Check out the latest, must-read 3D printing whitepaper by Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge:
Today Public Knowledge is happy to announce a new whitepaper: What’s the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing? This paper is something of a follow up to our previous 3D printing whitepaper It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw It Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology. Unlike It Will Be Awesome, which focused on the broad connection between intellectual property law and 3D printing, What’s the Deal? takes a deeper dive into the relationship between copyright and 3D printing.
A lot has changed since we released It Will Be Awesome. News outlets have discovered 3D printing. Rightsholders are issuing takedown notices. And Congress has started to take a look. At the same time, a lot has stayed the same. People are continuing to innovate to make home 3D printers better. Creators are pushing the limits as they design even more intricate 3D printed objects. And we are beginning to see the beginnings of physical remix artists.
But throughout this, people seem to keep coming back to copyright. As we note in the paper, part of this is a result of years of conditioning. Years of creating music, movies, and articles on computers have trained us all to automatically associate “digital” with “copyright,” and “disruptive digital” with “potential copyright problem.” But one of the gifts of 3D printing is that it brings digital into the physical world, where its connection to copyright is weaker. While this fraying may very well lead us to a new age of innovation, first we will need to retrain ourselves to stop assuming that everything is protected by copyright.
Of course, the first step in understanding what is not protected by copyright is recognizing what is protected by copyright. What’s the Deal? is designed to help mark those boundaries and draw focus to the hard – and easy – questions that the boundaries raise. Like It Will Be Awesome, What’s the Deal? is intended more as a conversation starter than a final word. Hopefully it will be a useful resource to the rapidly growing 3D printing community.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!