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UK Copyright Extension On Designed Objects Is 'Direct Assault' On 3D Printing (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A recent extension of UK copyright for industrially manufactured artistic works represents "a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution," says Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge. The UK government last month extended copyright for designs from 25 years to the life of the designer plus 70 years. In practice, this is likely to mean a copyright term of over 100 years for furniture and other designed objects. Writing on the Private Internet Access site, Falkvinge says that the copyright extension will have important consequences for makers in the UK and EU: "This change means that people will be prohibited from using 3D printing and other maker technologies to manufacture such objects, and that for a full century." Falkvinge points out a crucial difference between the previous UK protection for designs, which was based on what are called "design rights" plus a short copyright term, and the situation now, which involves design rights and a much-longer copyright term. With design rights, "you're absolutely and one hundred percent free to make copies of it for your own use with your own tools and materials," Falkvinge writes. "When something is under copyright, you are not. Therefore, this move is a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution." "Moving furniture design from a [design right] to copyright law means that people can and will indeed be prosecuted for manufacturing their own furniture using their own tools," Falkvinge claims.
Guys, this shit about the UK must stop. We all know it's a police state by now. Let them sink into the North Sea, please.
High Power here we go
the UK has no place in the EU.
Let's flood the tunnel and build a wall so that no british corporate welfare law can enter the EU. And the UK should pay for it!
You all can go Fuck yourselves. I will print whatever the hell I want in my home for my own uses. You can go and cry to your $1000 an hour psychiatrists as to why I am ruining your life.
Oh and to the MPAA... fuck yes I'll download a car! Doing it right now as a matter of fact as I want to print the Subaru Boxer engine model that is out there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If there is a copyright on design for 3D printing, that means there is also a copyright on the same being handmade or made via sculpting/cutting tools.
Trying to prosecute people for creativity and building shit on their own? Trying to prosecute people for building on their own from scratch?
Is clay art now going to be banned in schools for children and are schools going to be fined for kids drawing shit and sculpting shit?
Seriously UK, sink into the fucking Ocean. And take USA your mentally retarded child with you, where all this shit originates from.
CANADA, WE NEED YOU TO BURN WASHINGTON D.C. AGAIN.
And someone burn California to the ground please, that's where the main copyright driving force is located, especially Hollywood.
At this point, i don't mind going on a god damn slaughter spree.
Yes, it means they'll have to come up with their own designs rather than using someone else's. If this is a hardship, tough titty. I have no sympathy.
The new ministry of silly copyrights will be sending SWAT teams to conduct random house to house searches for violators. And the BBC vans will be modified to detect 3D printers. Only terrorists seek self sufficiency.
To no one's surprise this had to happen. Business is business. And that is who we let the government serve, so let's not go around blaming anybody else.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I love taking massive cocks in the ass! I love getting anally fucked while furiously playing with my tiny cock! I would love to 3D print dildos and butt plugs to experience gay anal sex when I'm alone! I am a raging homosexual and only homophobic moderators will censor my post to -1. I WANT TO TAKE IT IN THE ASS FROM LINUS TORVALDS WHILE DREAMING OF GAY TUX SEX! I'm proud to be a faggot and am recruiting all of you to join the gay lifestyle! I wish all people were faggots! My name is kheldan and I approve this message.
... for producing 3-dimensional objects that look like their copyright protected products?
I have seen some abuse of this. like designers trying to sue people for taking pictures of landmarks. That kind of thing.
I'm not an expert in British law but I would hope the courts would see most of this as fair use.
If you don't have the design files what's the big deal.
I don't think this is exactly an attack on 3d printing but trying to make it into a viable business.
Don't get me wrong its totally still bullshit its just not any more bullshit that all other types of copy right law.
If you need to repair something that's no longer manufactured and hard to find parts for, it's unrealistic to have to hire a lawyer to find and help negotiate "design usage rights". That's just plain dumb.
Or if it's a simple part with no patents on it, such as a gear, connector pin, etc. Ancient Greeks invented the (known) gear, for goodness sake.
There should be "repair reality" clause of some sort.
Table-ized A.I.
I figured it worked like this anyway. Still wrong, but now in line with all the other wrongness.
Did they make it retrospective, though? That would be really egregious in this context, if people have made copies of old-ish furniture (mostly using tools and wood rather than 3d printing, I guess) which are now rendered illegal. Yes, I expect the numbers wouldn't be huge, but it should still not happen.
What is the impact of this outside of the UK ? Since they are brexiting anyway the damage may be limited to just a single (potentially shrinking) country. Are there any other countries that have similar laws ?
How else are we going to entice and promote and help dead people to create more award winning designs? Seriously, if dead people can't build upon their existing body of work, knowing that they will be compensated for their work (if commercially successful), then dead people are likely not to create any more designs. Heck, they probably won't even try.
... for producing 3-dimensional objects that look like their copyright protected products?
Maybe they will start by suing plastic surgeons for altering people to look like Barbie(TM) dolls...
And what about men, I can already see being targeted by sex toy makers!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They can make their laws, but who's going to stop you?
Unless you are selling your #d printed things no one is going to come by your house to fine you for sitting on some famous chair.
What is the point of these laws? Or is the summary click bait?
needs to be a renewal fee to stop trolls.
The last thing we need is for some one to buy up old IP and then sue people makeing replacement parts or even forcing people to rebuy the software that they own just to be able to run it on a newer system in some kind of VM like system.
Just thing if for a old game. They took dos box made a custom build wrapped with DRM and say that you still need the custom controller that came with the game and then they used BS like this to take down sites telling people how to use the open dos box and there Original CD / disks with it.
Prior art, all the men in my family are hung like bears. At least all the way back to Kathrina the Great's court gigolo (who earned the family 'von' with his cocksmanship).
They better pay up.
Stop this type of shit now before we have fully functioning replicators.
Power and wealth are two different manifestations of the same thing....influence over people. Not only are they related...they are basically identical.
To help make it clear....
If you want someone else to grow a bunch of food for you, what do you do? You pay them with...MONEY!
If you are a congress critter, you might pay them with your money (and enact legislation that favors the stocks you hold so you get the money with which to pay them), or maybe you pay them with taxpayer money, or maybe you just enslave them and force them to work.
Same bread no matter how you slice it. You can no more take money out of politics than you can take medicine out of health care. Same shit, different heap.
Shouldn't 3D objects be subject to patent law, not copyright law?
If they aren't unique enough to qualify for a patent, they should be considered a logical extension of pre-existing work and thus be public domain.
The UK is approaching max Orwell. To the point it is becoming a shithole. Go ahead separate from the EU. They still have laws that allow freedom of thought and innovation. The EU will do better. It was Britain that kept trying to push though American style copyright laws.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
If I owned a 3D printer, I would ignore this law.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Or rather, *we will not let you* download a car!
Games Workshop is already doing this for Warhammer 40K models...
Its about fucking time.
Look crybaby, the only reason you had been able to claim your "design" warranted specific amounts of money was because other people had been willing to pay for it. This is changing. You want to keep getting paid? Finish the job and manufacture it. Or sell it as a kit. Otherwise, if I can make something just as good myself, I will, and then I'll make another and sell it to my neighbor. I don't care how bent out of shape you get over it when I do. I don't care a rats ass if its similar in design to the one you drafted up on a piece of paper. I don't give fuck-all about your feeling on the matter. If it put sawdust on my shop floor, or used some of my filament, its mine. If my 2 hands built it and it happens looks like some catalog shit, well it must be a great catalog, but that makes my creation no less mine.
I'm looking forward to the slashdot stories regarding the super-legit lawsuits brought against those legions of dishonest craftsmen, by the fine and upstanding companies that will soon control the manufacturing schematics and plans for everything.
Now if you will excuse me, my patent for "flat writing surface on 4 legs" just came back,and my copyright application was just approved for my new song, I call it "whistle'n noises" Now all I need to to is get my trusty lawyer to work extracting money from you guys for hand-writing letters (totes my idea btw) or whistling some noises.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
This can be tested. Do the men in your family have an actual bone in their penis, which can be fractured if bent over 180 degrees?
Another example of corporate greed with artists and creators expecting to make money from their work. They should be required by law to register any origional ideas they have on a searchable database so anyone who wants to can take them and make them.
1) Chairs, desks and tables have been around for 1,000s of years: There's so much public domain design out there, copyright shouldn't be an issue.
2) If I download a file for a propriety-owned screw, is that a crime? Does creating/possessing a file that describes and imitates a copyright design, break the law?
3) It's far more difficult to prove criminal intent and damages, when someone prints a one screw: It's obvious the person wouldn't buy a new desk instead.
Surely they are already the "Mothers of Invention" :D
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
But as 3D Printers get cheaper to build, and they are, and more accurate also; the end is not un-en-forcibly near. Printing 1 item is not cost effective to litigate, but a 1000? Ya, the lawyers would have a field day.
With wedding photography. It used to be that you'd hire a wedding photographer, and they'd shoot your wedding for a nominal fee or eve for free. But they'd charge you an arm and a leg for prints of the wedding photos. Reprints were priced similarly, allowing them to be paid multiple times for work that they'd already done.
In the 1990s, as the price of scanners plummeted and photo inkjet printer quality started to approach photographic prints, this business model stopped working. People simply scanned their wedding photos (sometimes even the contact sheet the photographer gave them to select which photos they wanted in prints), and printed off as many copies as they wanted.
Wedding photographers were forced to adapt. And they shifted to their current business model. They charge you an arm and a leg to shoot the wedding, but charge you a nominal fee for the prints or even give you digital copies for free. They still retain copyright, but they've acknowledged the reality that it's no longer cost-effective to try to enforce that copyright. And so their business model has normalized with everything non-IP related - they only get paid once for work that's done once.
So I don't see this having any impact on 3D printing. Once 3D printers become cheap and commonplace, it's going to be impossible to enforce the copyright on things like furniture. If a company does successfully win some court cases for violating the design copyright on their furniture, all they'll be doing is signing their own death warrant. Yeah nobody will copy their furniture, but nobody will buy their furniture either. Everyone will simply print furniture using a different design made by a company or individual who doesn't try to enforce their design copyright. The companies trying to enforce their design copyright will go out of business, while the folks who allow people to freely print their designs will become well-known. And the rich guy who wants custom-crafted instead of 3D printed furniture will hire them to design it instead of the company which used to be a big furniture maker but now nobody knows who they are anymore.
The only thing I'd worry about is some company trying to obtain an overreaching design copyright - like Apple trying to claim ownership of the concept of a flat slate with rounded corners. If some company successfully sues for 3D printed copyright violation of a modern equivalent of a dovetail joint, that could have huge implications for the things you can 3D print for over 100 years.
I hereby propose formalizing a nascent medium for expressive critical speech using satirical sculpture with the following term: paro3dy.
With the power of 3D printing at our disposal, these thick cartoons have already shown themselves rich with new methods of mockery. First, of course, is the added detail available with the third dimension, letting the satirist examine an issue from several angles, as it were. There are endless possibilities for caricature, lampooning, burlesque, even complimentary mimicry. You can ape a politician's nonsensical positions using a real ape, for example, with clever expressive details only apparent when viewed from certain vantage points. And your audience need not actually print out paro3dies, as they can be examined and appreciated in all their oblique glory using any 3D object viewer.
Plus moving parts! Easter eggs!
I have a work in mind: a representation of the UK government as a sprawling amoeba sprouting file cabinets and wigs, advancing on various freedoms of its citizens. Perhaps a few video cameras and guns can be poking up as well.
The term "paro3dy" finds no hits in Google other than license plates. I have therefore registered the domain names paro3dy.com and paro3dy.org, thus using the term in international commerce. But I will not trademark it. By dint of first use, I today place the term "paro3dy" into the public domain, forever barring intellectual trolls from absconding with the concept for their own greedy ends. Anyone can use the term freely.
I may make those domains into paro3dy index sites. However, simply tagging any 3D object with the term #paro3dy will suffice to create a virtual museum of satirical statuary.
So FBI BurEAUHD posts a story by an "anonymous submitter" about UK Copyright.
Let me think really hard.. um
Are any other nearby stories also FBI related? Yes, every single one of them.
The mind wanders, scrambling like HBO porn back in the 80's...
Yeah, Slashdot is definitely some FBI honeypot social engineering shit now. How many of Dice did they kill to take this over?
The origin of copyright as a "reasonable compromise between "information wants to be free", and monetary incentive for creators to create and publish their work" is actually incorrect.
Copyright was brought into being to protect the quality of copies of works. Notably the composer Handel invoked copyright - not to stop people reproducing his musical scores but to prevent them issuing faulty copies containing departures from what he had created but still attributed to him. Thus it was his reputation he was attempting to protect, and only as a secondary consequence his bank balance.
The direct control of copying per se for monetisation is relatively recent departure and it is rapidly getting out of hand, as everything does that is driven by unbridled greed. It is a truism that nothing entirely new can be invented - after all we've been inventing for maybe a million years by now. Consequently, as copyright is automatic (not requiring registration or specification) in most jurisdictions, it is possible to find an element in which someone has copyright already in effectively anything created. The ultimate result of rigorous enforcement will be that lawyers will become the plutocratic lords of the world (if they are not already), and invention will be stultified.
Historically, intellectual property rights have been distributed across a continuum from short term strong protection (e.g. patents) to long term weak protection (e.g. copyright), and this has served well for the couple of hundred years that IPR has been recognised. However the rise of the global corporate grabbers who in the words of Johnny Rocco from the movie Key Largo always "want more" first began to wreck this equitable framework by aiming to make all protection draconian, and they are now proceeding to demolish it entirely by trying to make it all perpetual as well.
It's entirely possible I'm offending some corporation by quoting those two words from a movie, which would of course be idiotic in the strict original sense of the word "caring more about one's private concerns than the welfare of the community".