will.
Despite the availability of cheap goods made by low-paid child laborers in developing nations, people still pay top dollar for crafts. I doubt that will change because of 3D printers.
(If you used laser cutting, it seems it would be hard to make non-convex parts, since you can't stop the laser at a certain depth.)