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DRM Could Come To 3D Printers
another random user sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"Downloading a car – or a pair of sneakers – will be entirely possible, although Ford and Nike won't be particularly happy if people use their designs to do so. A new patent, issued this week by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and titled 'Manufacturing control system', describes a system whereby 3D printer-like machines (the patent actually covers additive, subtractive, extrusion, melting, solidification, and other types of manufacturing) will have to obtain authorization before they are allowed to print items requested by the user. In a nutshell, a digital fingerprint of 'restricted items' will be held externally and printers will be required to compare the plans of the item they're being asked to print against those in a database. If there's a match, printing will be disallowed or restricted."
because it's bloody obvious.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So, no one else can patent it, thus disabling "DRM" authorization?
I won't hold my breath.
This will require significant bandwidth and processing power, especially to stop circumvention by rotating scaling, cutting (for later assembly) or adding or subtracting insignificant features. This bandwidth and processing power will add significant cost, which I see as fortunate in that it will be a competitive disadvantage for DRM enabled printers.
for rectangles with rounded corners.
God, the patent wars are coming to 3d manufacturing. What the heck is the point? I have to check with colgate before I can use my own machine to make myself a custom toothbrush? Is there going to be a DMCA provision for manufacturing at home now? Is it going to be abused like the current process is. I say BULLSHIT!
How can they believe that they can control this in a world where highly advanced 3D printing is possible at home? People will just print their own 3D printers that do not have these restrictions.
We can't have disruptive technologies that force us to change how we monetize creativity! Let's make the technologies useless, cumbersome, and expensive, so that later on we can claim they were never really worth what everyone thought!
Oh, and did I mention how terrible it is that we failed to do it with the automobile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws
Palm trees and 8
Looks like the patent protects a technology to implement DRM on printers. So... if you want to implement DRM on your printer, you'll have to pay the owner of this patent licensing fees. Otherwise, no DRM. So, non-DRM printers will be cheaper and more readily available.
Remember guys, a patent is not a law that things must be done this way! It's the opposite -- if things are done this way, you'll have to pay for it.
More likely, this company wants to make money on some future standard that will kill 3D printing. You know, a standard that will be required by law for all 3D printers, which will be so loaded with junk like this that only large industrial operations will be able to use 3D printers. Us little people can buy or rent the products of 3D printers, but to own or operate one in your home will be out of the question.
After all, when we allowed people to have computers in their homes instead of x.25 terminals, look at the disaster that ensued.
Palm trees and 8
This kind of DRM will be about as effective as the copy protection on DVDs or, perhaps, Blu-Ray. That is to say: not very effective at all. Creating machines or software that bypasses this protection will be available to anyone interested not too long after the protection itself has rolled out.
Sci-fi is decidedly not prior art in patents. I can imagine a device for instantaneous teleportation, but that wouldn't invalidate a patent for such a device, since patents (are supposed to) cover actual inventions, not just an idea for something, which is all sci-fi is. So unless your science fiction comes with detailed drawings and working descriptions detailed enough to actually build the device in question (in which case it isn't fiction), it cannot serve as prior art.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Which is why I said that the standard would require printers to be too bloated for small scale or home uses. Who will take the time to create parts for a printer that not only does not implement the standard, but which would threaten the revenue model for those industrial 3D printing shops that actually operate 3D printers?
This is why, if we are going to have a 3D printing revolution, it needs to happen right now before such a standard can be created. That is one of the reasons PCs were so successful: they become popular before X.25 terminals were rammed down everyone's throats. The people who are threatened by 3D printing know this, and they are going to try to stop the revolution before it starts.
Palm trees and 8
On your DRM-enabled 3D printer, 3D-print a DRM-disabled 3D-printer.
Ezekiel 23:20
Charles Hall was denied the waterbed patent in part because of Heinlein's description of the "hydraulic bed" in Stranger In A Strange Land.
[url] http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/6098825 [/url]
That this is a patent covering 3D printing is a misunderstanding of the patent by TFA. The patent doesn't talk about 3D printers but manufacturing machinery, defined broad enough to include almost anything from CNC machines to casting. They don't have to wait until 3D printers become commonplace, because this patent covers much more.