The World's Most Printed 3D Model, 3DBenchy, Is Now Public Domain

Hackaday reports: Good news for everyone who cannot get enough from improbably shaped boats that get referred to as a bench: the current owner (NTI Group) of the copyright has announced that 3DBenchy has been released into the public domain. This comes not too long after Prusa's Printables website had begun to purge all derived models to adhere to the 'no derivatives' license. According to NTI, the removal of these derived models was not requested by NTI, but by a third-party report, unbeknownst to NTI or the original creator of the model. Recognizing its importance to the community, 3DBenchy can now be downloaded & modified freely.

NTI worked together with the original creator [Daniel Norée] and former Creative Tools CEO [Paulo Kiefe] to transition 3DBenchy and the associated website to the public domain More details at Tom's Hardware and Fabbaloo.

I am late to the party, as it seems.

[Sique]

Despite having two 3D printers, I never printed a 3D Benchy.

Re:

[vyvepe]

I'm like you. I have 2 printers and never printed 3D Benchy as well.

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[martin-boundary]

I drew 3D benchy in crayon on a piece of paper once!

Re: I am late to the party, as it seems.

[mr.morbo]

Likewise, although the "3dbenchy.stl" file does print a nice ball of plastic string.

Re:I am late to the party, as it seems.

[R3d M3rcury]

I have four printers and I have printed 3DBenchy.

You need more printers.

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[Sandman1971]

Similar here. 3 FDM and 1 resin printer, 7 years, 0 benchies printed.

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[Moocowsia]

You need a crappier printer. Benchies and calibration cubes were key to me figuring out all the problems with my delta build. Incidentally, don't build a delta unless you're a masochist.

Sweet!

[Kunedog]

Can't wait until somebody figures how out to quickly convert one to a full-auto ghost gun, or run Doom on one, or make a beowulf cluster of them, etc etc.

Re: Sweet!

[frdmfghtr]

CowboyNeal would approve.

Not public domain

[Orgasmatron]

Public Domain, in copyright law, has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.

US copyright law is unclear about the ability of people to permanently transfer a copyrightable work into the public domain. My understanding is that the majority of copyright lawyers think it is impossible, but the question has never been directly addressed.

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[StormReaver]

There was a recent case where a photographer was suing Getty Images for selling her photos without permission. The judge in the case said that since she had committed them to the public domain, she had no leg to stand on.

So it has been addressed, and that was almost certainly not the first such case.

It also appears that committing a copyrightable work to the public domain requires little more than a clear statement in your licensing document(s) that you are doing so.

CC0 is a public domain equivalent license

[tepples]

The sculptor, former executive, and current owner agreed to distribute the sculpture under the CC0 1.0 license [creativecommons.org], which waives all exclusive rights under copyright and related rights. What's the material difference in legal encumbrance between a work under CC0 and a work whose copyright has expired?

Re:CC0 is a public domain equivalent license

[tlhIngan]

The sculptor, former executive, and current owner agreed to distribute the sculpture under the CC0 1.0 license, which waives all exclusive rights under copyright and related rights. What's the material difference in legal encumbrance between a work under CC0 and a work whose copyright has expired?

A work under CC0 is still copyrighted. It's still "all rights reserved" in the eyes of the law.

However, CC0 allows you certain rights that go beyond "all rights reserved" as long as you agree to the rest of the license.

Now, CC0 is very lax, but to acquire those rights, you still have to fundamentally agree with the CC0 license.

You do NOT have to do it though - under which "all rights reserved" will take precedent.

It's why these are "copyleft" licenses - they require copyright to be enforced. The GPL is worthless without copyright - if you do not agree to the GPL, you have all the rights given to you by copyright law instead ("all rights reserved"). You could take a little bit of GPL code and incorporate it into a non-GPL work if you want to try using it under fair use, for example.

Copyleft licenses give you more rights than standard copyright does, provided you agree to them.

As a result, the author could easily revoke CC0 at any time. Any copy distributed under CC0 will likely remain so, but any further use of it will be restricted. So they could easily revoke CC0, make a change to the model, then release it under a restrictive license. It's why you can re-license things under open source as well. You have the copyright, you can do whatever it is you want with it. The old ones distributed on the old license will remain so (unless the license has a clause letting it be revoked), but new versions will come under the new license.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

I usually license my code under CC0, WTFPL2, and Public Domain, requesting users pick the one appropriate for your jurisdiction.

The Byrne Convention has done far more harm than good. It's a God State philosophy.

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[quantaman]

Public Domain, in copyright law, has a specific meaning, which does not apply here.

US copyright law is unclear about the ability of people to permanently transfer a copyrightable work into the public domain. My understanding is that the majority of copyright lawyers think it is impossible, but the question has never been directly addressed.

I can't imagine why a lawyer would think that.

Here's an example, I'm releasing the contents of this comment I'm writing into the public domain.

What does that mean in practise? I'm giving you a licence that grants you all the rights you would have if my comment was in the public domain.

Now, the one wrinkle is that since the comment didn't enter the PD through age I could also have a version of my comment that wasn't in the public domain (well minus the embedded license). Just like some companies have both op

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[Orgasmatron]

You can rescind your license at any time. When you do that, I can no longer give a copy of my copy of your comment to a third party.

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[quantaman]

You can rescind your license at any time. When you do that, I can no longer give a copy of my copy of your comment to a third party.

Only if the license is revocable. Otherwise the GPL doesn't work.

And if I'm giving you a license equivalent to the public domain it's irrevocable by definition.

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[thegarbz]

You are right but only in the most obtuse interpretation of the law as it applies to the term public domain. In that regard there's no legal mechanism to classify something as public domain other than expiration of all other copyright licenses.

What this means in practice is there's no legal mechanism in the law for someone to volunteer something to public domain as by definition someone retains copyright over the thing they create and can choose what to do with it.

That last part is key. The CC0 license effe

Great to hear

[sjames]

In a world of krazy kopyright klowns squabbling over little to nothing, it's great to hear that NTI did the right thing!

"Not Requested by NTI"

[thegarbz]

Of course it was. They are the ones who applied the CC BY-ND 4.0 license to it. Ultimately that was the core of the request for removal. The fact that someone else pointed out that derivatives are in breach of this license leading to Prusa to do what it legally must in order not to be held liable is 100% NTI's fault and their fault alone.

They could have applied the CC0 license at any time after they purchased the company who owned it, but didn't. This was the only logical outcome of them owning copyright on

Name

[kackle]

Clearly this should be renamed to "Benchy McBenchface".