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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
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.
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!”
... for producing 3-dimensional objects that look like their copyright protected products?
Hey look, a EURO version of Trump supporter!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
Canucks are funny.
Hint: You never burnt DC, that was the Brits. Without them you would be the 51st state in reality as well as name.
At least we wouldn't have to put up with the damn frogs. You don't see cajuns demanding signs in some frogish creole.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Imagine you have 30 year old desk of a nice design. A specific plastic piece of the desk (for argument's sake) breaks. That piece cannot be purchased because the desk went out of production 25 years ago and replacement parts are not available. So you go ahead and print the piece you need - either downloading the 3D model or creating a copy of it yourself. You have a fixed desk. A few days later you get a visit from the boys in blue for copyright infringement. Replace the desk with a car, toy, or some other widget. According to your argument - you should spend possibly thousands on getting a new thing, rather than spending $1 and a little time to maintain the thing. According to your argument the rest of the world should shame you into wasting your money. Me, I'd rather not shame anyone for doing anything reasonable like keeping their stuff maintained.
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.
Sadly, this law also means that if you build your own design, and it happens to look like someone else's you could be facing punitive fines for copyright infringement.
Oh yes, extending "intellectual rights". The answer for a nation no longer making stuff. Because the government has been great at determining true innovation vs form following function.
See software "methods" for more great innovation. One click! Shopping cart! Such novel ideas no one else would have thought of!
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 ?
(From TFS))
...people can and will indeed be prosecuted for manufacturing their own furniture using their own tools...
...and someone else's design and engineering. That's a major effect of 3D printing now: someone else's design and engineering effort gets reduced to massively-replicated data. Sometimes it's intentional and done at the will of the creator, but with 3D scanners, it's a short jump to a lifestyle where if you want something, you only have to see it, and you can print a dozen. Why bother with commerce and incentivizing the design arts when you could just clone something for the cost of matierials?
It's reasonable to see the analogy to literary copyright. A similar design effort and craftsmanship goes into writing, and legislators over the last few centuries have found the value of such to be worthy of legal protection. Designed material goods did not need such protection, primarily because the labor cost to replicate a design makes copying a low-profit business. Now we have 3D printers virtually eliminating that cost, as Gutenberg's printing press did for literature, and we must again consider the socioeconomic impacts.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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...
If they learned some honest trade they wouldn't cry now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
You really should wait for 3d printers to get to 'as good as the original for cheap' before declaring that they have.
There are _insurmountable_ technical problems with plastic extrusion printers, they will never make parts as strong as injection molded ones. Simple copies aren't strong enough, not even close in most cases. To make them work at all requires reengineering the thing for the new material strength (or lack of strength across layers).
Also consider the cost/weight of filament vs. Injection molded parts. The filament extrusion process is more expensive than the molding process. Molding also works with better materials (e.g. glass of carbon fiber reinforced nylon 6-6).
This issue is bigger than 3d printing. Copyright on shapes is just stupid. (e.g. Buran looked like the space shuttle because of the laws of physics.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A few days later you get a visit from the boys in blue for copyright infringement.
a) those guys don't exit
b) copyright infringement can only be called by the copyright holder or one of his proxies
c) the case you describe is no copyright infringement - you can copy for personal use what ever you want
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
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.
You really should wait for 3d printers to get to 'as good as the original for cheap' before declaring that they have.
We can already print titanium turbine blades. You really should read up on what 3D printers have done before declaring that they haven't.
I don't know about a desk piece (maybe a pull knob?), but I can think of plenty of vintage car trim pieces, like headlight trim, window knobs, etc, that I'd absolutely love to have an online database to be able to download, print, and install, especially on 60s/70s Japanese cars that were never in great supply in the US to begin with. (almost bought a Kei Van, it had mismatched headlight trim that looked a little odd.. Imagine being able to pull the right one, 3D scan, mirror, and then print something that actually fits! Sand and paint, install, done!)
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If I owned a 3D printer, I would ignore this law.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
With six figure metal sintering machines. The same machines that existed 10+ years ago before 3d printing became a craze.
There are no current plastic 3d printers that can make parts as strong as injection molded parts. There are no technologies on the horizon to do this. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your fantasy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
Apple did precisely this.
They had a design patent.
Guess what the UK just reclassified to normal copyright? YEP their version of a design patent.
It was only "the brits" because the nation of Canada didn't exist yet. As it was though, the British who were actually from Britain were pretty busy fighting in other parts of the world at the time (hence why the US thought it would be easy to invade Canada) so it fell to the British who lived in the area now known as Canada to go to war to defend that area. It was those local "British" who burnt portions of DC. So saying "it wasn't the Canadians, it was the British!" is pretty pedantic really considering that it really was the people living in what's now known as Canada, and who by any reasonable definition were more "Canadian" than "British"
As for "the damn frogs", you do realize that the US allied themselves with France during that time period right?
Do you mean the frogs who defeated General Washington and later were much of the militia that burned Washington DC? The same frogs who haven't lost a war since 1763?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
With six figure metal sintering machines.
I can submit STL design files to their website, and get the part delivered to my door two days later. That does not cost six figures.
There are no current plastic 3d printers that can make parts as strong as injection molded parts.
So? In most cases they will be strong enough. If not, just design in some support ribs (which you often can't do with injection molding).
you can copy for personal use what ever you want
Tell that to the MPAA, RIAA etc.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
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.
Thankyou for making your opinion clear, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council*.
I mean, you're wrong, because independent invention is in fact not a defense unless you can demonstrate you invented it first (since copyright law is functionally legalised extortion - and I say that as a good friend of several published authors), but your declaration of assholedom is duly noted.
*if that reference is unclear, I suggest you read The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
We talk here about UK and Europe.
There is no RIAA in Europe ... the relevant local institutions similar to RIAA demand payments for empty media and USB sticks, so that is covered.
As soon as you have purchased a legal license you can copy it for personal use. Depending on country you can share it with friends even.
Circumventing copy protection however is since introduction of DMCA and the corresponding laws in Europe "illegal".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's a good point - there's actually an environmental benefit to shorter copyright terms on designs (not so easily argued on paper works).
I wonder if our European cousins have anything to say about all of this. They recently enacted laws to save us Brits 27 pounds each per year, so would appear to be in the financial territory for new desks as well. They might have a final flick of their tail before we serve notice on them.
On balance though, fixing your own desk isn't really an issue (even if in theory it is). Making the design for the failed part available will be (which I'd say is the real loss here), as indeed will making replacement parts for other people. Stuff for your own consumption is likely to be allowed if you went to court, but anything else now won't be. However, I'm left wondering if making the replacement part slightly differently from the original might be sufficient to side-step the whole thing (that's a legal gamble I'd prefer not to have to take though).
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.
went out of production 25 years ago
Which is why these designs should be protected by something more like trademark. Use it or lose it. If you want to sell replacement parts, great. If not, let me build my own. But I won't settle for having NO choices.
Which is why 3D printing should move toward printing molds for 3D objects rather than the objects themselves. That is, if there are materials available that would hold up to the process.
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.
If you turn off the maple syrup, most of us aren't even going to notice. 90% of the "maple" syrup we have on our shelves is High Fructose Corn Syrup with maple flavoring... even the high priced "Real" stuff. I think the only place in the US that might get pissed about a maple syrup shortage might be Southern New England/New York. Northern New England would love it though.
There are plastic 3D-printed parts that are strong enough for their intended purpose, even if injection molding could do better.
When I first started to get interested in 3D printing, the low-end machines cost thousand of dollars. I can now get a better one for under $500. (It looks like I'd be buying myself a new hobby if I got one, so I'm going to wait until after retirement.) Metal sintering machines are going to decrease in cost over time, and may well wind up being hobbyist machines. There's nothing inherently preventing them from becoming cheap. (There are things that may never make it, like sintering titanium, but other alloys can be developed.)
I also know where I can send a CAD file and get stuff 3D-printed professionally without having to buy my own machine.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Molds have to be a lot more durable than what's injected into them, and so parts made in 3D-printed ejection molds would be of lower quality than 3D-printed parts in general.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm not so sure that's true. Just a much higher melting point and sufficient rigidity. The mold only has to be durable enough not to fall apart. What's injected into it will be solid material.
Example - you can fill a water balloon and freeze it. I'm pretty sure that ice is more durable than the balloon.
You generally want more than one shot out of a mold though.
CNC milling machines do a great job of making molds. There are already tradeoffs available, cheap to make vs. durability.
Much more precise than current generation extrusion 3d printers too.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Requiring reengineering the part to be 'strong enough'. You can't just scan a part and print a copy.
Nothing inherently expensive about metal sintering machines except the high power lasers and inert gas environments.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'