Pirate Bay To Offer Physical Item Downloads

lukehopewell1 writes "The Pirate Bay is offering users the chance to download and print out real objects using 3D printers in what the pirate site is hailing as 'the future.'" Amir Taaki mentions that among the new "physibles" uploaded to the Pirate Bay are "plans for a tabletop replica for a Warhammer 40k dreadnought that got taken down in December with a DMCA request." Downloadable 3D models have been around for a while; MakerBot users are probably all familiar with the Thingiverse. Couple TPB with a cheap method of accurate 3D scanning, though, and I wonder what illegal shapes will emerge.

Comments

Re:Car

[The MAZZTer]

Yes, yes I would.

The future comes, are we ready

[PerlJedi]

This calls to mind Corey Doctorow's short story "Printcrime".

Re:How would you register a downloaded car?

[betterunixthanunix]

That's the one thing I'm not sure of. I'm all for downloading one, but where can I get a VIN to make it street legal?

This is the least of your concerns -- people do build their own cars in garages and there are procedures in place to register those cars. The real problem with downloading a car is that Detroit will join Hollywood in attacking new technologies rather than updating their business model.

Re:*Gazing into crystal ball*

[SuricouRaven]

Actually, in some US states, they are illegal to sell or to posess in quantity. Texas and Alabama at least, and I believe quite a few more, have made the sale of sex toys a criminal offence. I'm not going to google the details from work, look it up yourself. That's one reason you'll often see them sold as 'novelty' items: The manufacuters maintain some facade of them not really being what they are, knowing that most of the time the police have more important laws to enforce. Every now and again some local politician orders a crackdown to win the Family Values voters over.

Print your own stuff.

[CastrTroy]

I was discussing this with my brother about a year back. We were in the store looking at this warhammer stuff, and I remarked that these dye-cast figures aren't any more complicated (probably less so) than hotwheels. Yet peopel are paying $5 a piece for them, or getting special sets of "rare" pieces for over $50. I was saying that eventually people would just be printing their own models on 3D printers. I guess the future is here. And good for it. I always thought some of these games were a little odd. Things like Magic Cards. Who-ever spends the most on their deck has a huge advantage over everyone else. Sure there's skill involved at some level, in knowing which cards to put in the deck in the first place, but a lot of it is spending money obtaining that deck. I would be like playing chess, where one player had all queens because he had spent a bunch of money.

Re:for a while

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, we all like to play with our memes, (it's practically at that multi choice form), but isn't anyone seeing who else is really threatened?

Try the Toy industry! In one sense, toys are "sorta stupid", just big hunks of plastic with the computing power of a watch.

Bye bye $60 for some Sit and Spin thingie!

Oh dear skies alive, having the TOY lawyers playing with the media lawyers? *Cringe*

Plus this thing is gonna play hell with Patent vs. Copyright.

"Oh, the patent expired? Let's copyright the Replicator Formula for 100 years!"