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[Büge]

Few people have these printers for now, yet even so GW can see the writing on the wall. They are leading a charge against these like you would not believe.

It doesn't help that they've been steadily inflating their prices and cutting back product over the past decade.

[Mongrel]

Minis gamers are a resilient lot. Like RPG guys, people often wind up playing whatever rule set their local group likes or wants to try out - and unlike Mage Knight, minis are never tied to a set rule system. So you can use anything with anything, really. If GW were to go tits up, I really don't think they would be missed.

But the IP is worth enough that I think they'll survive somehow.

[Büge]

Minis gamers are a resilient lot. Like RPG guys, people often wind up playing whatever rule set their local group likes or wants to try out - and unlike Mage Knight, minis are never tied to a set rule system. So you can use anything with anything, really.

Yeah, but this is Games Workshop we're talking here. They run tournaments for this stuff. I'm sure there's enough casual players to go around, but there's also the hardcore tourney hounds who get angry if your dudes aren't carrying the weaponry you marked down for them in your army list.

[Mongrel]

True, but it turns out that's actually a minority of minis gamers. Especially in Europe.

Also: Fuck those guys. Hardcore GW tourney dorks are among the worst of the very worst for terminal gamer-itis.

[Royal☭]

I think most of the bigger companies are making tempest in a teacup over this. While a Makerbot is cheaper for at home prototyping, I doubt it could compete with industry grade injection molding to make things like Games Workshop figures. While the random rich wanker might be willing to drop the $1500 or so for one, that's EXCESS for individual bootlegging. And the price per pounds means that the price to sell to others isn't competitive. I realize it'll get cheaper, but right now, not worth it.

And as for as legal ramifications, the purpose of 3D printing is beyond the scope of just bootlegging existing items. Again, can't really compete with large scale industrial crafting. My guess is that courts will rule similar to VHS, in that it has purposes outside of just copying existing stuff. If this were a good, just world, it would lead to conversations about the nature of patents, trademarks and at creation.

[LaserBeing]

I wonder how quickly this stuff will drive the price of plastic up...

[Shinra]

I wonder how quickly this stuff will drive the price of plastic up...

Considering China is sending us billions of tons of cheap injection molded plastic shit every year for pennies on the dollar, I would guess plastic is one of those things that will always be cheap.

[Mongrel]

Plastic will probably not even go up in price much even if all the oil vanishes (it's pretty easy to get artificial polymer feedstock from vegetable sources, though it IS more costly than oil - for now).

[Thad]

Well, unless they try to put a tax on it.  There's pretty serious precedent for that; every time a new machine comes along that can be used for infringement, the lobbyists are pretty quick to try and tax it to offset their hypothetical losses.

I posted a video/transcript of Zappa's Porn Wars testimony last month; among other things, he suggested that the music labeling push was a deliberate distraction so that the proposed Blank Tape Tax could fly under the radar.

[Thad]

Finally getting around to reading Rule 34 (now in paperback!); I'm 3 chapters in and it's gotten into black market 3D printing.  It's fascinating stuff.  Minor spoilers follow.

Stross posits a near future where 3D printers are commonplace but come stock with DRM to restrict the things people can print.  Stripping the DRM is easy enough; so is getting onto a VLAN through an illicit wireless network whose transmissions are disguised as line noise on a voice network.  The fab plant is compared, pretty immediately, to a drug lab, and the guy running it is paranoid as hell about getting caught by the law and, of course, in debt to various criminal organizations.

Stross's version seems to indicate a much more complex machinery than just "plastic goes in, plastic comes out"; he extends the drug metaphor by having various different chemical ingredients sold illicitly by seedy dealers.

Homemade guns are mentioned in passing, but, well, the book (1) is called Rule 34 and (2) is not a comedy (or, alternately, is a REALLY FUCKING BLACK comedy), so the focus is on 3D printers being used to produce some pretty stomach-churning stuff.

I imagine the book's going to get a lot nastier as I go, and I can't say I'm looking forward to that.  But it's definitely one more example of Stross looking at tech and society and putting a hell of a lot of thought into what could realistically happen in the near future.

[Thad]

Bald eagle shot in face by poachers; beak permanently damaged, unable to feed itself.

Gets new, 3D-printed beak.

She was on track to be euthanized.

But raptor specialist Jane Fink Cantwell, who dresses like Indiana Jones, refused to take “dead bald eagle” for an answer. She joined forces with mechanical engineer Nate Calvin of Kinetic Engineering Group, and together with other scientists, engineers, and even a dentist, they designed a nylon polymer beak that would perfectly replace Beauty’s lost upper mandible.

[...]

I’ve seen so many bald eagles crying a single tear over terrorism or gay marriage or whatever that it’s really hard not to interpret this as some kind of metaphor about America. Ruined by guns, kept alive by nonprofits, technology comes to the rescue? Sure, I think it works.

[Büge]

These are the people that Games Workshop would see thrown in prison!

[Brentai]

I assume these are not actually the people that Games Workshop would have thrown in prison.

(And when you get right down to it, all porcelain crowns, fillings etc. are done with similar technology these days.  This is just applying that same idea to an avian.)

[Büge]

No, they're not. But the way GW acts sometimes...

[Thad]

Teenage Engineering decides 3D printers are not the enemy and once someone's spent $850 on a synthesizer it's maybe okay to let them make their own replacement knobs for it.  They've released their shapefiles.

On the one hand, they totally deserve praise for this.  On the other, I kinda wish we lived in a world where shit like this was just expected instead of being praiseworthy.

[Mongrel]

Forget 3D printing, how about effective practical matter replicators?