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What Will Ubiquitous 3D Printing Do To IP Laws?
Lucas123 writes "With scanners able turn objects into printable files and peer-to-peer file sharing sites able to distribute product schematics, 3D printing could make intellectual property laws impossible or impractical to enforce. At the Inside 3D Printing Conference in San Jose this week, industry experts compared the rise of 3D printing to digital music and Napster. Private equity consultant Peer Munck noted that once users start sharing CAD files with product designs, manufacturers may be forced to find legal and legislative avenues to prevent infringement. But, he also pointed out that it's nearly impossible to keep consumers from printing whatever they want in the privacy of their homes. IP attorney John Hornick said, 'Everything will change when you can make anything. Future sales may be of designs and not products.'"
"3D printing could make intellectual property laws impossible or impractical to enforce."
That won't stop the old boys from trying, like they are doing it with music and movies.
Looks like we missed the chance to reverse all these ancient laws back when downloading came on the scene.
Now 3D Printing will do to physical goods what downloading did years ago to digital goods.
Touche.
can i print clothes or shoes for my kids on a 3d printer?
can i print a working tablet?
how about a charging cable for my iphone?
or new toilet paper?
Surely you only need a common 2-D printer to print IP laws.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
'Everything will change when you can make anything. Future sales may be of designs and not products.'
ok, so still a long time from now then.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If they go the route of chipped HDMi cables going forward and check outputs based on enforced regulations. There is still time to do this, not that I'd be a fan.
N/T
Print me a Lawyerbot! (c:
Sue me, baby, I can make a million of them!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of the stories that get told around the financial crisis is how the relationship between Rating Agencies and Investment Banks changed because of Xerox. Before Xerox rating agencies would charge investment banks for copies of their data. But once Xerox copying machines came out, the rating agencies feared that they would only have one customer and investment banks would just make copies of the data and pass it around. So they made the data free for all intents and purposes and started charging the banks on how their products got rated. We all know how that turned out.
Patent law specifically allows people to "make their own" based on the patented design. You aren't allowed to produce the items for sale or distribution, but you are allowed to make one for yourself.
This is where patent law and 3D printers are really going to collide, because 3D printing makes it easy to make your own.
One might be able to argue that the model used to do the printing is "distributing the design", but it's not illegal to distribute a patented design, only to produce the designed items for sale.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Free Speech!
Oh, wait, messed up ... only got the middle finger.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Even when home manufacturing will become affordable (at this point 3D printing is only good for fragile plastic toys and CNCs cost a fortune), mass production will still be much cheaper. The result will be the opposite of the prediction: designs will worth less because of piracy, but manufactured goods will still sell because they will cost less.
"With scanners able turn objects into printable files and peer-to-peer file sharing sites able to distribute product schematics, 3D printing could make intellectual property laws impossible or impractical to enforce. At the Inside 3D Printing Conference in San Jose this week, industry experts compared the rise of 3D printing to digital music and Napster. Private equity consultant Peer Munck noted that once users start sharing CAD files with product designs, manufacturers may be forced to find legal and legislative avenues to prevent infringement. But, he also pointed out that it's nearly impossible to keep consumers from printing whatever they want in the privacy of their homes. IP attorney John Hornick said, 'Everything will change when you can make anything. Future sales may be of designs and not products.'"
Let's see if we can do tongue-in-cheek test of this statement by replacing "make" and "print" with "brew", and "peer-to-peer file sharing service" with "US postal service"
"With people able to write down brewing recipes and US postal service able to distribute those recipes, home brewing could make intellectual property laws impossible or impractical to enforce. At the Inside brewing Conference in San Jose this week, industry experts compared the rise of home brewing to digital music and Napster. Private equity consultant Peer Munck noted that once users start sharing recipes with brewing procedures, industrial brewers may be forced to find legal and legislative avenues to prevent infringement. But, he also pointed out that it's nearly impossible to keep consumers from brewing whatever they want in the privacy of their homes. IP attorney John Hornick said, 'Everything will change when you can brew anything. Future sales may be of recipes and not alcohol.'"
Unless alcohol sales US are suffering terribly from the advent of home brewing, the statement of this lawyer is a bag full of sh*t aimed at creating legislature that will only benefit IP lawyers.
When the manufacture of goods becomes a matter of popping someone's design in a scanner, sharing it over the web, and then letting others print it at home, IP will become even more critical to business than it is today. Businesses will not simply limply waggle their hands in the air and moan in impotent, melodramatic depression if piracy of physical goods becomes possible. They will lobby. Hard.
You think the eternal extension of copyright is bad with just the entertainment industry behind it? You haven't seen anything yet. If IP becomes king of all property law, then IP will rule it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It will right a lot of things that have gone wrong in our society.
The IP Laws won't really change. Since you are 24/7 under survilance it's pretty easy to enforce IP, the moment you download a shematic or finished printing it you'll get an E-Mail saying either Pay up or get sued.
Designs, like MP3s, are digital data which is by nature infinitely reproducible. You can only build an industry on selling designs if you introduce legally sanctioned mechanisms of artificial scarcity. Which means a bunch of lawyers will get together calling themselves the Design Industry Association of America. They will argue for a tax on raw plastic, to be paid to them; and will sue anyone they think might have a 3D printer stashed away in the attic. Of course they won't actually have any connection with real designers any more than the Recording Industry Association of America has any connection with real musicians, but that doesn't matter because as everyone knows it's the lawyers who get to keep all the money. They are, after all, the only people (apart from bankers) who actually add value in this economy.
Cynical? Moi?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Most things that I spend real money on are composed of multiple different substances, not just fixed piece of plastic that can be reproduced by injection moulding (not that injection moulding is particularly cheap, but I'm just saying that the bulk of things that I spend money on are fully assembled objects made of many parts and materials and would not be practical for the current regime of home 3d printers).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Take a look at the patents. And take a look at the stuff around you. How much of the stuff around you is patented and amenable to being 3d printed? And what fraction do you believe you could put together cheaper and more conveniently?
Let's take a look at a stapler. $5 from Amazon. I'm sure it was patented at one time. Let's pretend it still is. Even with the best 3-d printing today, using million dollar machines, you're not going to be able to make a good one. So let's assume the machines get good enough and cheap enough you could make a stapler at home. How about the staples? Ok fine, let's assume you can make those too.
You want to go through the trouble of making the parts and assembling? Oh, you've got a cheap machine that can make it from multiple materials and even does some of the post processing?
Congratulations. It's 2050 and you've made a stapler that could be bought for $5 in 2013 from Amazon. And now Amazon has it for $1 because they own a better machine that runs 24/7 and buys more varieties of materials at lower cost. And the patent ran out decades ago.
Next up, a microwave oven. Or car tire. Or tv remote.
3D printing is going to be a problem for only a very few items. Not the vast majority of stuff you use or is patented. Economies of scale will make even those items impractical to knock off. It'll be decades before it becomes even a miniscule problem. Why are we getting in a tizzy now worrying about it?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I think in the eyes of the founders when they created the patent office, the idea that one man owned the product of his labor was never to be infringed. Rather, it was to prevent companies from stealing ideas, and providing them so that they competed against the inventor', and allowing the inventor to profit from his effort. It was realized back then that you could not prevent a man from copying a plow (first US patent ever) that he observed in use or by reading the patent by his own effort.
Similarly, I don't see how patents should even apply to 3D printing, since people making things for themselves is a natural right, a right far exceeding any legislative "right" or privilege granted by the government. The idea that a company can stop you from producing something yourself for your own use, is a very chilling idea. So far the most realistic real-world example of that is Monsanto, which can prohibit farmers from replanting seeds. However this is done under a specific license contract, which is agreed to by both parties.
The OP also has a bit of fancy about it. Not everything can be 3D printed. Metals need particular traits that can't be achieved by sintering. Not all plastics are printable as well. Eventually engineers will learn to engineer for non-3d printable materials, so that replacement 3D printed parts aren't feasible. And I would postulate that if you're using 3D printable parts, then your design isn't all that patent-able.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Laws have to change as technology makes them obsolete. That's not to say that people who have an interest in living in the past won't kick, scream and bribe their congress critters, but eventually they'll lose.
From Heinlein's Life-Line;
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
People buy digital goods....netflix, itunes, amazon...all sell digital goods. Not just a little, but a lot, and that is an understatement.
I think what would end up happening is developing countries might suffer and the shipping industry might suffer. E.g. Amazon could sell yet another copy of an mp3 file without needing to have somebody in China assemble it, and there's no need for a UPS guy to deliver it. In the end the customer just saves money on both assembly on shipping, and the only four people who profit are Amazon, whoever designed it, whoever sells you the filament, and the payment processor.
The later could be eliminated with bitcoins.
This is all a good thing, by the way. One constant that has always repeated throughout history is that the cheaper anything becomes, the wealthier the poor become (remember not to confuse wealth with money.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Society of 7.5 billion people, is more innovative than what a bunch of non creatives want us to believe.
In the world of seeders and leechers, lawyers are leechers, they contribute nothing and download your money
I can see laws passed, via an ACTA or WIPO-like treaty that would force all 3D printers to only accept signed files, and it would be some clearinghouse that only allows certain people to have signed files for certain printers, likely with a very expensive barrier to entry.
A simple law banning ownership of 3D printers unless they had a DRM stack would do the trick. Already, to retrieve existing printers, it just takes finding people with who are in any database for ordering them or parts, then getting a search warrant, similar to how California bypasses the fourth amendment whey they go do their gun seizure raids.
People laugh at laws, but there is a tendency to arrest now in the US (and thus make the private prisons happy), then sort out laws. And making a DRM stack that disallows all but signed binaries is trivially easy.
I doubt that home 3D printers will ever be a serious danger for regular products. A user might print a case for his iPhone or something like that, but even the most simplistically functional objects tend to be far beyond what a home 3D printer can do. Even when a 3D printer can compete, it's often more expensive then the same product done regularly somewhere in China and shipped over here.
I think the copyright with 3D printings won't be with the big manufacturers, but within the realm of the hacker/maker crowd itself, people taking each others design without following the license and stuff that like. Wouldn't surprise me if some Chinese company would start mass producing a popular object without paying royalties either. But that's basically the same set of problems we already have with Open Source, music, films and even Youtube videos.
In general I consider home 3D printing rather overhyped, there is only so much plastic crap you can print and most people won't have any use for a personal 3D printer. Outside of the home, 3D printers are for more interesting, be it to create rocket parts or organ replacements, but your home printer won't ever be capable of that.
There won't be any Ubiquitous 3D Printing. /. crowd will someday soon own a 3D printer. But the general population? Not going to happen.
I don't doubt that many of the
I am just about a geeky as you can get, and not get beaten up for your lunch money as an adult, and I want a 3D printer. But I am not sure why I want one.
Off the top of my head i can think of half a dozen things I could and probably would use a 3D printer to make. But that is the problem. After those items are made, I just can't think of anything else I would want/need to make.
I wonder if at some point there will be 3D printing shops, of perhaps somewhere you can send your file, and have the printed object sent to you. That might work. But Ubiquitous 3D Printing, I very much doubt it will ever happen.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Yes, but what patented objects can be just scanned in and printed? I can't really thing of any significant ones. An iPhone? A pharmaceutical? Could they print a Teddy bear? And that's not patented. And if you could (at all), could you do it at a reasonable price? One has to think that the manufacturer's cost of making it will always by X/4 or so.
At least, that's what happened with copyright laws as a result of ubiquitous A/V recording...
They will have no recourse, since it is the product designers and developers who own the IP. If they share it with the consumer directly, too bad manufacturer, you've become obsolete.
Current consumer end printers only use plastic, but other materials are already possible now. Here's a link the materials available for one of the online 3D printing services. Again, presently You can only choose one material at a time. My point is that printing complex objects with multiple materials, for example an Ipad, will be possible.
http://www.shapeways.com/materials?li=nav
Possible, perhaps... but not remotely practical for the foreseeable future.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
developing countries might suffer
Only in that we don't need them to build our trinkets anymore. On the other hand though, they now can build things themselves in the same manner. Cheaper and locally. On sum I suspect it will really *help* developing countries a lot more than it might ever hurt.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
See: the copyright wars
Well, I'd say that depends on Your definition of "forseeable future". It's not going to happen in the next few years to be sure. I would speculate that its quite likely in the next few decades however.
it's nearly impossible to keep consumers from printing whatever they want in the privacy of their homes.
followed by
Future sales may be of designs and not products.
so IP law|*suits|*yers will define the future?
how come i don't see pattern for *)profit in here?
other than feeding the system that bites the hand.
news at...
It has always been fair use to make stuff for yourself in your own home for noncommercial purposes.
Can a 3D printer produce clean drinking water, reliable electricity, law and order and competent, honest government?
When it can then maybe it'll help the third world.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
The question is what will existing IP laws do to 3D printing..
No such thing has ever happened. An OBJECT contains many things. A SHAPE is all you can do with 3D printing. For God's sake the aggrandizing hype behind 3D printing is nauseating.
Go ahead, prove me wrong, 3D print a FULLY FUNCTIONAL MP3 PLAYER FROM A FILE.
Can't be done. "Schematics". Jesus Christ. You loons have swallowed your sci-fi delusions whole and didn't chew even once.
You really think people will be able to print full working automobiles, appliances, and assorted consumer electronics at home within the next few decades?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...when 3D printing is much more advanced, this will actually be a problem
Modern manufactured products are complex assemblies of metal, plastics and sometimes circuitry
A 3D printer can print an ice cream scoop, but not a bicycle, or a smartphone, or a fishing reel..etc..
This kind of article reminds me of the early days of Virtual Reality when the writers went on and on about a time when VR would be indistinguishable from reality
Well, VR kinda failed to live up to the hype..maybe someday it will, but so far, no (and yes, I know a bit about it having worked on a well funded VR project)
I've worried in the past about what will happen if 3d printing (and I mean real 3d printing that can build all kinds of stuff, not just plastic parts). For stuff that's easy to design (like a coffee mug), I would expect that it wouldn't cause many problems. Open-source designers can design the stuff in an hour or so and give it away. No big deal. For stuff that takes a lot more engineering, like a car, I'd be worried about our ability to continue designing into the future. If designers can't get paid for their work (because everybody's downloading the designs off Piratebay or something and not paying anybody for the design work), then it could harm society's progress. Maybe some sort of kickstarter system could pay for the design (but, again, this works best if the design is relatively cheap). Or maybe people will donate. We'll see. Depending on how things shake-out, we could end up driving a bunch of old fuel-efficient, and unsafe cars that were designed in yesteryear rather than being able to take advantage of much-better designed cars that could never be designed because the market for design has dropped out from underneath us (due to rampant piracy). For stuff that's relatively rare (like designing a Spacecraft), then maybe one entity (i.e. a government or company or billionaire) would be willing to pay the entire bill for the design work. Or maybe the government will fund design work for a variety of consumer devices through tax dollars (essentially the Soviet Union model). Or maybe companies will attempt to tightly control their designs so they don't get copied (e.g. if a company creates a self-driving taxi, but never releases any of the design plans to anybody, thereby allowing them to get a return on their design work through their automated taxi service).
It would be sad to see humanity's technological progress hobbled by ubiquitous printing (a cool technology) that undermines the economics of designing new stuff - at least when that economic model relies on "spreading out the costs of designing stuff over a the population of people who use that device" (which has actually been a very good model - probably the best model in the past few centuries - for the design and production of new stuff).
By the time this happens, all IP will be locked up in portfolios held by large companies. No one will be able to "print" anything without violating IP. Licensing will be built into every 3D printer, just as today's photocopying machines embed circuitry to print almost undetectable markers to prevent copying currency. As one poster pointed out, the industry lobbies will not allow truly effective 3D printers to be sold without these mechanisms built in.
The future is one in which no one will be able to make anything without paying a fee to some large company. The IP holders will be the elite - the rest of us serfs.
Given that technologies such as 3D printing and AI will result in massive unemployment, we will all essentially be begging for the right to print the essentials that we need, paying the IP masters at every step. We will all be on stipends from the government, which will be (indeed, already is) controlled by those masters.
Eventually, those masters will not need us: they will just make whatever they need, consuming all of our natural resources, and the masses will stave.
IP is this century's tool for re-instituting feudalism.
The real question we should be worrying about is:
"What Will Ubiquitous IP Laws to do to 3D Printing?"
I can hear the saliva dripping from the mouths of lawyers looking to litigate 3D printing into the ground. They'll fail, but its going to be a death-rattle 100x more destructive than what the MAFIAA has been doing for the last 20 years.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
First, I agree with previous posters about complex products being printed at home. Home-printed autos, for example, are not going to be economically competitive with factory-made ones anytime soon (for decades or even centuries). On the other hand, gouging on simple but unique-to-the-model parts—say, exhaust manifolds—is going away.
Second, the changes will be interesting, but those who can only fret about the damage to information hoarders are not seeing the big picture. As a society, we'll be freeing up the resources we've been using to mass-produce, transport, and store relatively simple objects. This leap in efficiency will be a boon to everyone, including those who can only focus on their cash cows. In fact, when a broken part can be produced on the spot, repairing complex machines rather than discarding them might become fashionable again. What's more, just as with RepRaps and whatnot, machines will be designed that don't require exotic materials, specifically so that their parts can be produced anywhere.
So... asking the IP lawyers what they think is barking up the wrong tree. I for one don't care. Ask instead the economists, ask about not needing large warehouses and stockpiles and parts transported and waiting for them. Railroads might do even better than now, as they're well-suited for transporting massive amounts of raw materials.
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
There will be many items that cannot be 3D printed for quite a while. CPUs, lasers, specialized equipment. But mass manufacturing of simpler items will be gobbled up from below. Sure, it's cheaper per item to mass produce a plastic bowl, but when you can throw the pieces of the broken bowl into a hopper and have it print out like new again, the convenience factor will trump all. And that hopper is a pretty key piece of the puzzle, because raw material will continue to be a limiting factor without it. Who has ABS plastic sitting around that isn't already formed into a finished good?
From there it's straightforward to predict ripple effects. People ceasing to buy manufactured goods puts pressure on manufacturers and on the distribution networks that move products from fab to store shelves. Walmarts shut down. Shipping companies take a hit at all levels. Unemployment hits in a massive deluge. Service industries might continue for a while, but when unemployment restricts people's incomes it puts deflationary pressure on services, too.
On the other hand, the average joe will have access to productive power undreamt of. Why not print yourself out a Ferrari, or a bazooka? Want the latest iPhone? Print it out using a scanned & downloaded file. Heck, print out a 3D printer and give it to your mom.
Then the limiting factors would be energy and land. Distributed power generation through wind and solar, and reduced power consumption through more efficient devices, might balance that equation, but at the end of the day there is only so much land in the world. What happens to the masses of people who can't afford to pay rent or property taxes anymore? Do they become seasteaders or overthrow the systems of land ownership? Do particularly determined individuals print out rockets and emigrate to Mars? Standing here at the dawn of this revolution, it's a bit hard to gaze into that particular part of the crystal ball. But I feel sure that before most of us /.-ers reach retirement the world will look almost nothing like it does today.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Nobody is going to have the ability to print out an actual car.
Not necessarily true. Some parts might not be printable but many/most will. I used to work in a rapid prototyping shop. We could make replica parts (in plastic) that once painted you'd have a hard time telling they weren't the real thing just from looking at them.
Printers simply aren't going to be user quality and printing in materials like steel or carbon fiber.
Actually you can print metal. There are devices out there that can print aluminum, titanium, and steel. Hell you can even print organic tissue. It's not just plastic.
I'm going to print a crap-ton of Epic miniatures. I can finally play that 30,000 point vs 30,000 point game I've always dreamed of!
If it became cheaper to build a car, then i would expect the prices of ready-built cars to drop accordingly.
It will almost certainly never be cheaper to print your own than to buy one made by Ford or Toyota. The materials alone would cost more than the car in the quantities you could buy them in. Volume discounts when you are talking millions of units a year are enormous. The per-unit production cost to a big auto company for a comparable vehicle is going to be far, far lower than any one off, even if there is no profit motive attached. (Disclosure: I am an accountant)
Unless you are talking about luxury cars, they aren't priced "artificially high". Even the most profitable auto makers (Porsche, Toyota, etc) only have profit margins in the high single digits. They make money by selling a LOT of vehicles but they don't generally make all that much on each one. A few luxury makes make a lot of money per vehicle (Ferrari, etc) but they don't and can't sell all that many at the price points they charge.
Automobiles no. Appliances and electronics, partially. If you had a printer the size of a washing machine, you could print parts of anything, with parts small enough to fit in the printing area. The only parts You cannot print are the electronics. You can print the circuit board, but transistors, microchips etc will have to be ordered online. This relegates this activity to people thrifty enough to do some delicate assembly on their own. So... yeah in general effect, Your assessment is correct.
This keeps coming up on Slashdot, and it's mostly a non-issue. The only reason it's an issue now is that hobbyist 3D printers are so crappy that they're used mostly to produce copies of game and movie related decorative items.
If you use one to make a dashboard knob for a '57 Chevy, there's no IP issue. Design patents are only for 14 years. You can't copyright a functional part, and most functional parts aren't original enough for a utility patent. There's a robust third-party auto parts industry because of this.
When 3D printing in metal really gets going, it's going to be a Joe Sixpack thing. The same people who own welders will own 3D printers. If you do not presently own at least one power tool, you will probably not have a 3D printer.
What Will Ubiquitous 3D Printing Do To IP Laws?
Better question: Who cares?
This is why the ./ guest account is called 'anonymous coward', of course.
[FrLz]
no but by bringing costs down, it frees up money to be put to those things. When things are ubiquitous they aren't stolen very often since by definition they're everywhere.
Reliable electricity? I'll be good money you could 3D print most parts to make a stand for a solar panel to make it a heliostat, thus providing 'more' power.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
My car has little plastic thingies which spray water on the headlights. Due to snow and ice, they are broken. Replacement parts at the dealer cost $110 each (for a part which can't contain more than $1 worth of plastic).
I'd love to download and print replacements.
I run a company that makes wire harnesses. We recently quoted a harness for a major car company (can't say the name) which we would sell to a Tier 1 auto for about $11 and would cost us about $8 to make. If you were to buy this from a dealer they would charge you about $80. As a crude rule of thumb, the mark up on aftermarket dealer parts is typically about 5-8X over the price charged by the maker of that part. So if you were being charged $110, chances are that the company that made it charged somewhere around $13-20. For low volume plastic parts that's probably pretty reasonable given the amount of labor and the tooling costs in a typical low volume plastic part. A die for plastic parts might cost $5-10,000 easy. I'm not counting the paint, material handling, overhead, raw materials, etc. That means you have to produce many thousands of parts just to break even on the tooling. 3D printing *might* make a dent in the price of some of these low volume parts because you don't have a lot of the tooling costs but you will still have a LOT of machining costs. A 3D printed part might take 10-20 hours to complete and that isn't cheap even if you own the machine.
...grooves and all?
It appears you can: http://www.amandaghassaei.com/3D_printed_record.html
If I 3D print "a record from scratch" (no pun intended) does the rip to MP3 count toward my 3 felonies a day?
It, no doubt does, but I sure would like to replace some I have (much less figure out how to "scan" the r-e-a-l-l-y old ones!)
They will have no recourse, since it is the product designers and developers who own the IP. If they share it with the consumer directly, too bad manufacturer, you've become obsolete.
I think you are confused... and so is the article... the "manufacturers" are the people who own the printers. Not to be confused with the designers, wjo come up with the designs which are manufactured by people using those printers.
So yeah, the designers might want IP enforcement of some kind, but of course that already exists, in the form of design patents.
But since we already have design patents available as an IP mechanism, there's really nothing that needs fixing here.
We obviously will have to outlaw the new technology. Start by saying that there is an epidemic of people using 3D printed guns to murder people. Get the government to classify 3D printers as a tool to manufacture guns. Sale of a 3D printer will fall under the Gun Control Act and boom, no one has a 3D printer.
OR
Get a small handful of companies to corner the market. Imagine of only HP, Brother, Epson and Cannon were making 3D printers. You just pay those four companies to include a system that won't let them print objects that match a database of copyrighted objects. IP owners can pay to have their object added to the database.
Ralph Williams wrote this tight little story for Astounding in 1958.
His alien engineered replicators cannot reproduce animate objects, which is their only limitation. "No assembly required." Energy is not a problem. Material resources are not a problem. Complexity is not a problem. Craftsmanship is not a problem.
Everything comes out of thin air --- except the prototype.
The department store manager navigating his way through this chaos sees this very quickly. He knows that IP rights in a world of seemingly infinite material abundance will be the one real measure of value.
He knows that the object which is trivially easy to replicate will lose its novelty quickly.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
Little Boxes
The moment I found out it was 'illegal' to question the 'holocaust', I knew it was all a big lie.
It's not illegal to question it. It's illegal (in a few places) to deny it. The deniers are the one with the big lie.
In general things should be questioned. But when faced with an overwhelming amount of evidence that challenges your preconceptions, it's not sane to continue asking the same question over and over. Ignoring evidence you don't agree with doesn't change what really happened, it just make you look like an idiot. If there is an enormous amount of evidence supporting something, such as the holocaust, ignoring it make you looks like an enormous idiot. Using "LOL" to help prove your point make you look like a 9-yr old idiot.
I don't know anything about the people you mention, but I would guess that they went to jail for offenses like theft or tax evasion. People write books in jail, being sent there doesn't silence them.
As for "pound of flesh"- do you have any idea where that quote comes from, or the context it's used in? I'd suggest to look it up, but if you didn't like it then you would just deny it and then make up some other story about it.
Most conspiracy theorists, such as yourself, also have underlying inferiority complexes. Now, as well deserved as your inferiority complex may be, I suggest that you see a professional therapist to help mitigate the effects and prevent you from picking up another crazy idea. Otherwise it's probably not going to be too long before you're on a street corner somewhere, frothing at the mouth about Bigfoot or Elvis.
Great Hitler's Ghost, he's back.
"3D printing could make intellectual property laws impossible or impractical to enforce."
Bullshit.
"IP" laws are quite practical and possible to enforce... at least, the reasonable parts of them are.
Study after study after study have shown that personal copying HAS NOT HARMED either the music or software or music industries. If anything, their profits have gone up. The continued attacks against making personal (as opposed to for commercial sale) copies is nothing more than an attempt at absolute control.
3D printing does not "threaten" so-called "intellectual property" laws in the least. Neither did Jacquard looms, or computer punch cards, or cassette tapes, or DVDs, or automated lathes, or injection molding, or CNC machines. All of the industries that depended on those things for manufacturing or distribution have been thriving. If anything, more so than if those things had not come along.
The articles right in that one of the first things to be hit will be kid's toys.
Forget printing cars and clothes like this thread's talking about.
The first big lawsuit:
Legos.
No complex shapes, plastic that fits what 3D printing can do. A deep pocket industry, where they'll feel the effects
quickly. Teens that can probably come up with the basic shapes with trial and error in just a few hours.
Yeah, where's the popcorn? This is going to be show...
I don't know what the tech will be like in 10 to 15 years, but right now the material that you use in the current generation of 3D printers to produce an object costs more than the object would if made using traditional manufacturing. The only place that it makes sense to use it right now is where you can't use mass production techniques... i.e.: individually customized items.
Of course, that is now. If those costs drop (and there is no reason to believe they won't), then traditional IP will be out the window. At that point, a consumer would be able to print a standard widget for the cost of running the printer. At that point, customization of the CAD drawings will be where the money will be at.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I think this question has been asked before.....
...since they won't be selling many more $20 plastic soldiers.
And I can see the end of various bilking opportunities for auto manufacturers, Apple etc charging extortionate amounts for plastic spare parts and accessories.
Other than those niche markets though, I don't think most of the people who make 'stuff' need to feel threatened by the foreseeable capabilities of consumer 3D printers.
Patent law specifically allows people to "make their own" based on the patented design. You aren't allowed to produce the items for sale or distribution, but you are allowed to make one for yourself.
It hurts your head to read the geek's posts about the law.
The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
In the U.S., a patent is a right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, exporting components to be assembled into an infringing device outside the U.S., importing the product of a patented process practiced outside the U.S., inducing others to infringe, offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent, and a few other very carefully defined categories. The distinctions between what patent rights include are complex. For example, merely thinking about an invention or drawing a diagram is not an infringement. Likewise, research for "purely philosophical" inquiry is not an infringement.
United States patent law
If AMD wants to build a billion dollar chip fab "of its own" based on Intel's designs and patents, AMD has to license Intel's designs and patents.
This is not rocket science, people.
When it can produce reliable electricity, law and order and competent honest government then give California a call.
Can a 3D printer produce clean drinking water,
Yes, if you have the materials to print a water filter or solar water still.
reliable electricity,
Yes, if you have the materials to print a solar panel (I estimate it will take about 5 years until somebody successfully prints a primitive one).
law and order and competent, honest government?
Maybe.
And here you go, somebody already is working on it:
http://theinstitute.ieee.org/people/profiles/less-expensive-and-greener-3d-printing
Sure, he's only dealing with recycling milk bottles now, but I'm sure many people are working on a more generic solution.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Saturn vehicles had plastic body panels, and my bumper is just a plastic panel over a crushable core. If I can replace the crushable core with a different one and then get a 3d-printed panel for it, why wouldn't I go that route?
The stock lug nuts for my Toyota Matrix cost $8 each. They're making a huge profit margin on those. Yes, they have a built-in washer, but for comparison aftermarket tuner lug nuts with spline drive cost about a buck each.
I don't see most people printing whole products at home. I do see people printing replacement parts for things that break rather than paying exorbitantly high rates to buy the part from the manufacturer.
I had a Kitchenaid food processor. The lid is just a piece of plastic, and my wife damaged it trying to chop a carrot that wasn't totally thawed. They want $50 to replace it. In a relatively short time I fully expect to be able to have a replacement printed for a lot less than that.
www.shapeways.com
But, he also pointed out that it's nearly impossible to keep consumers from printing whatever they want in the privacy of their homes.
Ding Dong!
... Hey! How many of you ARE there?
... I guess so. How does this protect me again?
..., of course not? What's he doing in the kitchen? ... place in their next commercial that you'll soon see.
... your safety to watch for quality control failure events for things you print, and to make sure that whatever you print doesn't accidentally match something existing in the object database. You wouldn't walk into a store and steal a hammer that someone else made, would you? And you SURE wouldn't want to buy a hammer that was broken, right? We're just making sure you don't print out parts of a hammer designed by someone else. And if you happen to stumble across a brand new design, we'll be happy to ... check it for quality control and structurally integrity. Who knows, if it's good enough you might find it featured in the next commercial break! Oh, and for the boys stuck down in the central office, if at night you and your spouse want to get together and something ... more biological, we'll be happy to monitor the door from this side to make sure that no one accidentally opens it.
Hello?
Hi. We're from the government and help to help. Can I come in?
Ummm, sure, have a seat over
Oh don't worry, there's enough to do the job. Now where would you like them, or would you like for us to decide?
What? Decide what?
The cameras, of course. There's so much crime running around rampant now-a-days that we're having to install cameras everywhere just to protect the innocent person. Don't worry, they're small and ubiquitous, very quiet and power friendly, with audio, color, and iR, and even PTZ remote controlled. Is over here ok?
Over the couch looking towards the TV? I
Oh, easy. When on the couch we want to make sure a burglar doesn't break into your house while you're watching TV, or that you don't change the channels during the commercials, or go outside while they're on, You wouldn't want to steal from the people sponsoring the show now by not watching them, would you? And the view of the door as well is to make sure that you don't leave the house while they're playing. Many, many people have spent time and effort creating, filming, editing, and shipping this to help you decide what to purchase -- you don't want to disappoint them, do you?
Ummm
Well, we're making sure that if you leave your TV to make a sandwich while the commercials' on you're at least using the ingredients last advertised. Otherwise you're stealing money from the people who's ad you just ignored at your peril. And besides that, we get also get to gather the ingredients, mixing orders, and times and temperatures while you cook, which is great for helping out the economy by providing ready-made food ideas for other people to cop UMMM frog-in-throat there, sorry
Hey, HEY, why is he coming out of the bedroom?
What? Well, that's where you've placed your 3D printer -- we got a copy of the bill of lading from the shipping company just like you did, and like I said earlier, we're help to prevent crime. So the camera is there for
What's that, boys? OK, we're all finished here, everything's up and operational. Thanks for your help -- oh, and be sure and watch for the next set of 3D printing plastic! It comes in 6 different colors and now even includes built-in RFID values. Not to worry though, all of the cameras have remote readers so we can tell you exactly which parts you made, the relative schematic, where they are, and when they're just about to break and need replacement.
No no, there's no need to thank me -- You're Welcome! We're just Your Government Watching Out for You Wherever it Cam.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
And where, exactly, are these CAD files going to come from? There are going to be professional 3d modelers (just as there are now). The moment one of them hands out a file that was done on contract, their career is over. No one will ever trust them again.
Which it doesn't.
Nonsense. One, they're never going to be ubiquitous to that extent. Two, there's always power in denying someone something.
And that needs a 3D printer why, please tell. The solar panels are presumably produced by conventional means, but somehow that doesn't work for simple accessories?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the same way it is not illegal to print out a copyrighted image for your own non-commercial use (eg. because you want to pin it to your wall)
and of course, a mandatory reading for everybody who wants to participate in discussions about this is printcrime - http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_Printcrime.html
Rich
Vested interests are going to have to understand, that government does not exist to serve them (except maybe in some corrupt places like North America).
If the big copyright hucksters want to keep getting paid for work they did decades ago, then I want the same privilege - to be continually paid for work I have already done - at their expense, since they are currently extracting that privilege at MY expense. I have had enough.
Copyright terms are far too long. Personally, I would like to see copyright terms of no more than a year, for film/media. Computer software should have copyright terms of no more than ten years, and printed media, less than five.
I think the situation around patent law is now completely untenable. Patents are not doing what they were designed to achieve, which is to allow public access to the 'discovery', for the benefit of all, while affording the 'inventor' some protection. Consequently, there appears to be no choice, but to complete abolish patents. Having done considerable research into this area, there does not appear to be any practical way to create the patent system, tp work in the interest of the majority.
Yes, if you have the materials to print a solar panel (I estimate it will take about 5 years until somebody successfully prints a primitive one).
you mean like this solar panel?
http://mashable.com/2013/05/17/print-a3-sized-solar-cells/
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Economies of scale.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.