Ebay Shop Scrapes Thingiverse, Sells Designs In Violation of Creative Commons (all3dp.com)

He Who Has No Name writes: A little over a week ago, Thingiverse user Loubie posted Sad Face! to Thingiverse, protesting the use — without permission — of their designs and those of others by JustPrint3D, an Ebay seller marketing physical prints of the designs in question (over 2,000 by some counts). Despite a terse and legally shaky denial of any wrongdoing by JustPrint3D, there are obviously multiple violations of various iterations of the Creative Commons licenses (several forms of the CC license are options for Thingiverse uploaders to assign to their Things when uploading, and one is the default). Now MakerBot itself is wading into the uproar firmly on the side of its users, and has released a statement mentioning potential legal action.

Comments

Empty

[pcjunky]

Their Ebay store is empty.

fits the pattern

[frovingslosh]

Ebay only takes action against illegal things when there is bad press.

Re:fits the pattern

[ShanghaiBill]

I have considered creating a small one in the past. Not too much paperwork, but the lawyer wanted paying.

You do NOT need a lawyer to form a corporation. You can start a corporation on-line for about $200, in about 30 minutes. I own four: One California corp, one Nevada corp, one Delaware corp, and one company in the Cayman Islands. All except for the California corp are just private mailboxes, but they are still useful for shuffling money around to minimize taxes. Unless you make all your money on a W-2, you are foolish not to incorporate at least once.

It is also nice to take a vacation to the Caribbean, and write it off on my taxes as a business expense. All I have to do is schedule a board meeting, with only myself as sole board member in attendance. I don't even need to rent a meeting room, since there is no law that the meeting can't be held on the beach.

Re:But the license does NOT ban profit

[He Who Has No Name]

Mixed in among the 2,000 odd items lifted by JustPrint3D - not just Sad Face! - were various forms of the CC license, including Non-Commercial. Beyond simply profiting, JustPrint3D wasn't providing compliant attribution on anything. It was a mess.

Re:But the license does NOT ban profit

[samkass]

As I type this, the license link on the product's page leads to the variant of the Creative Commons License, that explicitly allows commercial use:

You are free to:

        Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

        Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

        The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

What's the problem? Did the author pick wrong license by mistake — and will they apologize to the folks now harmed by eBay's overreaction?

You forgot the "Under the Following Terms" bit, which is the whole point!

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Re:Pretty much a non-issue due to licensing.

[Immerman]

Without that attribution, there is no license. You're saying, essentially, that the stuff in the store is all there for people to take, and the only crime the shoplifter committed was not paying for them. Exactly. Without paying, you're not allowed to take.