3D Printers and Piracy

Recommended Videos

theultimateend

New member
Nov 1, 2007
3,621
0
0
So, this is kinda a short question. With the rise of 3D printers on the horizon, do you think we'll be seeing toy companies and other "hard goods" companies complaining about people just printing copies of their statue, or toy, or model?

I'm wondering if we'll see something like steam where you have access to a ton of Skus that you can buy to print out products in your own home.
 

ShindoL Shill

Truely we are the Our Avatars XI
Jul 11, 2011
21,802
0
0
ever seen a 3D printer? theyre massive. and expensive. plus, you'd need a reference model, and materials... wouldnt be worth it.
 

Fightgarr

Concept Artist
Dec 3, 2008
2,913
0
0
While 3D printers exist, they're still incredibly expensive and rare. I don't see them headed to the mass market anytime soon, let alone getting to the point where any significant portion of the population has one.
 

shmagiggywokka

New member
Sep 29, 2008
19
0
0
3D printers also have a quality tolerance depending on which machine is used, so basically you have a physical "pixellation" problem, meaning smooth surfaces can feel like a fingerprint. I've used a Rapid Prototyper a couple of times, and they certainly are massive, and take a great deal of $$ to operate (material components primarily).

Until they get to the size of a standard printer/scanner I doubt there'll be any huge piracy problems.

:{>
 

Anarchemitis

New member
Dec 23, 2007
9,102
0
0
3D Printers are expensive. Far more expensive than that which would justify goods duplication without licence or permission. Even so, CNC milling machines (which are essentially the same thing but with metal and no color) have been around for over a decade and goods duplication has not been an issue.
 

Bruden

New member
Oct 26, 2009
66
0
0
"incredibly expensive and rare" not really, there's a lot of people working on spreading them to the masses quickly. In fact an indiegogo campaign just wrapped up that was handing out 3D printers for $700 fully assembled and ready to print. At not even the full cost of a decent computer 3D printers are cheap and lots of people are making them, which means it just takes people realizing how cool they are for it to become wide spread.

OT: I doubt it, while some people might do that I would expect the majority of users to be individual artists making personal items, especially if they happen to be a table top gamer. (Seriously the desire to finish my film project is the only thing that stopped me from having a 3D printer already just to make custom minis for DnD games.)
 

infohippie

New member
Oct 1, 2009
2,369
0
0
Eventually, 3D printers will become ubiquitous. They're big and expensive now, but that will change. A lot will depend on the copyright landscape at the time. If IP law continues down the path the US has been trying to push it, then the shapes of pretty much everything will be copyrighted and owned by corporations. If we can push IP law down a more consumer-friendly path, great possibilities might open up.
I'd like to recommend Cory Doctorow's short story Printcrime [http://craphound.com/?p=573] to anyone interested in this topic. In fact, I'd like to recommend all of Cory Doctorow's work to anyone interested in the fight against too-broad IP law.
 

Dags90

New member
Oct 27, 2009
4,683
0
0
lithium.jelly said:
Eventually, 3D printers will become ubiquitous. They're big and expensive now, but that will change. A lot will depend on the copyright landscape at the time. If IP law continues down the path the US has been trying to push it, then the shapes of pretty much everything will be copyrighted and owned by corporations. If we can push IP law down a more consumer-friendly path, great possibilities might open up.
It also depends, "hard goods" if I'm interpreting the OP right would be covered under patent law, not copyright. I'm not exactly why we have a distinction between patent law and copyright, but we do and it's quite extreme the differences between the two.

Suffice it to say, when replicators become reality, gold pressed latinum will be the only thing of value anymore.