Intellectual Property & The Future of @Home Manufacturing Comment Exchange #2.1
JB: That’s a useful experience to add to the conversation. It helps illustrate, as you offered, the difference between hobbyist and professional needs where guidelines/etc are concerned.
As a hobbyist not intending to profit from the models I create/download and print for my own use, however, how is me going into the woods and crafting a hammer handle of my own design without first researching existing hammer handle patents and industry standards/regulations different than 3D printing something I model myself but don’t first research for IP red tape?
I think this is an important discussion to really keep working at voluntarily long before industry and legal teams decide there’s something to poke and prod until innovation is a dead horse. I agree that a positive start to this with members of the DIY movement working on solutions now will exhibit a responsibility without a need to default to the courts and politicians to decide.
Also, I didn’t intend to insult members of bureaucracy in general, I’m sure most are fine folks and standards do have reason. No one wants splinters or poisoning because hammer handle materials that have been mass distributed are of poor or negligent quality.
But what if my kid wants to 3D model keychains to sell at our yard sale? What’s the difference in that and making them out of cardboard and construction paper? Yeah, I read about the kid that got in trouble for selling lemonade and all, but that makes no sense to me, either. What about when I want to make a keychain for myself? Do I have to go to the local licensed 3D printer store even if I’m not going to sell it?
We aren’t doing a good enough job differentiating between spirit and letter of the law concerning innovation. Nobody even knows the letter of the law. It’s different depending on who you pay to be your attorney and how a judging body interprets everything.
Can’t we just set up something like TinEye except specifically for 3D models/electronics? There’s got to be some kind of solution that comes of this besides spinning our wheels and locking up good ideas for ages for no reason
Adam B. Levine: The problem from my perspective is rules at every level are one-size-fits-all. We have a set of rules for people who don’t want to make money, and a set of rules for people who do want to make money – Since there is no subdivision besides “wants to sell something” and “wants to sell a million of that thing”, it means tons of rules are made for the huge user that make zero sense for the small user but must either be followed or exempted before it stops being a hurdle.
And they are hurdles. So many things are just impossible without a whole bunch of money and time, and most people can’t make a living paying for the privilege of jumping through hoops.
But getting back to the topic at hand, I really like the idea of not thinking about design ownership as “intellectual property” and more like an item you manufactured and sell copies of for cheap online.
Treating ideas like we treat physical objects, does that make sense?
But moreover, I think we should revamp how we treat physical objects as well as ideas. Your proposal of a trickle-down system would certainly work towards both in my opinion.
We need to do something. I’ll still hold onto the possibility that those that want to create and share completely free items for reuse, distribution, etc. can do so with some kind of solution that is versatile enough to be useful for purposes big, small, amateur and professional.