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from the printster-will-be-the-new-napster dept.
Remember Napster or Grokster? Both services allowed users to share computer files – usually digital music – that infringed the copyrights for those songs.
Now imagine that, instead of music, you could download a physical object. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie – push a button and there's the item! But that scenario is already becoming a reality. With a 3D printer, someone can download a computer file, called a computer-aided design (CAD) file, that instructs the printer to make a physical, three-dimensional object.
Because CAD files are digital, they can be shared across the internet on file-sharing services, just like movies and music. Just as digital media challenged the copyright system with rampant copyright infringement, the patent system likely will encounter widespread infringement of patented inventions through 3D printing. The problem is, however, that the patent system is even more ill-equipped to deal with this situation than copyright law was, posing a challenge to a key component of our innovation system.
If 3-D printing at home happened fast enough it would cut China off at the knees.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday January 08 2016, @04:12PM
I totally agree. The lack of imagination is pretty weird.
For some reason, people think that printing stuff is very expensive -- it isn't. Filament costs less than 3cents/gm and most useful items come in around 20 to 100 gms with the 100gm items being on the large size. People think the only use is making star wars figurines, but there are lots of static household items that are made in plastic that you can print up for 50 cents.
People think that because an injection molded piece is cheaper on a per/piece basis when building a million at once, that it's not worth printing. Except, when was the last time any enduser paid wholesale manufacturing scale prices for anything? The valid comparison is the full retail cost + (shipping or (gas+time in line))+tax. Printing is often much cheaper to the end consumer in the context that matters. I laid out an example where two things I printed cost me less than the sales tax would have totalled to buy the cheapest versions I could find: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=9989&cid=247947#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]