Hey Thingiverse users! The Crabitat at MakerBot is live (as seen above) and we need new shell shapes to try out and see if they’ll move in. Join the project to help help hermit crabs. Please upload designs and tag them with “Shellter”.
When we started Thingiverse we didn’t want there to be weapons on it, but there were a number of awesome toy weapons that blurred the line and so we changed the TOS to something more blurry and toy weapons carried on. In fact, if you shoot anything on Thingiverse fast enough, you could hurt someone. There have been a lot of things on Thingiverse that could be classified as weapons, but they could also be classified as toys. A miniature catapult is technically a siege weapon, but it could also be classified as a toy. To summarize, our weapons policy has been a blurry line.
Recently there has been a lot of discussion around guns since the lower arm of an AR-15 model went up on Thingiverse. It’s a beautiful model. It’s also the only part of the AR-15 that you can’t just mail order. It’s been possible and legal to make your own firearms since the beginning of the USA, but is Thingiverse the right place for deadly weapons?
We’re discussing this internally and we’re spending time exploring the legalities of firearms on Thingiverse. We want to make sure that Thingiverse can be accessed from schools and is student friendly and we are exploring the implications of weapons on Thingiverse for classrooms.
It’s a controversial subject. For myself, I get a lot of satisfaction from shooting guns in the woods at tin cans, but I also had my best childhood friend commit suicide with a gun he bought by routing around the registration process. I’m not convinced that 3D printing is easier than buying a gun illegally, but it does offer another avenue for weapons to enter the world. Will the next war be armed with 3D printers? One thing that’s for sure, the cat is out of the bag and that cat can be armed with guns made with printed parts.
Before we make a decision, I’d like to get the Thingiverse users’ feedback. We’re going to either change the terms of service or not, but we want to get your feedback before we make that decision.
On Thingiverse you’ll find a poll in the sidebar with three possible choices. Below the choices is a place for you to leave your comments. This poll can only be seen if you’re logged in. Each Thingiverse user can only vote once and once you’ve made your choice, the poll disappears. I hope you’ll take the time to tell us what kind of Thingiverse you want and use the comment section to tell us why.
Here at Thingiverse, we love Flattr. It’s there so that if you like something, you can sign up and click on it’s Flattr button. At the end of the month, you decide a flatrate that you want to give and it divides that amount up between all the things that you Flattr’d!
At Thingiverse we max out every month and give 100 Euros a month and split it between all the things that can be Flattr’d. This month, there are only 76 things to be Flattr’d so each thing uploaded that can be Flattr’d will get at least a Euro from Thingiverse. Woo Hoo!
Money is one of the things that motivates some people so if you like what you see on Thingiverse and you see a Flattr button, Flattr it!
For better or worse, we’ve hit a milestone in the history of digital fabrication. We’ve just received our first DMCA takedown notice for a copyrighted object. Due to the DMCA we are required to respond to takedown notices in a timely manner or risk losing protection under the “Safe Harbor” provision. Since we’d like to continue to be a place where people can openly share their designs with the world, we have complied.
If you are unfamiliar with the DMCA and/or the Safe Harbor provision, there is an excellent FAQ at Chilling Effects. In this day and age, knowing is half the battle.
As a result of this, we’ve also had to learn more about the DMCA. To this end, we’ve updated our legal page with a new DMCA specific policy. Thanks to our friends at Etsy, we were able to quickly add the appropriate language to that document. Please take a read and feel free to give us your feedback and opinions in the comments.
In the interest of openness, you can also read the email that prompted our new policy below the fold. You may have noticed that this design has been getting a lot of attention on Boingboing and imaterialize.
Joris writes in with a call for more formalized attribution!
Intellectual Property (IP) is protected and guarded worldwide. People & companies zealously guard their creations, lawyers lobby governments to draw up ever tougher laws. The offline IP world is intensely formal and legal. Online however these laws are defied more than observed. My favorite example of this is The Pirate Bay’s legal section. Generations are growing globally up without any real affinity for IP.
This illustration characterizes this.
An increasingly more tenable looking compromise will have to be reached between ever harsher laws and an ever more disdainful public. As more and more technology becomes digital more and more IP will be subject to these issues. Even the “e-readers will save the publishing industry” crowd must realize this and hopefully will undertake action soon as the smoke has drifted lazily some distance away from their crack pipes.
The gap between IP owners and the public is not the only worry on the horizon however. The image above not only illustrates the IP gap but also shows us a far greater emerging problem. This problem is one of attribution. The joke above was made by someone and has dutifully spread round the web. But, who made it? Where does this person get their credit, their karma, their reward however intangible? The web’s increasing lack of attribution as a “copy paste” culture takes hold will stifle innovation and creativity even more than gross disrespect of IP laws will.
If your movie gets pirated then you still receive the credit for having made it. Now, I don’t think James Cameron would have make quite as much money from Avatar if he would have had to earn it with an accompanying spoken word tour. But, his having received credit for making the film at least opens doors to various potential business models. If your name is stripped from your creation on the other hand you have no future recourse. The graph above could be by Bacrist or someone else. Crucially, I can not know for sure. Attribution is essential for a world to emerge where global creativity is maximized for everyone. Only then can creativity be rewarded and future creativity be stimulated. Only then will misappropriation be less rewarding than creation.
So what is the solution to this IP gap and the lack of attribution on the web?
Well Thingiverse is. Not only Thingiverse but also Flickr, Deviantart, and similar sites. At first glance these sites are for sharing designs, photographs and art. Fun communities for interaction, props and creativity. But, these sites, as Flickr’s size shows, are becoming some of the largest repositories of intellectual property the world has ever seen. Tens of thousands of people are relying on these sites for safe storage of their files. These sites provide a home for sharing, giving away, showing and selling files. I have to be clear on this: the following does not constitute legal advice. But it could be possible for an upload to one of these sites to become a “poor man’s copyright” to provide proof of ownership of a particular design, trademark, copyright etc.
Most importantly these sites also spurn creativity while giving the public the appreciation for the effort & individual talent that goes into a photograph, a 3D model or a story. These repositories of IP could be the solution to regulating IP and attribution. By creating indexable verifiable “homes” for designs as well as paths to attribution a balance may well be struck between appreciation & reward of individual IP and the unencumbered sharing and exchange of information. It is a precarious balance at its present state. If it is maintained and strengthened however the exchange and interplay of creativity will accelerate the spread of knowledge beyond what we could even imagine.
You can follow Joris on twitter here or check out his blog, VoxelFab, on the future of manufacturing here. Joris is the Community Manager of 3D printing service i.materialise.
Marty has created an awesome Thingiverse Plugin!
For awhile now, I’ve wanted to embed an RSS feed of the latest stuff I’ve printed from Thingiverse on MakerBot 131′s page. To kick things off, I asked Zach to implement an RSS feed of the Thing’s I’ve Made page on Thingiverse. It’s been awhile, but I’ve finally gotten around to creating a WordPress plugin that I’m calling Thingiverse Embed.
Check it out! you can embed snippets from Thingiverse and make a cool sidebar widget! You can see this example on the page for MakerBot 131.
SketchChair from Greg Saul on Vimeo.
This is the tool I’ve been dreaming of ever since we got a lasercutter. So cool! SketchChair!
I am going to fill my apartment with this type of furniture!
Cathal Garvey, the man who brought you the makerbottable dremelfuge and micro-lathe needs a mousetrap and he’s willing to pay $25 for someone to design it.
I have a problem. There lives in my house a tiny mouse, and as I am friend to all animals I wish him no harm.
The live mousetrap I tried didn’t work: crafty mouse escaped it repeatedly. I also invented a few wacky methods involving pitfalls, narrow bottles full of bloating foods and even tried to suck him out onto a vacuum cleaner head covered with cheesecloth. No avail!
I am offering a bounty for something:
$25 to the first design that catches the mouse. It must:
- Not harm the mouse
- Be printable on a Makerbot
- WorkMouse get!
Whichever design Cathal chooses, we’re going to sweeten the deal and send them a MakerBot t-shirt if they will upload the design to Thingiverse under an open license.
Can you build a better (MakerBottable) mousetrap?
2-Dominic-Muren-Part-1 – Dorkbot Seattle Feb 3, 2010 from christopher prosser on Vimeo.
3-Dominic-Part-2 Dorkbot Seattle Feb 3, 2010 from christopher prosser on Vimeo.
Dominic Muren is an occassional contributor to the Thingiverse blog and he gave a great presentation on personal manufacturing at the Seattle Dorkbot! This is very much worth the watch! Check it!
The gang who does the Radar series over at Babelgum came by the BotCave and made this video. They used Nikon d90′s and it turned out beautiful! Go to their site and check it out big.
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