DRM Could Come To 3D Printers 315
another random user sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"Downloading a car – or a pair of sneakers – will be entirely possible, although Ford and Nike won't be particularly happy if people use their designs to do so. A new patent, issued this week by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and titled 'Manufacturing control system', describes a system whereby 3D printer-like machines (the patent actually covers additive, subtractive, extrusion, melting, solidification, and other types of manufacturing) will have to obtain authorization before they are allowed to print items requested by the user. In a nutshell, a digital fingerprint of 'restricted items' will be held externally and printers will be required to compare the plans of the item they're being asked to print against those in a database. If there's a match, printing will be disallowed or restricted."
Added Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously! WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
God, the patent wars are coming to 3d manufacturing. What the heck is the point? I have to check with colgate before I can use my own machine to make myself a custom toothbrush? Is there going to be a DMCA provision for manufacturing at home now? Is it going to be abused like the current process is. I say BULLSHIT!
Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember guys, a patent is not a law that things must be done this way! It's the opposite -- if things are done this way, you'll have to pay for it.
RAND standard (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, when we allowed people to have computers in their homes instead of x.25 terminals, look at the disaster that ensued.
Re:Kill 'em while their young (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't that exactly what the AHRA did, strangle DAT and Minidisc in the cradle.
Won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They Makes Me Laugh (Score:3, Insightful)
The item "3D printer that do not have these restrictions" will be on the blacklist, so you can't print it.
Re:They Makes Me Laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
How can they believe that they can control this in a world where highly advanced 3D printing is possible at home? People will just print their own 3D printers that do not have these restrictions.
I'm sorry, but "highly advanced" home 3d printing is so far from reality that this doesn't seem plausible in our lifetimes. The last 3D printed part I ordered from a commercial manufacturer was an intricate set of inherently interlocked mechanical components laser-sintered out of a cobalt-chromium superalloy. It literally could not be manufactured by any other process. The last 3D printed part I saw produced by a "home" 3D printer (a RepRap) literally looked like a piece of poop - and it wasn't supposed to.
Commercial 3D printing is just starting to become economically viable for use as a production technology in some specialized applications. But the gap between the commercial implementations and DIY implementations is huge, and not closing very fast. Mechanical technologies develop much more slowly than electronics. In our lifetimes, we have seen unimaginable advances in electronics, but mechanical manufacturing has advanced only incrementally. And this makes sense. The advances in electronics are facilitated by advances in our understanding of the science involved. But we already understand Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, statics, strength of materials, and all the other disciplines involved in mechanical manufacturing. We understand the science very well, and have for over a century. Thus, the improvements in this field come more slowly and arise more from creativity and synthesis rather than from breakthroughs in human knowledge.
TL;DR: Moore's law doesn't apply to mechanical manufacturing; the rate of progress in this field is slow and disconnected from the rate of progress in electronics; and "highly advanced 3D printing" won't be possible at home any time in the near future.
Re:Or, is someone patenting it (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't really even matter if they somehow manage to get this accepted and into the 3D printers...
It matters if all 3D printers have to pay some sort of 'tax' to offset the losses of the big companies. Like we do for SD cards, hard disks....etc. (in some countries)
Re:Science Fiction, Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sci-fi is decidedly not prior art in patents. I can imagine a device for instantaneous teleportation, but that wouldn't invalidate a patent for such a device, since patents (are supposed to) cover actual inventions, not just an idea for something, which is all sci-fi is. So unless your science fiction comes with detailed drawings and working descriptions detailed enough to actually build the device in question (in which case it isn't fiction), it cannot serve as prior art.
Someone call the "obvious patent" police! (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the people who have approved decades of "existing idea X, but on a computer" and "existing idea-on-a-computer X, but over the network" claims will decide that "existing idea-on-networked-computers X, but using a 3D printer" claims are where the obviousness line is finally being crossed?
Re:Shouldn't be patentable (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if it's patented to have DRM on a 3D printer... wouldn't that mean printers wouldn't be able to DRM anything UNLESS they actually paid for rights to use the patent to prevent users from using their product?
"Your honor, my device does not legally have the right to use the DRM restriction, as it is a patented technology and we do not currently have any licenses to it."
Just as it was for inkjet printers? (Score:2, Insightful)
TL;DR: Moore's law doesn't apply to mechanical manufacturing; the rate of progress in this field is slow and disconnected from the rate of progress in electronics; and "highly advanced 3D printing" won't be possible at home any time in the near future.
Conventional printers are also constrained by mechanical manufacturing. Nonetheless, we've seen a very nice progression from the dot-matrix electromechanical printers of the 1970s to the superphotographic quality of today's cheap inkjet or laser. We thoroughly understood the science involved in both electromechanical impact printing and photographic chemistry. But advances in software and microcontrollers gave us ways to use those technologies more effectively and cheaply, and made practical other technologies that let us do even better. I see no reason to believe that the same thing won't happen with 3D printing.
Re:Kill 'em while their young (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't be patentable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't be patentable (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, they'd be complete morons to try to trust unencrypted data once it's in someone else's physical control.
That would seem consistent with what I've observed with most copyright holders.