The Future: Copyright Infringement issues with printed items?

Currently we have issues with with filesharing, where people share software, music, movies, etc that doesn't belong to them.

With the invent of 3D printing / scanning, I foresee a larger, harder to control issue. "Item sharing"

Instead of just sharing music, and movies, people will begin sharing 3D model designs for popular products. People will also begin making duplicates of items they have at home.

I don't see any realistic way of stopping this (especially duplicating items with a scanner/printer combo). It could seriously hurt a lot of businesses.

What are you opinions?

Well, this is an issue I foresee as well. Something will need to be done. However, even if you scan an object and make a copy of it, it doesn't mean it will function the same way. In order for objects to function the same way, there would need to be multiple parts created, and assembled. This would take complicated STL files, drawn up by someone that knows the engineering of an object. Sure this could be done, but this would the sale or sharing of such designs would be copyright infringements. This would fall under the same category as music and movie downloads. Can't stop it, but can try and minimize it with fines, and penalties.

I have both printed parts that are commercially available and would fall under a protected design or function - after seeing it, modeling the same things.
Also I have made parts that may not be worth protecting copyright-wise, but cost twenty times as much (even online).

It's already reality to some degree, and same as MP3 will slowly creep up on the industry. Once it's beeing adressed it's probably too late;
It's amazing what a well working printer like the UP can do even without knowing a thing about 3D printing (that's basically how I started), and when software and hardware of reprap machines gets even easier to use it will spread more.
No doubt in a distant future we will have printers capable of printing on a much finer scale, and even if not on a nano or molecular level, I am sure 3D printers will be able to copy even more complex (and multi material) models.

It's allready fascinating that you can print working mechanic models with a SLS printer, without assembly required.
Even with a one-printhead FFF printer it' s possible to some degree, and I find it a lot of fun designing such models :-)

In relation to file sharing and the future of 3D printing, I think our industry should learn from the painful lessons that the music industry suffered.

First of all DRM did not work. I do not think true DRM protection will work for 3D files either.

What did work was charging a reasonable price for the files. When you charge a low enough price, people would rather buy than steal. When music is $1/song, people would rather pay for it than torrent it. When design files are $2-10 each, people will not really try to pirate them too much.

Drew Taylor
https://3Dagogo.com