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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.
I want to download a car!
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Those "You wouldn't download a car, would you?" warnings on the beginning of DVD's are going to be funny when people actually are downloading cars...
For the record, I totally would.
What's the first thing with any new tech? Porn! So, 3D printers will be used to make sex toys.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
In some states, certain shapes may only be downloaded as an "adult novelty item".
I wanna download an A-bomb!
It's dildos all the way down.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
I look forward to being able to download a 3D model of an LP, that I can play on my turntable. Take that, RIAA!
This calls to mind Corey Doctorow's short story "Printcrime".
Download what is supposed to be a car, end up with a literal bag of dicks...this is gonna bring trolling to a whole new level!
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.
Palm trees and 8
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?
In most states you'll not be surprised to learn there is a form and a nominal fee to have the state assign you one.
Happens ALL the time for homemade custom boat trailers and to a much lesser extent homemade motorcycles and cars.
Its not usually much of an issue. "Red states" stereotypically seem to have a half page form and want like $5, "Blue states" stereotypically seem to have a 30 page form and want $100, but its always possible...
The biggest "problem" you'll encounter is most states have a certain location, size, and technique required to permanently deface the vehicle with the new VIN. Usually engraving a part of the frame meets the legal obligation, but how you engrave the frame ranges from "hold my beer and watch what I do with a dremel" all the way up to strange photoetching techniques.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Rick Astley?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
The mere idea that there is such a thing as an illegal shape is offensive.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Or 3D portraits of Chris Dodd with the AACS encryption key below...
This is commonly called a Slim Jim, and owning one is not illegal. (At least not where I live.)
When I was young I worked for an auto detailer, and one of the suppliers I dealt with had entire kits in his truck. I found my hand made stuff was better.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Wow, I can finally own stuff not made in China!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I don't own a 3D printer, so I think the first item i'd download is one of them!
When all else fails, you've won.
"Blue states" stereotypically seem to have a 30 page form and want $100, but its always possible...
Yeah but 20 pages of that are questions like "How does this car effect the aura of the driver?" and "Is there any possibility that this car could create a hostile work environment for a LGBT or minority?"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
First off, what is your credit card processing fee? There is a reason Apple isn't laughing all of the way to the bank with iTunes but the credit companies ARE laughing their ass off. It all depends on your size and your risks (chargebacks) but gosh darn, you might be suprised that your 25 cent fee ends up mostly at the credit card company. That is nobody does a charge back and you have to pay anywhere up from ten bucks for it. With your 25 cents, 1 chargeback costs you 40 paying customers, well it would IF you could use all their quarters to pay for the 1 chargeback, which you can't because other things will have to payed from it as I already stated.
Further more, you say the movie costs 20 bucks, even if rentals worked like that, which they don't, you need 80 paying customers (IF you could keep the entire quarter) just to break even. Meanwhile, your entire legal case rests on the fact that there is only ONE copy around for each possesion, so if 80 customers want the same movie at the same time, you need 80 x 20 bucks to satisfy demand. Now you need a total of 640 paying customers... IF you could keep the entire quarter which once again, you cannot.
I keep hammering on this because a lot of noobs to business think that money is free. You sell something and everything the customer pays, ends up in your pocket. Transaction costs HURT many a small business and is the reason you can't buy a nickle item with a credit card.
The most annoying thing is that this doesn't have to be the case, in the EU payments systems are far far cheaper per transaction, on the order of cents rather then quarters and are even free. Whenever I have to implement a CC solution because people in the EU thinks it will mean the world I find it very amusing to show them the fee structures. It is like telling a baby how their candy will be taken.
Oh, and those transaction costs, you have them DOUBLE. Two transactions... all to be payed out of 1 quarter dollar along with all your other costs.
You should put this in a business case and present it at your bank. They need a good laugh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You cannot build a functional combustion engine out of any substance malleable enough to be usable by a cheap consumer-grade 3d printer.
Cars require metal parts, and metal parts require more powerful equipment to forge.
Copyright and trademark infringement are common and this sort of thing has been a source of controversy for a while now.
But the next big blowup will be over things that are illegal in themselves just by their shape and arrangement of parts. I'm talking about things like weapons, drug paraphernalia, and pathogens. It's likely we'll see a crackdown or at least a panic resulting in calls for licensure of many of the most useful creation tools ever designed.
Take the humble AK-47 rifle, for example. It's designed for ease of manufacture, making it a likely target for replication. This makes enforcing highly restrictive gun laws very difficult in a world full of machines that can build them from simple raw materials.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
They're selectively enforced. Believe me, if they need a reason to bust your ass and can't come up with anything else, they'll be perfectly happy to break out that shit if they need to.
It would be pointless to forbid Warhammer figures. Some players are more or less serious about supporting the games companies and therefore more or less serious about proxying. I'm sure you'd find, however, that any generic toy soldier models could be printed in quantity. Communities will evolve that use entire proxy sets and just agree, by convention, which generic models correspond to which Warhammer models. Of course, you could do this with ordinary, plastic toy soldiers now but that's not quite as satisfying. If you can replace your copyrighted Dwarven Axe Berserkers with creative commons Dwarfish Adze Maniacs, you retain most of the flavour that makes the original models so fun.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
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!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The output of the 3d printers will be made of a completely different substance than the specialized car parts. The different substance will likely have different heat and pressure tolerances, different tensile strength, and so on. It probably won't work, and could cause damage.
Maybe, but they would make a great pattern to build a mold so that the part could be reproduced with the proper materials.
-Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
DNA synthesizers are. Guess TPB is going to have seeds for Ebola sequence in ten years and soon be labeled a terrorist site after that.
I mean, why not start with, say, a basic template for that sort of figure, and add in your own detail with a 3d modelling program, and create an original figure that you can then "print" out and utilize? I mean, what on earth makes having a duplicate of that particular figure so worthwhile that one should be inclined to even *want* to copy it?
I know if I had that sort of tech at home, I'd be making all kinds of customization to figures, rather than wanting to duplicate something that somebody else has done. And while granted, not everybody has the time or the inclination to want to do that sort of thing, I still find myself at a loss to understand why a person would rather copy something commercial than something somebody else might have made for free. Especially considering that home 3d printers generally can't actually do the kinds of fine detail that typically goes into metal figures of that size.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Shapes are already illegal. Look at what apple is trying to do to samsung's galaxy s phones and tablets.
In order to balance out the force of partisan jokes, I ask of the red state forms include 'Does it have holders for beer and shotgun?' and 'Does it run on almighty Texas Tea, or Pathetic Lieberal 'Leccy?'
Yours are funnier though. Bah. I need more tea to make jokes well.
About five years ago I was forced to abandon development of a project I started called 'Vassal 40k', under threat of legal action by Games Workshop. After I received the takedown request I deleted all files I had that pertained to the project, removed all links to it from sites I was hosting, and terminated the bit torrent seeds on my fileserver.
A few minutes ago I found a torrent for Vassal 40k on Pirate Bay.
Since I include complete source in all my distributions, it was easy for different people over the years to take over the project and add new stuff. Every few months while browsing the web I will find a video on youtube of people playing, or read a blog where someone has used it to write a battle report. Several times over the years I almost downloaded it. Then I imagine that having those files on my computer might be enough justification for armed men to kick down my door and take everything I own at gunpoint.
The incident has left me with little desire to play Warhammer 40k, but I do not support the actions of Pirate Bay. As a developer I believe that the rights of copyright holders should be respected. I publish my personal projects under Open Source licenses and would be pretty mad if I found out someone was in violation. I honestly think that Vassal 40k, the project I spent months of my time coding, testing, and creating art for, should be taken down off Pirate Bay and people should never use it again.
If Games Workshop does not want us spending our time developing games for their IP as fans, we shouldn't. Instead spend our time creating our own original open source game content as competitors.
Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG
http://www.makerbot.com/
Under $2000 to get going.
...and the one that gets you busted is the Mickey Mouse ears.
5 years for pirating a Michael Jackson CD :-(
4 years for killing Michael Jackson
Seriously
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Two things: tournaments, and cost.
I think most official tournaments require at least X% of a model be a GW model (allowing for green stuff modifications, small addons, etc). With 3D printers, you could print out everything, and there's probably no way in hell that Games Workshop could call you on it (possible excuses to not look like the real models: I modded it, it came damaged like that, I mixed bits, etc). Since GW has been slowly moving towards making damn near everything plastic instead of pewter, there's nothing stopping anyone from just printing most of (if not their their entire) army out.
The other extremely important vector is cost. Once 3D printers catch on, there's no way $20 blisters, $40 large models, $60+ unit boxes, etc will compete with the alternatives of 3D printing the actual designs (and don't you worry, the designs will circulate no matter what anyone tries to do). GW marks these suckers up (more in places like Canada, bastards), and I'm fairly certain it's where they make most of their money. Not even casual players could ignore this, and they can keep the same designs that everyone else uses, with probably no one who'd call them on it the wiser.
Once they can't guarantee profits from models... where are they going to make their money? Paints are easily substituted, rulebooks are few and far between for most players, scenery could be bought for a fraction of the cost elsewhere or made by hand... their entire business model will need to be rethought from the ground up.
And you'll get a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
You wouldn't print your mould directly, you'd print a model, then pack moulding sand round the model to form a mould. Then remove the model and pour in the metal.
Depending on the complexity of the part you could either go for a reusable model or a model that you melt out of the mould before using it. (like with lost wax casting)
Though if it's a mechanical part you would probablly need to do some machining after casting to get tight enough tolerances on the important surfaces.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register