The Pirate Bay Introduces 'Physibles': Napster For Physical Objects

from the kicking-the-hornet's-nest dept

A little over a year ago, we wrote about a fascinating paper from Public Knowledge with the splendid title, "It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology." It was written by Michael Weinberg, who recently recorded an interview going over much the same ground, if you prefer to listen rather than read. At the heart of both is the concern that once 3D printers become better and cheaper, and people start posting digital blueprints for commercially-available physical objects on the Net, then the manufacturing industries will recapitulate the war on sharing currently being waged by the music and film companies.

The output quality of 3D printers may still leave something to be desired, but the second part of the equation – freely swapping digital blueprints of objects without too much concern for any intellectual monopolies that are infringed upon – just became much easier thanks to The Pirate Bay: We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years. That's probably true. Whether you will risk prosecution for doing so depends on how the post-SOPA legal landscape turns out.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: 3d printers, file sharing, infringement, physical objects, sharing

Companies: the pirate bay