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[Thad]

So okay.  Remember Righthaven?  The copyright troll that went bankrupt after a series of ill-conceived lawsuits on behalf of companies who never actually gave it permission to file lawsuits on their behalf?

Well, per Boingboing, a Swiss company has grabbed up righthaven.com and turned it into a hosting service.  And is marketing it as a provider that won't take your site down over frivolous copyright claims.

[Mongrel]

Delicious!

[Büge]

You wouldn't download a dreadnaught.

_{(a blueprint for a 3D model of a Warhammer 40k Dreadnaught was taken down after a DCMA notice by Games Workshop from one website, but strangely, the original blueprint remains on Google Sketchup)}

[Mongrel]

I keep saying that eventually we're going to see a big offshore site in a country where people are reasonably certain their government won't extradite and which will simply ignore takedown requests. Eventually the site may be delisted, but as has been said over and over, there will be workarounds to reach them in any country that doesn't have censorship built into their internet network infrastructure at the national level (and even then, there may be workarounds). Hell, even the Pirate Bay is still sailing along for the most part.

You'd maybe expect China to be the place for such a site to pop up (and Megaupload did in fact have a big presence in Hong Kong, but that was only a slice of their pie and the principals all lived elsewhere), but cultural differences mean that the Chinese aren't big enough on western IPs and music to make such a site (that's not to say there are no Chinese fans of say, Warhammer, but that the biggest and most powerful Chinese websites all cater to the domestic Chinese market with little exterior presence). And even the Chinese government does pay some lip service to western IP, very occasionally raiding the biggest producers of counterfeit goods or pirated work. Got to keep up appearances!

The tipping point will be when a government feels it has more to gain by supporting such a site then it has to lose by pissing the US off. Such countries already exist, but usually they have severe proscriptions against western media and products (Iran, North Korea, etc.). It's just a matter of waiting for the stars to line up.

Also, someone may look at Megaupload's music box idea and decide that's a big moneymaker and push it hard.

[Thad]

You wouldn't download a dreadnaught.

_{(a blueprint for a 3D model of a Warhammer 40k Dreadnaught was taken down after a DCMA notice by Games Workshop from one website, but strangely, the original blueprint remains on Google Sketchup)}

Yeah, in the coming decade 3D printing is going to become a HUGE disruptive technology.

io9 had a story yesterday titled Charles Stross’ [sic] latest novel is coming true over on The Pirate Bay.  I haven't read Rule 34 yet (waiting for the paperback) but yeah, the trading (legal and illegal) of 3D printer blueprints is going to be a big deal very soon.

[Mongrel]

It's funny... minis wargamers vs GW is actually one of the forefronts of that issue. Wargames minis, because they're expensive items, but small, inert, solid objects with no moving parts, made from unremarkable material. Basically a perfect candidate for early 3D printing. And GW because they're so crazy protective of their IP.

Now I do think that 3D printers will have some fairly high restrictions for a while yet. Printing food doesn't solve a hunger problem or really act as anything more than a novelty, because if anything you still need to physically ship raw foodstuffs and I expect printed food to be of even worse quality than fast food. Machine parts with high loads is also probably not a big starter, because if you know about say... car parts, you know that most of them are produced through manufacturing processes designed to affect the material at very fundamental levels. And some materials will never be decent as printables (for instance, no one's going to try and print an aluminum engine block though maybe we'll someday see some kind of high-density super-epoxy) At least not for a very long time. But you may see stuff like side panels, or trim as printables. Or little kit cars with 2HP engines and very short lifespans as a gimmick to show proof of concept.

Even then, home printing will hardly be a be-all end-all. Magic cards have been printed for nearly 20 years, and home printing and scanning has been in place for just about as long, but we still don't see home-printed counterfeits as a big problem for a variety of reasons - even though some cards are worth as much as $1000. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but that it's extremely rare. There's probably a lower percentage of counterfeit Magic cards in circulation then there is counterfeit US currency in circulation.

[Ziiro]

I wish GW was smart enough to jump at this head on. Offer a service where you can buy a custom figure for them to print. You buy the product from them, for example (Lets say a Space Marine 'Kit') that allows you to create a customized figure (Which head, arms, pose, etc) and then GW has the printer setup to print your custom figure and send it out to you. It'd be pricy, of course. But people would pay for it, no doubt.

[Thad]

@Mongrel: I'm thinking stuff a lot simpler than food or auto parts.  I'm thinking anything cheap, plastic, and typically manufactured in places like China, Taiwan, etc.  Stuff like toys, small replacement parts for household appliances -- that's the stuff that's going to explode in the next decade.

[Mongrel]

@Mongrel: I'm thinking stuff a lot simpler than food or auto parts.  I'm thinking anything cheap, plastic, and typically manufactured in places like China, Taiwan, etc.  Stuff like toys, small replacement parts for household appliances -- that's the stuff that's going to explode in the next decade.

That, yeah absolutely.

Man, that actually makes me wonder if those economies will be seriously affected. It'll be first world households that early-adopt 3D printing. It'll take time for companies to build a store of downloadable blueprints optimized for printing, but this could really rewrite much of the low-value offshoring story.

Of course, it's just another step in the effective destruction of overall jobs and the grossly reduced need for labour in general. But at this point the west has already suffered much of the ill effects. It'll be other parties denied the chance to climb up the industrialization tree. The poorer parts of Asia might wean themselves off such production just enough to avoid devastation (they're trying to move in that direction, but we'll see how that goes), but future aspirants like Africa can never used 1st stage industrialization as a stairway out of poverty.

Even if it is just cheap plastic crap, a big chunk of the economic future could be bound up in this story.

[Büge]

cheap plastic crap

I'm curious to know if we'd have the petroleum necessary to produce enough plastic to make printable products feasible.

[Mongrel]

Well, right now we're already using that in factories. The volumes of raw ingredients for the base materials won't change all that much.

[Thad]

Newt: the latest politician to get a C&D for using a song without permission.

We live in a world, now, where everyone is an infringer -- anyone who tells me he's never so much as watched a video on YouTube that includes unauthorized use of copyrighted content is a liar.

So there comes a point where you've got to prioritize, go after the big fish and let the little ones go.

So who's bigger -- the guy sharing a few hundred songs on Limewire (or whatever the fuck the equivalent is these days), or the half-dozen fucking guys running for President who've been busted using music they didn't pay for at their campaign events in the last two elections?

[NexAdruin]

Why would you go after the guys who have been writing the laws that give you carte blanche to do whatever the fuck you want re: Copyrights?

[Thad]

Yeah, you're right.  That'd be like suing their customers.  Or putting rootkits on CD's.

...anyway, speaking of stupid and counterproductive ways of dealing with customers, Doctorow's latest is titled With a Little Help: Digital Lysenkoism.

The explanation for the title:

Soviet-era scientists were required, on pain of imprisonment, to endorse Lysenkoism, a discredited theory of inheritance favored by Stalin for ideological reasons. [... W]hen Soviet scientists met their Western counterparts, everyone knew that Lysenkoism was an awful absurdity. But the Soviet scientists had to pretend it wasn’t. Not unlike some of the discussions inside today’s major publishing houses when it comes to DRM.

He goes on to say that he's helping put together the Humble E-Book Bundle, and gives this anecdote:

And I’ve recruited enthusiastic contributors from all of the big six publishers for the Humble E-Book Bundle—that is, all except one, which has an all-DRM-all-the-time policy and won’t consider publishing anything without DRM in any of its divisions.

Because of its insistence on DRM, this one publisher is going to miss out—along with its authors—on hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, and some great exposure. Needless to say, every author I’ve approached from that publisher is now trying to figure out how to get out of their contracts for future books. It’s one thing to have your publisher’s bizarre, ideology-driven superstitions erode e-book sales. It’s quite another to learn that you’re going to miss out on a chance to pay off your mortgage because your publisher has bought into a form of digital Lysenkoism.

[Büge]

Anyone else in?

[Brentai]

Yes, but probably not on purpose.

[François]

Well, in my case we're talking about sacrifice on the caliber of giving up eating truffles and caviar for lent, but I'm with y'all wealthy folks in spirit and I'd do it if I could.

[Thad]

Yes, but probably not on purpose.

Yeah.  I haven't bought a new RIAA-affiliated album since...2004?  When was Poodle Hat?

And those qualifiers are kind of important, too.  Better yet, DO buy music, movies, and games in March.  Buy independent ones that aren't affiliated with the MPAA/RIAA/ESA.  Buy used ones whose sales don't go to the MPAA/RIAA/ESA.  Don't punish the people who aren't part of the problem.

(And yeah I know the ESA backed out.  The argument is probably that it was too little, too late.  But I can understand if people don't want to flog them further, too.)

[Joxam]

Actually I think arguments could be made that you should loudly support the people that backed out at the same time that you condemn those refusing to. "We use their shit because they got a clue, your turn!"

[Mongrel]

Well, in my case we're talking about sacrifice on the caliber of giving up eating truffles and caviar for lent, but I'm with y'all wealthy folks in spirit and I'd do it if I could.

Right there with you, brother Frank.

Now pass the aqua-velva.