[00:00.640 --> 00:02.580]  ...involved with, you know, expired patents.
[00:03.200 --> 00:05.000]  But that's kind of the making side.
[00:05.220 --> 00:09.520]  The side that 3D printing often people forget about is the creating side, right?
[00:09.620 --> 00:12.960]  Because printing stuff is only as good as the stuff that you have to create.
[00:13.220 --> 00:18.420]  And there are basically two different ways to create things for 3D printing, to create those objects.
[00:18.660 --> 00:20.220]  The first is scanning.
[00:20.320 --> 00:34.680]  And laser scanners can be, you know, 10,000, 20,000, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of scanners, or you're also seeing a great set of technology that are coming down, like, super low-end 3D scanners.
[00:34.940 --> 00:38.180]  So this is the face of my co-worker.
[00:38.580 --> 00:49.220]  There was a program for an iPhone that actually uses the front-facing camera on the iPhone and flashes a bunch of lights and then builds a 3D model.
[00:49.340 --> 00:58.520]  And she insisted that if I was going to use this horrible picture of her that is incredibly distorted, that I include a picture of her to prove that she isn't, like, as freaky-looking as she is in that picture.
[00:58.520 --> 01:05.340]  But this is, you know, this is $5 worth of iPhone app scanning a face into a rich 3D model.
[01:05.760 --> 01:08.200]  So this is a really impressive technology.
[01:08.200 --> 01:09.300]  You're seeing it on the creation side.
[01:09.320 --> 01:11.500]  You're seeing it on the output side.
[01:12.000 --> 01:18.400]  But in addition to scanning things that already exist, you're also talking about creating things, right?
[01:18.540 --> 01:20.640]  Creating things in a virtual space.
[01:20.860 --> 01:28.460]  And many of you are probably aware there's CAD programs, like AutoCAD, that are going to cost thousands of dollars per seat.
[01:28.460 --> 01:37.000]  But there's also a whole universe of free programs that allow people to build things that are 3D objects.
[01:37.140 --> 01:41.480]  So you don't need a thousand dollar CAD program to have access to it.
[01:41.640 --> 01:46.020]  And this is just... it's actually a very rich universe of programs right now.
[01:46.180 --> 01:48.580]  And some of them are very sophisticated and complex.
[01:48.760 --> 01:51.580]  Some of them are very easy to use, but not necessarily as powerful.
[01:51.580 --> 01:52.740]  These are just some examples.
[01:52.980 --> 01:56.900]  Blender is one that I'm going to guess that a couple of people here are familiar with.
[01:57.120 --> 01:59.460]  That is very sophisticated, very hard to use.
[01:59.640 --> 02:04.260]  I sit down in front of Blender and I kind of stare at it and have no idea what to do with it.
[02:04.480 --> 02:08.260]  But if I was skilled in Blender, I could make incredible objects.
[02:09.060 --> 02:12.720]  Kind of down the line of complexity, you've got Google SketchUp.
[02:12.920 --> 02:17.560]  This is easy enough that even a lawyer can learn how to use it in about an hour or two.
[02:17.560 --> 02:20.220]  So this is something that we managed to build in SketchUp.
[02:20.440 --> 02:23.680]  And then you're actually seeing browser-based designers.
[02:23.920 --> 02:26.160]  And so these are things... you don't have to download a program.
[02:26.300 --> 02:28.200]  You can just do it in your browser.
[02:28.940 --> 02:33.040]  Tinkercad, they use sort of like a gamification to teach you how to use the tools.
[02:33.260 --> 02:41.660]  Which is really important because for many people, thinking in that three-dimensional space, if they haven't done it before, can be a real challenge.
[02:42.040 --> 02:50.920]  And so finding a way to bring people into that design process is actually one of the hardest things to think about when you're thinking about 3D printing.
[02:52.220 --> 02:55.600]  3D10 is another program that basically uses like pixels and LEGOs.
[02:55.820 --> 02:57.500]  Another way to kind of ease your way into it.
[02:57.580 --> 02:58.380]  And I wanted to add this other one.
[02:58.440 --> 03:00.660]  This one I absolutely cannot use.
[03:00.760 --> 03:01.960]  It is beyond my capability.
[03:02.580 --> 03:03.620]  But this is OpenSCAD.
[03:03.740 --> 03:13.840]  This actually, instead of using kind of a 3D space where you are manipulating objects, you code the object, and then it just sort of renders it next to it.
[03:14.020 --> 03:22.780]  So if you are a coder, if you think sort of encode first and an object second, there's even a 3D design program for you.
[03:24.760 --> 03:27.160]  And so that's kind of on the design side.
[03:27.340 --> 03:28.400]  That's how you make things.
[03:28.580 --> 03:30.960]  But how about when you want to actually print things?
[03:31.020 --> 03:33.000]  When you want to actually have those physical objects?
[03:33.000 --> 03:40.300]  You can think about it having three categories of 3D printer right now.
[03:40.540 --> 03:44.700]  The first one is this sort of industrial category.
[03:45.000 --> 03:47.840]  And this is the category that's been around for a long time.
[03:47.840 --> 03:59.540]  If you went to an engineering department at a large university, or you were in a design company that's fairly large, you're going to have these rapid prototyping machines.
[03:59.700 --> 04:01.900]  And you will have had access to them for some time.
[04:01.900 --> 04:05.120]  These are just some things we happen to have around the office.
[04:05.400 --> 04:09.360]  And you can see it prints it out in kind of like a gluey powder.
[04:09.700 --> 04:11.400]  It's hard, but it's almost like a plaster.
[04:11.860 --> 04:19.440]  And so, you know, if you were a shoe designer, you may design the shoe, and then you print it out, and you look at it, and then you change it, and you can do that very rapidly.
[04:19.900 --> 04:25.880]  If you're an architect and you're designing a building for someone, you can print that building out and show it to them.
[04:25.940 --> 04:38.400]  And if you imagine, if you have clients who are not used to looking through architectural plans and can't really see it when it's 2D, handing them a model is an incredibly powerful way to say, this is what we're going to build.
[04:38.420 --> 04:40.240]  And it's not a replica, right?
[04:40.300 --> 04:44.860]  It's an exact copy scaled down of what you're building in the computer.
[04:44.860 --> 04:48.480]  And this is just sort of a consumer product that you would... same sort of thing.
[04:48.580 --> 04:55.320]  If you were designing a bottle, you could design it, you could print it out, you could hold it in your hand and say, oh, well, this is what this is going to feel like.
[04:55.380 --> 04:56.360]  Maybe I want to change it.
[04:56.860 --> 04:58.180]  You know, Apple has a lot of these things.
[04:58.280 --> 05:04.240]  People who do high-end industrial consumer design are dealing with these sort of rapid prototypers all the time.
[05:04.360 --> 05:10.800]  And these are machines that are going to cost you $10,000, $50,000, $500,000, depending on what you're using it for.
[05:11.420 --> 05:15.860]  Because beyond the rapid prototyping, you can also use them in actual design.
[05:16.340 --> 05:22.560]  There are parts of the new Boeing 777 Dreamliner that are 3D printed.
[05:24.140 --> 05:25.420]  Those aren't the wings.
[05:25.840 --> 05:27.540]  It's not the fuselage.
[05:27.940 --> 05:35.680]  But it's parts that are hard to build other ways, that especially have to do, I believe, with airflow management.
[05:36.120 --> 05:42.640]  But it's just an easy way to design shapes that are hard to make in other ways.
[05:42.760 --> 05:44.460]  So this is sort of the industrial world.
[05:44.640 --> 05:56.220]  If you talk to people who've been in 3D printing a long time, if you are feeling not super charitable to them, you might describe them as sort of the mainframe business of 3D printer.
[05:56.420 --> 06:00.280]  They say, oh, this is what people use it for, and no one would ever want one of these in their home.
[06:01.040 --> 06:10.320]  So that was the received wisdom in the world of 3D printing, and additive manufacturing until, as I said a couple of years ago, some of the early patents expired.
[06:10.740 --> 06:16.040]  And then it turned out that, well, actually, people really do want to have these things in their home.
[06:16.220 --> 06:30.860]  And so you started to see, first with a guy in England, Professor Adrian Ballier in the RepRap project, and then with MakerBot and others coming together saying, okay, we can play in this space.
[06:31.080 --> 06:31.960]  We can make these.
[06:32.120 --> 06:37.000]  Let's make these 3D printers that are accessible to people at home.
[06:37.480 --> 06:40.680]  They print in ABS plastic, so LEGO plastic.
[06:41.300 --> 06:45.040]  And let's see what happens if we just make these available to people.
[06:45.200 --> 06:49.240]  And what you've seen is this incredible proliferation of these machines.
[06:49.400 --> 06:51.820]  So these are probably, MakerBot has been downstairs.
[06:52.100 --> 06:55.600]  So MakerBot, they're a very well-known brand of this.
[06:55.600 --> 06:57.380]  RepRap is in the middle there.
[06:57.840 --> 06:59.960]  And then even on the right, this is actually a very interesting one.
[07:00.160 --> 07:02.320]  This is the 3D Systems Cube.
[07:02.840 --> 07:09.760]  And 3D Systems is a company that is in the really big, expensive 3D printing market.
[07:10.160 --> 07:18.400]  But even they have decided that they want to get into this lower-cost, lower-resolution plastic 3D printing market.
[07:18.580 --> 07:22.040]  So they were sort of forced into that market when the patents expired.
[07:22.040 --> 07:33.300]  But if you watch how quickly these things develop, it's amazing to see how fast quality is improving in this sort of open development space.
[07:33.440 --> 07:36.540]  If you go on Kickstarter every two weeks, there's a new 3D printer out there.
[07:36.740 --> 07:40.340]  And every single one has a new attribute and something different...
[07:40.340 --> 07:42.400]  Almost every single one has a new attribute.
[07:42.440 --> 07:43.660]  Something new and different about it.
[07:43.740 --> 07:44.280]  And so it's just...
[07:44.280 --> 07:50.120]  It's this incredible pace of innovation around just this basic 3D printing technology.
[07:50.120 --> 07:58.580]  The other category, the third category, is kind of the Kinko's category of 3D printing.
[07:58.820 --> 08:05.960]  These are companies that buy those super expensive 3D printers and then make them available to everyone else.
[08:06.140 --> 08:09.560]  So Shapeways is a very well-known example of this.
[08:09.720 --> 08:11.500]  They have all these high-end 3D printers.
[08:11.520 --> 08:18.440]  So if you design something, you can upload to Shapeways, you pick your material, they'll print it out, and they'll send it to you.
[08:19.500 --> 08:24.020]  And almost more interestingly, they will also allow you to set up a virtual storefront.
[08:25.060 --> 08:34.740]  So if you're a designer, you can do a bunch of designs, and you don't have to order, you know, a thousand-unit run from China or somewhere, and then have them in a warehouse.
[08:35.080 --> 08:36.300]  You just throw the design up.
[08:36.820 --> 08:41.480]  And if people want it, Shapeways will print it on demand, and they take a cut, and you take a cut, and everyone's happy.
[08:41.480 --> 08:49.240]  If no one likes it, then, you know, you're at whatever time it took you to design the design, but you're not in a situation where you now have all this product you need to get rid of.
[08:49.680 --> 08:50.860]  Pinoco is another great example.
[08:50.980 --> 08:51.960]  This is actually worth mentioning.
[08:52.260 --> 08:53.300]  Pinoco does 3D printing.
[08:53.440 --> 08:56.500]  They do a lot of digital manufacturing together.
[08:56.520 --> 09:10.660]  So when we're talking about 3D printing, 3D printing gets a lot of the attention, but 3D printing is really just part of a larger digital manufacturing ecosystem where you're talking about CNC mills and laser cutters.
[09:10.660 --> 09:12.660]  I mean, laser cutters are used to make a MakerBot.
[09:12.980 --> 09:30.380]  There's this whole suite of technologies that allow you to do very precise, low-run manufacturing, that as they become to be available to people, really change the way that people interact with objects and with kind of the physical world around them.
[09:31.760 --> 09:35.480]  And 3D systems also has sort of a Shapeways type system that they're rolling out.
[09:35.560 --> 09:37.440]  So they are sort of everywhere.
[09:37.680 --> 09:39.540]  They're buying companies left and right.
[09:39.540 --> 09:42.120]  They are a very interesting company right now.
[09:43.360 --> 09:44.020]  So what?
[09:46.020 --> 09:48.400]  You know, we've got some industrial 3D printers.
[09:48.460 --> 09:50.000]  We've got some personal 3D printers.
[09:50.380 --> 09:52.040]  You can use a laser scanner.
[09:52.080 --> 09:53.780]  You can use free software.
[09:54.940 --> 09:55.640]  You know, la-di-da.
[09:55.780 --> 09:56.120]  Who cares?
[09:56.300 --> 09:57.760]  Why does this matter?
[10:00.340 --> 10:03.260]  So the answer to that, and it's actually...
[10:03.260 --> 10:10.400]  It's an unsatisfying answer and an incredibly satisfying answer at the same time, is that it's really hard to say.
[10:12.560 --> 10:16.760]  3D printing is a general purpose technology, right?
[10:16.840 --> 10:18.420]  It makes things.
[10:19.780 --> 10:31.800]  And so, sitting here where we are at the cusp, at the very early stages of 3D printing, standing up here and telling you, well, this is the way that people are going to use this.
[10:32.020 --> 10:36.460]  This is the impact this is going to have, is a lie.
[10:37.200 --> 10:37.880]  Nobody knows.
[10:38.000 --> 10:39.360]  It's a general purpose technology.
[10:39.360 --> 10:40.660]  It's used for all sorts of things.
[10:40.780 --> 10:41.440]  Some are frivolous.
[10:41.520 --> 10:42.240]  Some are amazing.
[10:43.260 --> 10:44.540]  And so, it's just...
[10:44.540 --> 10:46.380]  We're sitting here thinking to ourselves, so what?
[10:46.480 --> 10:47.940]  I don't know, but something.
[10:48.940 --> 10:50.060]  And that's very exciting.
[10:51.500 --> 10:57.220]  What we do know is you can use 3D printing to print things that cannot be manufactured or manufactured easily.
[10:57.320 --> 11:00.500]  Like I said before, you've got pieces of a triple seven.
[11:01.060 --> 11:04.880]  And these are pieces, they aren't using 3D printing because they want to use it for a press release.
[11:04.880 --> 11:10.080]  They're using it because it was the way to make that shape in the most efficient way possible.
[11:10.200 --> 11:14.860]  If you talk to engineers and designers, this was something of a surprise to me because I'm not very smart.
[11:15.000 --> 11:15.960]  I hadn't really thought about it.
[11:16.300 --> 11:24.680]  A lot of the shapes that you see in everyday world, the reason they're shaped like that is because that's the easy way to manufacture it.
[11:25.960 --> 11:30.660]  But if there's another way to manufacture a different shape, there's nothing stopping you from doing that.
[11:30.720 --> 11:40.840]  If you go to Shapeways, especially, and you see your fingers and you see the kind of designs that the jewelry designers and the sculptors are putting out, and they look like nothing you've ever seen before.
[11:41.080 --> 11:47.240]  And it's not exclusively because no one has been able to imagine a shape like that before.
[11:48.160 --> 11:56.060]  It's because there hasn't been a practical way to translate it from someone's idea into the real world.
[11:57.340 --> 12:00.180]  And 3D printing can also drive mass customization.
[12:00.740 --> 12:06.340]  When you are printing every single one individually, changing it is not a big deal.
[12:07.440 --> 12:07.840]  Right?
[12:07.880 --> 12:18.260]  Right now, if you are going to make a bunch of objects, you have to make... you make one stamp, and you stamp out a thousand or ten thousand or a million, and they have to be exactly the same because you've got one stamp, and they all have to kind of be stamped out the same.
[12:18.420 --> 12:22.640]  If you're printing every single one out, small variations are irrelevant to you.
[12:22.640 --> 12:25.780]  You don't care because each one is made individually.
[12:26.440 --> 12:37.280]  And so these sort of the uninteresting first-generation uses of this is you're seeing people who have sort of custom bobble heads, and, you know, things like with custom script on it.
[12:37.440 --> 12:44.220]  And it's not interesting because it's not cool, but it's sort of like these are the things that you can easily imagine from today.
[12:44.600 --> 12:54.480]  But as you start playing out what it means to be able to mass customize every single object in your life, it presents an incredible suite of opportunities.
[12:56.540 --> 13:02.460]  And all of this is basically because it begins to drive creation to the edges of the network.
[13:03.020 --> 13:03.540]  Right?
[13:03.720 --> 13:11.700]  People who did not have access to an easy way to manufacture things before all of a sudden have access to a way to do that.
[13:12.040 --> 13:15.700]  And they do weird things when they get access to stuff like that.
[13:16.080 --> 13:21.960]  Some of it is really interesting, some of it is really frivolous, but almost all of it is something you couldn't anticipate.
[13:22.520 --> 13:31.480]  And so, you know, one of my favorite examples, and this is because I'm a policy person and that's what I do, is we've seen a lot of 3D design for protests.
[13:32.480 --> 13:38.760]  So, one of the issues that my organization was very much involved with was the SOPA-PIPA fight earlier this year.
[13:38.760 --> 13:45.820]  And so we saw that the first thing, the first one I saw, was somebody printed out up here a no SOPA-PIPA badge.
[13:45.920 --> 13:49.460]  And people said, okay, print these out and send them to your representative.
[13:49.760 --> 13:51.320]  And say no to SOPA and PIPA.
[13:51.380 --> 13:55.060]  I have no idea if anybody did this.
[13:55.240 --> 13:57.100]  I have no idea if any office got this.
[13:57.540 --> 13:58.260]  But it's great.
[13:58.340 --> 13:59.580]  I love that impulse.
[13:59.740 --> 14:05.920]  And since then you've seen the sort of proliferation of other 3D printing protest examples.
[14:05.920 --> 14:11.140]  You've got a gay marriage one, you've got a 99% one, you've got an Occupy one, you've got a no nukes one.
[14:11.700 --> 14:15.240]  The one in the upper right may ultimately be my favorite.
[14:15.580 --> 14:18.440]  That gentleman is Chris Dodd.
[14:19.000 --> 14:26.580]  He used to be a senator and is now the head of the MPAA, which is the movie studio lobbying arm.
[14:27.320 --> 14:33.880]  And the thing below him is a decryption key for Blu-ray discs, I believe.
[14:33.880 --> 14:40.180]  So it's sort of like a shrine to anti-DMCA circumvention.
[14:40.520 --> 14:45.060]  So, you know, you see random things that people are doing.
[14:46.880 --> 14:48.100]  So let's step back.
[14:48.220 --> 14:53.080]  Because, as I said, this is the kind of thing where it's a general purpose technology.
[14:54.640 --> 14:58.540]  It drives creation and innovation to the edge of the network.
[14:59.920 --> 15:03.780]  It's hard to say what impact it will have, but people are doing really interesting things.
[15:04.020 --> 15:07.660]  This sounds, especially to this group I imagine, it sounds a lot like a computer.
[15:08.900 --> 15:09.340]  Right?
[15:09.400 --> 15:12.280]  This sounds a lot like what happens with computing.
[15:12.280 --> 15:16.040]  And so, that's what we thought too.
[15:16.840 --> 15:18.960]  And so we thought to ourselves, well, okay.
[15:21.200 --> 15:26.860]  We, every day at Public Knowledge, we are engaged in all of these digital intellectual property fights.
[15:29.520 --> 15:37.860]  What do we wish we had done in whatever, pick your time, 1985, 1990, 1995.
[15:38.200 --> 15:44.480]  What do we wish we had been doing then to make these fights that we're having today much easier?
[15:44.620 --> 15:48.060]  Because look, I mean, I love a good fight as much as the next person.
[15:48.320 --> 15:54.600]  But I really like an unfair fight where I have an advantage that I have weighed 10 or 15 years in the past.
[15:54.600 --> 15:57.600]  And so we said, okay, well, so what can we do?
[15:57.680 --> 16:02.280]  What can we do today to make our lives easier in whatever, 5, 10, or 15 years?
[16:02.380 --> 16:07.720]  And so as an example of this, I want to tell you the story of kind of digital copyright and digital IP.
[16:09.300 --> 16:20.780]  So, back in the day, in the late, in the mid and late 1990s, certainly if not earlier, there were all these people, many of which are in this room right now, who were doing all sorts of really interesting stuff.
[16:20.900 --> 16:22.160]  They said, okay, we've got these computers.
[16:22.500 --> 16:24.140]  They're connected to each other on our network.
[16:24.140 --> 16:25.520]  We can build all these tools.
[16:25.800 --> 16:26.660]  We can change the world.
[16:26.880 --> 16:27.660]  People are going to love it.
[16:27.800 --> 16:29.060]  It's going to make everyone's life better.
[16:29.340 --> 16:30.140]  Everything's going to change.
[16:30.380 --> 16:31.040]  Everything's going to be good.
[16:31.240 --> 16:32.420]  Who could not love this?
[16:35.780 --> 16:46.520]  And it turned out that when you are changing the world, when you are disrupting, you're disrupting someone.
[16:48.800 --> 16:56.440]  And when you're changing the world, someone who likes the world the way it is, may not be as enthusiastic as you are about that.
[16:57.380 --> 17:02.700]  And very often, those people are fairly established in Washington.
[17:02.720 --> 17:04.300]  Look, they say, look, we are a huge industry.
[17:04.520 --> 17:05.740]  We employ all these people.
[17:05.980 --> 17:08.480]  This is making it harder for us to pay those people.
[17:08.720 --> 17:09.940]  Therefore, it is bad.
[17:10.640 --> 17:22.100]  And so what happened in the mid to late 90s was a bunch of industries got together and said, well, these computers with the networks and all this stuff, we don't like it so much.
[17:23.540 --> 17:24.780]  It's disrupting what we're doing.
[17:24.780 --> 17:31.760]  And so what happened, unfortunately, was the disrupted industries got together with Congress.
[17:32.760 --> 17:34.040]  And that was sort of it.
[17:34.160 --> 17:38.640]  Because at the time, the public interest groups like mine, we didn't even exist at that point.
[17:38.880 --> 17:42.620]  And most of the people who were doing interesting things were busy doing interesting things.
[17:42.780 --> 17:46.320]  They weren't spending a lot of time going to Washington and talking to Congress.
[17:46.560 --> 17:49.940]  And so what you got was the DMCA.
[17:49.940 --> 17:54.140]  And I'm not going to get up here and say that the DMCA is all bad.
[17:54.500 --> 17:58.360]  There are a lot of parts of the DMCA that actually make the Internet work today.
[17:58.860 --> 18:00.320]  But it's a balance.
[18:01.040 --> 18:12.580]  And the balance that the DMCA strikes as it was written in the late 1990s is not the balance that it would strike if it was being written today.
[18:13.800 --> 18:19.120]  If we had the same kind of political engagement from technology users as we did then.
[18:21.100 --> 18:24.820]  And so that's sort of the model that we're using right now.
[18:25.120 --> 18:29.320]  You know, how does that apply to 3D printers?
[18:29.480 --> 18:33.340]  Well, the good news is 3D printers are not computers.
[18:33.440 --> 18:35.980]  I mean, they are computers in the sense they've got little boards in them.
[18:36.060 --> 18:38.140]  But they're not computers.
[18:39.860 --> 18:47.680]  And one of the most interesting ways that they are not computers is in the way that they relate to intellectual property.
[18:48.760 --> 19:06.620]  Because the one thing that we have learned is that when someone is being disrupted with a digital thing, the first tool they reach for to beat back that disruption, to beat back that change, is intellectual property law.
[19:08.680 --> 19:18.100]  And, you know, it's actually kind of a historical fluke that we associate intellectual property law with digital technology.
[19:18.520 --> 19:31.120]  It's basically a historical fluke that the kinds of things that are easy to create and share with a computer, hooked up to a network, are the kinds of things that are protected by copyright, right?
[19:31.120 --> 19:34.840]  It's just, you know, movies and music and articles and photos.
[19:35.080 --> 19:36.840]  Those are the things of copyright.
[19:39.100 --> 19:53.300]  But when you step away from your computer and you enter the real world, you are reminded that most things in the world are not protected by copyright.
[19:56.400 --> 20:00.950]  And 3D printers make things in the real world.
[20:01.880 --> 20:10.190]  And so the hooks of intellectual property are not as strong into 3D printers as they are into computers.
[20:10.360 --> 20:11.340]  And that's good news.
[20:11.450 --> 20:13.100]  But let me break that down a little bit.
[20:13.190 --> 20:14.670]  Let me kind of expand that a little bit.
[20:14.750 --> 20:18.510]  Because that was actually something that was very hard for me to wrap my mind around because I had...
[20:18.510 --> 20:22.820]  Look, I think of digital policy in terms of intellectual property.
[20:23.950 --> 20:29.970]  And that may be good, may be bad, but that's just because that's just sort of what I associated with the Internet and with computers.
[20:29.970 --> 20:31.900]  The way you deal with it is copyright, copyright, copyright.
[20:32.040 --> 20:40.290]  When you step away from the computer, you look at the real world, you find yourself in a world full of things that are not touched by copyright, and really not touched by any kind of intellectual property at all.
[20:41.150 --> 20:42.230]  So let's talk about copyright.
[20:42.820 --> 20:45.470]  Copyright, as all you know, is designed...
[20:46.050 --> 20:52.250]  It applies to creative things, to things that you would hire an artist to make.
[20:52.250 --> 20:56.750]  And that's especially true in the kind of the physical object world.
[20:56.990 --> 21:04.670]  You know, we can get into all very interesting discussions about, you know, is a computer programmer more of an engineer, more of an artist, you know, whatever it is.
[21:04.750 --> 21:10.800]  But in the physical world, copyright is attaching to things that don't do anything.
[21:12.210 --> 21:18.400]  Copyright is attaching to things that look nice, but don't have a functional utility useful use.
[21:20.190 --> 21:22.380]  But copyright has some very interesting features.
[21:22.750 --> 21:23.880]  Copyright is automatic.
[21:24.630 --> 21:32.840]  There are reasons, there are good reasons, to register your copyright, but you don't have to register your copyright to get copyright protection.
[21:32.860 --> 21:45.080]  If you are right now sort of writing an email, or doodling on your program, or something else besides listening, you know, that doodle is protected by copyright by virtue of writing it down, of drawing it out.
[21:45.620 --> 21:49.750]  That email is protected by copyright by virtue of you typing it out.
[21:50.270 --> 21:54.220]  And not only is copyright automatic, it lasts a really long time.
[21:56.140 --> 22:00.820]  Right now, copyright lasts for the lifetime of the creator, plus 70 years.
[22:01.710 --> 22:10.460]  So that doodle is protected until the day you die, and then for 70 more years after that.
[22:12.760 --> 22:15.400]  And damages in copyright are soon to be automatic.
[22:15.600 --> 22:22.780]  You can, without proving any real damages for infringement, you can get up to $150,000 per work.
[22:23.170 --> 22:31.860]  So copyright is something that is automatic, that is long, and that is expensive, but it doesn't cover functional items.
[22:32.380 --> 22:34.780]  It doesn't cover useful articles.
[22:35.950 --> 22:38.000]  And this is the world of patent.
[22:38.000 --> 22:42.520]  And the thing that you have to remember is that patent and copyright are mutually exclusive, right?
[22:42.600 --> 22:43.670]  It's one or the other.
[22:43.780 --> 22:46.400]  You walk through the copyright door, you walk through the patent door.
[22:47.300 --> 22:48.210]  It's not both.
[22:48.260 --> 22:51.800]  And if it's a functional item, it's not the copyright door, it's the patent door.
[22:51.950 --> 22:52.880]  So what about patents?
[22:55.240 --> 22:58.040]  Now patents, unlike copyright, are not automatic, right?
[22:58.080 --> 22:59.380]  You need to apply for a patent.
[23:00.430 --> 23:03.500]  You apply for a patent that takes time and money.
[23:04.020 --> 23:08.450]  And as part of that process, you need to actually show that it's a novel, a useful thing.
[23:08.560 --> 23:12.520]  Now, you know, let's put aside patent on software debates.
[23:12.900 --> 23:14.880]  It's a worthy debate, but not right now.
[23:16.360 --> 23:20.300]  But that, when compared to copyright, is a much higher bar.
[23:20.980 --> 23:22.300]  It takes effort to do.
[23:23.580 --> 23:25.100]  And also the term is much shorter.
[23:25.210 --> 23:26.360]  The term of a patent is 20 years.
[23:26.450 --> 23:27.860]  Now, 20 years is a long time.
[23:29.210 --> 23:36.120]  But there is nothing copyrightable, created in my lifetime, that will ever enter the public domain.
[23:37.960 --> 23:38.480]  Nothing.
[23:40.040 --> 23:47.500]  There are plenty of things, that were created during my lifetime, that were protected by patent, that are now in the public domain.
[23:49.650 --> 23:56.500]  And the other set of intellectual property that we need to at least touch on, but isn't as important here, is a trademark and design patent.
[23:56.500 --> 24:03.320]  And the reason that trademark and design patent, is not as important, is first of all, it also, you can't get a trademark or design patent, on a functional, useful article.
[24:04.220 --> 24:05.640]  And it's fairly specific.
[24:05.840 --> 24:18.480]  And this is important, because if you think about the world of digital design, if you have a very specific design patent, or a very specific trademark, and it is trivial to take that object, and change it in a virtual space, and print out a different one,
[24:20.270 --> 24:23.800]  avoiding infringing on that trademark, or on that design patent, isn't that big of a deal.
[24:24.520 --> 24:29.880]  So not to say that it's not important, Not to say it's not real, but when you think about all these things, it's not at the top of the list.
[24:30.340 --> 24:31.580]  But what's the bottom line here?
[24:31.740 --> 24:43.280]  The bottom line is that when you step away from your computer, as I've said before, and you look around, things aren't protected by intellectual property, right?
[24:43.670 --> 24:47.500]  So my notes for this talk, protected by copyright.
[24:48.500 --> 24:51.400]  This podium, protected by nothing.
[24:52.870 --> 24:55.400]  This wire, protected by nothing.
[24:55.540 --> 24:58.080]  The chairs you're sitting in, protected by nothing.
[24:58.340 --> 25:01.120]  These neon lights, protected by nothing.
[25:03.690 --> 25:08.500]  And so when you think about it, you have sort of all these things you can create with a 3D printer.
[25:09.960 --> 25:17.040]  And then a subsection of those are even going to be protectable by intellectual property.
[25:19.040 --> 25:24.140]  And then a smaller subsection of those are actually going to be protected, because there are all sorts of things that are either...
[25:24.140 --> 25:31.100]  that maybe were in the kind of the patent universe, but weren't worth patenting, or they were worth patenting, but they were worth patenting 25 years ago, and are now in the public domain.
[25:31.620 --> 25:36.840]  I mean, if you had this kind of diagram for something on a computer you're talking about, it would be a one-to-one, right?
[25:36.900 --> 25:40.780]  Basically, everything you type up on a computer is automatically protected by copyright.
[25:42.400 --> 25:46.170]  And critically, this is not a loophole.
[25:47.900 --> 25:51.340]  This is not a mistake or an oversight.
[25:53.300 --> 26:01.100]  We have had the ability to copy physical objects since we've had the ability to make physical objects.
[26:02.800 --> 26:10.670]  And intellectual property law is a balance, and we have found that we do not need to give people a monopoly on physical objects to convince them to make them.
[26:10.820 --> 26:13.840]  And I know that because I'm standing at this podium.
[26:14.670 --> 26:15.710]  And it exists.
[26:16.640 --> 26:25.670]  And if I measured this podium, or I even took a laser scanner and made an exact copy of it, there is nothing that the manufacturer of this podium could do about it.
[26:26.300 --> 26:27.240]  And that's okay.
[26:28.210 --> 26:29.260]  That's not a mistake.
[26:31.640 --> 26:32.720]  So what's happening now?
[26:34.060 --> 26:41.320]  We've got all these kinds of 3D printers, we've got a sort of crash course in intellectual property law that I appreciate all of you sitting through.
[26:41.800 --> 26:42.980]  Where are we now?
[26:43.240 --> 26:50.140]  What we're seeing is that people are just creating and sharing and even selling online.
[26:50.740 --> 26:59.820]  That this community, this set of norms are coming together to answer the question, how do you deal with virtual physical objects?
[27:00.100 --> 27:02.190]  How does this world come together?
[27:03.060 --> 27:15.120]  But not surprisingly, we have started to see some of the general intellectual property things creep in to the world of 3D printing and design.
[27:15.220 --> 27:16.060]  So I want to tell you this story.
[27:16.140 --> 27:16.900]  I want to tell you a couple of stories.
[27:17.800 --> 27:23.260]  And this is just an example of places that people are sharing and selling online.
[27:23.960 --> 27:25.480]  And you can see this actually...
[27:25.480 --> 27:26.210]  I really like this slide.
[27:26.280 --> 27:28.710]  I didn't mean to do this, but maybe I did.
[27:29.220 --> 27:31.600]  If you look here on the left, there's Thingiverse.
[27:31.600 --> 27:33.560]  And it shows you that diversity, right?
[27:33.780 --> 27:35.190]  So you've got this owl statue.
[27:36.370 --> 27:38.040]  That's a statue that doesn't really do anything.
[27:38.260 --> 27:39.860]  It looks nice, but it has no function.
[27:40.000 --> 27:41.190]  So that's going to be protected by copyright.
[27:41.480 --> 27:43.210]  Then you've got a bracket for a rep-rap.
[27:43.710 --> 27:45.100]  That's not going to be protected by copyright.
[27:45.210 --> 27:47.450]  You've got a pull cord for a lawnmower.
[27:47.850 --> 27:49.280]  That's not going to be protected by copyright.
[27:49.480 --> 27:54.340]  There's a whole universe of things up here that are things, but no one owns them.
[27:55.330 --> 27:57.480]  You're not infringing on them if you copy them.
[27:57.480 --> 28:03.580]  Well, let me tell you the story of the first DMCA takedown notice in the history of 3D printing.
[28:05.780 --> 28:10.560]  So the Penrose Triangle is this impossible object, optical illusion.
[28:10.760 --> 28:12.600]  It came from the 1930s.
[28:12.710 --> 28:17.100]  It's named after Mr. Dr. Penrose or somebody, some European guy.
[28:17.620 --> 28:29.240]  And what happened was last year, somebody came up, someone sort of appeared online and they said, I am the smartest person on the Internet today.
[28:30.880 --> 28:39.000]  I have figured out how to make this impossible object with 3D printing and I will not tell anyone how to do it.
[28:39.260 --> 28:44.720]  I'll sell you one, but no one will be able to crack the code as I have.
[28:46.560 --> 28:57.710]  And so, a day or two later, someone threw up a design on Thingiverse and said, ah, I too have figured out how to make this impossible object.
[28:58.000 --> 29:02.080]  And I'm like the first guy, I'm just going to throw it up on Thingiverse, do whatever you want with it, I don't care.
[29:04.710 --> 29:14.670]  And the first guy said, no, you, sir, I do not like you and the thing that I do and I do not like things online is accuse you of copyright infringement.
[29:15.720 --> 29:21.580]  And so, he sent a, a takedown notice to Thingiverse saying, this person is infringing on my copyright, must be taken down, this is horrible.
[29:21.960 --> 29:32.500]  Now, there are a lot of interesting questions about this because Penrose Triangle is an optical illusion, which is probably a useful article, which is probably not protected by copyright at all.
[29:33.480 --> 29:43.430]  Also, as I said, this design is originated in the 1930s, so the person who made it may not have, even if it were protected by copyright, they might not have very much of an interest.
[29:44.120 --> 29:52.740]  So there are a lot of kind of technical legal questions about this, but suffice it to say, when this person sent the takedown notice to Thingiverse, everyone freaked out.
[29:54.020 --> 29:58.000]  You know, it was all holy hell of, oh my God, the DMCA is invading the world of 3D printing.
[29:58.190 --> 30:12.460]  Fortunately, it was such a freakout that the first person stepped back after a day or two further and said, okay, whatever rights I have, I dedicate to the public domain and I withdraw my takedown notice.
[30:13.930 --> 30:21.900]  So we saw this sort of, this attempt to use intellectual property law and then a community freakout and then kind of backing away, which was good.
[30:22.000 --> 30:28.300]  But this isn't the only time that we've seen intellectual property law used to take down 3D printed objects.
[30:28.400 --> 30:30.620]  And sometimes that's actually, it actually is probably right.
[30:31.070 --> 30:33.360]  This is a cube from the movie Super 8.
[30:34.190 --> 30:38.600]  And there's a guy, a guy designed it and put it, I don't know if you've seen the movie Super 8.
[30:41.170 --> 30:43.600]  So he will tell you.
[30:43.780 --> 30:45.380]  So this is, this is the design.
[30:45.860 --> 30:56.340]  And he put it up online and got a lovely letter from the good people at Paramount who said, we would really don't want you to put this up and we want you to take it down.
[30:56.800 --> 30:57.450]  And he did.
[30:57.710 --> 31:06.840]  And the funny thing is actually, if, if we lived in the world of Super 8, this thing would be a, a functional object and not protectable by copyright.
[31:07.020 --> 31:09.120]  But because we don't live in the world of Super 8, it's just kind of a sculpture.
[31:09.460 --> 31:10.840]  And so it was protected by copyright.
[31:11.190 --> 31:13.300]  And so, you know, sort of all is well that ends well.
[31:13.780 --> 31:18.380]  The, the universe of copyright can work when it is supposed to work online.
[31:18.740 --> 31:25.020]  Another example of this, and this is actually a really complicated example, is a, this is a, a mech from Warhammer.
[31:25.220 --> 31:31.210]  And so someone put this up and the Warhammer people freaked out a little bit and said, you know, take this down.
[31:31.450 --> 31:32.540]  This is infringing on our copyright.
[31:32.710 --> 31:33.820]  And initially they did.
[31:35.500 --> 31:40.080]  And that would sort of be the end of the story if this was actually a copy of a mech from Warhammer.
[31:40.240 --> 31:43.360]  Because the Warhammer mech is a, a character in a video game.
[31:43.480 --> 31:44.560]  It's gonna be protected by copyright.
[31:45.210 --> 31:50.620]  But it turns out that this is actually not an, a copy of a Warhammer mech.
[31:51.020 --> 31:56.740]  It's just some sort of in the style, but not a copy of a Warhammer mech.
[31:57.580 --> 32:04.580]  And that, that is a much more tenuous connection to copyright than an actual copy.
[32:04.780 --> 32:12.520]  But this has sort of resolved itself in the temporary way that many things resolve itself, which is it's down now, but you can find it and everyone is, is happy enough to walk away.
[32:12.720 --> 32:17.820]  But we are seeing good examples of not infringing copyright, not, not infringing copyright as well.
[32:18.960 --> 32:20.800]  Many of you familiar with Settlers of Catan?
[32:21.120 --> 32:21.560]  Yeah?
[32:21.980 --> 32:22.740]  Probably a little bit?
[32:22.860 --> 32:22.960]  Okay.
[32:23.430 --> 32:29.560]  So the way that copyright works for board games is you cannot copyright the rules of a board game.
[32:31.580 --> 32:36.040]  And you can't copyright parts of the board game that are necessary to play it.
[32:36.930 --> 32:40.300]  So Settlers of Catan is made up with these tiles that are shaped this way.
[32:40.480 --> 32:45.120]  And so this person made this incredible 3D printed Settlers of Catan board.
[32:47.220 --> 32:56.580]  The way that the Settlers of Catan people represent sheep and bricks and stone and all those things, the kind of images on the tiles, that's protected by copyright.
[32:56.800 --> 33:00.600]  But tiles shaped that way, that represent those things, are not.
[33:00.820 --> 33:06.620]  So this board does not infringe on the copyright of Settlers of Catan.
[33:06.740 --> 33:11.220]  And we have encouragingly not seen the Settlers of Catan people demand this be taken down.
[33:13.430 --> 33:15.640]  So what is this, what is kind of the meta message here?
[33:15.710 --> 33:17.020]  What's the real takeaway from here?
[33:17.140 --> 33:18.450]  You know, all these, all these are all these stories.
[33:18.710 --> 33:24.900]  The answer is actually that it looks like for now, community norms are basically working.
[33:26.900 --> 33:27.340]  Right?
[33:27.430 --> 33:33.480]  The 3D printing community and design community is coming together and working to regulate themselves.
[33:34.020 --> 33:37.720]  And we're seeing that even in the design of a site like Thingiverse.
[33:37.960 --> 33:38.320]  Right?
[33:38.460 --> 33:44.140]  Thingiverse is set up to show you where a design came from and where it is going.
[33:44.860 --> 34:00.450]  So the fact that you cannot sue someone for infringement doesn't matter because the thing that you care about as a community, if you want to be a healthy, creative community, is finding a way to identify and reward creativity.
[34:01.740 --> 34:04.800]  You really want to be able to identify those innovators and reward them.
[34:04.980 --> 34:08.930]  And you can do that in a way that does not require massive lawsuits.
[34:09.620 --> 34:12.660]  You can be a much more nimble and creative community.
[34:12.800 --> 34:18.840]  And so you see it in things like, like Thingiverse, but this isn't just like this thing that could work in this weird corner of the Internet.
[34:20.040 --> 34:23.440]  Billion dollar industries are also built on this idea.
[34:24.040 --> 34:30.040]  Fashion, cooking, haircuts, all of these are low IP industries.
[34:30.040 --> 34:32.200]  You cannot copyright a dress.
[34:32.960 --> 34:35.760]  You cannot copyright a really fancy dish.
[34:36.320 --> 34:38.200]  You cannot copyright a haircut.
[34:38.700 --> 34:48.580]  And so when you talk to people in these industries, they will talk and they will talk and they will talk and they will talk about their influences and about their inspiration.
[34:50.280 --> 34:55.320]  But they will not tell you, We are licensing from my inspiration.
[34:56.140 --> 34:58.180]  They don't have a deal with their influences.
[34:58.500 --> 35:02.740]  It's just very important in that community to talk about where you get your ideas from.
[35:03.320 --> 35:05.780]  And that's what you're seeing in this world of 3D printing.
[35:06.840 --> 35:09.360]  And this is great because you're so much more nimble.
[35:09.440 --> 35:09.900]  I'm a lawyer.
[35:10.080 --> 35:11.120]  I love the law.
[35:11.260 --> 35:12.120]  I think it's really important.
[35:12.560 --> 35:19.860]  I do not necessarily think that every new idea should have to go through a bunch of lawyers to be checked off before it hits the public.
[35:20.660 --> 35:23.460]  It's a slow, bad way to do things.
[35:23.760 --> 35:31.100]  And so finding a way to structure this community that does not require heavy IP law is great.
[35:31.100 --> 35:33.200]  And we are seeing that, and it's really encouraging.
[35:33.580 --> 35:35.760]  So for now, we're seeing this system work.
[35:36.200 --> 35:37.460]  So what's happening in the future?
[35:38.780 --> 35:40.180]  This is coming back to what I said.
[35:40.400 --> 35:41.400]  It is much easier.
[35:41.480 --> 35:42.300]  I'll tell this to everybody.
[35:42.440 --> 35:45.620]  It is much easier to make friends before you need them.
[35:46.960 --> 36:00.360]  And so what are we doing now to make sure that we're laying the groundwork for that day, that someone walks into their congressman's office with a MakerBot and says, this pirate box is destroying my business.
[36:00.480 --> 36:02.100]  You need to outlaw it.
[36:05.290 --> 36:07.770]  I don't know if that's a good cheer or a bad cheer.
[36:08.910 --> 36:11.510]  You know, as a general matter...
[36:11.510 --> 36:12.290]  Series of cylinders!
[36:12.630 --> 36:12.750]  Right.
[36:18.060 --> 36:23.880]  The first response to something new like this cannot be to legislate.
[36:24.280 --> 36:35.120]  When you see new technology, your impulse is to think of the most horrible, dystopian future you can imagine, and pass laws to stop that from happening.
[36:35.120 --> 36:35.780]  Right?
[36:35.940 --> 36:40.540]  Like the future where Biff owns the cops, and everything is horrible, and it's like all going to shit, right?
[36:40.760 --> 36:41.540]  This is bad.
[36:41.840 --> 36:43.460]  And so we need to pass laws to make sure they can't happen.
[36:43.620 --> 36:44.620]  That's a horrible idea.
[36:44.720 --> 36:45.660]  And why is that a horrible idea?
[36:45.780 --> 36:49.100]  Because, first, that wasn't gonna happen.
[36:50.680 --> 37:00.540]  But second, and probably more importantly, in trying to outlaw imagined future threats, you inevitably prevent productive paths of innovation.
[37:01.960 --> 37:05.220]  So your first reaction cannot be, let's pass some laws.
[37:06.860 --> 37:10.720]  The other thing to do is to introduce 3D printing to policymakers.
[37:10.900 --> 37:11.520]  And we've been doing this.
[37:11.640 --> 37:13.700]  You know, you may recognize some of these people up here.
[37:13.860 --> 37:16.600]  We bring people, we bring the 3D printing community to Washington.
[37:16.600 --> 37:18.740]  If you're interested in this, come find me afterwards.
[37:19.060 --> 37:21.920]  And just say, hey, we're real.
[37:23.920 --> 37:25.220]  This isn't science fiction.
[37:25.760 --> 37:29.420]  And not only is this real, this isn't even a real hobby.
[37:29.420 --> 37:30.600]  This is a real business.
[37:32.080 --> 37:33.260]  We're hiring people.
[37:33.420 --> 37:34.500]  We're selling things.
[37:35.160 --> 37:36.780]  We're moving into new offices.
[37:37.320 --> 37:39.860]  This is worth protecting, or at least not strangling.
[37:42.200 --> 37:43.160]  But what can you do?
[37:44.860 --> 37:47.580]  What can you do to help protect 3D printing in Washington?
[37:48.980 --> 37:53.860]  The thing that you can do, more than anything else, is to use it.
[37:55.480 --> 38:10.540]  Because when that day comes, if that day comes, and I hope it doesn't come, but if it does, where someone walks in and says, this pirate box is destroying my business, we want that congressperson, that senator to say, no, I know these people.
[38:12.180 --> 38:13.780]  And they want them to call us up.
[38:13.840 --> 38:15.620]  And we say, no, you need to protect 3D printing.
[38:15.620 --> 38:17.460]  Because this is happening.
[38:17.640 --> 38:18.580]  And that is happening.
[38:18.700 --> 38:21.480]  And someone is making this incredible breakthrough, and that incredible breakthrough.
[38:21.640 --> 38:25.200]  And in order to get those stories to say, this is how this is being applied.
[38:25.380 --> 38:26.980]  We need people to try new things.
[38:27.540 --> 38:31.020]  So the thing that you can do with 3D printing is just try and use it.
[38:31.020 --> 38:32.880]  And some of the things you do will be great.
[38:33.080 --> 38:34.920]  And some of the things you do will be stupid.
[38:35.120 --> 38:36.240]  And some of them will work.
[38:36.340 --> 38:37.460]  And some of them won't work.
[38:37.560 --> 38:38.680]  And some of them will be frivolous.
[38:38.740 --> 38:40.300]  And some of them will change the world.
[38:41.760 --> 38:43.100]  But you need to do them.
[38:43.540 --> 38:45.260]  Because we need those stories.
[38:45.680 --> 38:53.020]  We need those examples to say, this is a completely legitimate technology that's worth protecting and fostering.
[38:53.140 --> 38:58.180]  And when you do that, when you do those things, let me know about it.
[38:58.180 --> 39:03.580]  Send me an email, send me a Twitter, whatever you want to do, but let us know.
[39:03.860 --> 39:07.940]  Because those are the stories that are going to help defend 3D printing in Washington.
[39:08.380 --> 39:09.040]  Thank you very much.
[39:09.180 --> 39:11.140]  I've got a minute or two for questions.
[39:11.460 --> 39:15.220]  Thank you for your attention.
[39:19.920 --> 39:21.060]  Anyone have any questions?
[39:22.520 --> 39:23.480]  Come to the mic.
[39:25.300 --> 39:32.000]  In the music industry, there was a period in which the music industry wanted all MP3s banned totally.
[39:32.560 --> 39:40.480]  Now it's in a position where they kind of like rely upon it for money revenue and also still want it banned for use of piracy.
[39:40.900 --> 39:45.860]  But the attitude has significantly changed once they saw the financial advantage.
[39:46.200 --> 39:48.780]  A lot of it was pre-built on fear beforehand.
[39:49.380 --> 40:08.540]  Do you think there's an advantage in briefing the politicians to state the fact that, yes, this is a different pattern, but not one that's going to necessarily damage the United States or Europe or whatever, but could be to the economic advantage and present things in a way that will enable the politicians,
[40:08.760 --> 40:14.580]  when people do present them with a fear, to say, no, you can shift your business and you won't lose out.
[40:14.580 --> 40:16.180]  You've only got to gain from this.
[40:16.540 --> 40:17.540]  Yeah, absolutely.
[40:17.700 --> 40:20.200]  There are two great parts of that.
[40:20.280 --> 40:27.000]  The first is to say there is a story you can tell about 3D printing about bringing manufacturing back to the United States.
[40:27.160 --> 40:30.620]  And that is a very attractive story in Washington right now.
[40:30.760 --> 40:37.340]  And to say you can move manufacturing from a far away central place to a much closer local place.
[40:37.480 --> 40:48.740]  But there's also kind of a larger point, which is that you have a situation where if an industry finds itself confronted with 3D printing as a disruptive force, they can look to the music industry.
[40:48.920 --> 40:50.140]  And they kind of have two choices, right?
[40:50.200 --> 40:54.860]  They can spend 10 or 15 years spending a lot of money trying to get it outlawed in Washington.
[40:55.320 --> 41:01.380]  Or they can spend the same time and money figuring out how to turn it into a new business model for them and really take advantage of it.
[41:01.460 --> 41:05.400]  And that's one of the things that you actually are starting to see that with a couple of companies.
[41:05.460 --> 41:06.500]  It's really encouraging.
[41:06.500 --> 41:11.640]  And hopefully, the lessons of... you're always fighting the last war, unfortunately.
[41:11.980 --> 41:14.980]  But the lessons of the last war is embrace this early.
[41:15.260 --> 41:16.660]  You're going to spend money either way.
[41:16.820 --> 41:17.980]  You might as well spend money productively.
[41:19.840 --> 41:21.640]  Hey, great talk, by the way.
[41:22.440 --> 41:24.460]  What I wonder about is a lot of us here are geeks, basically.
[41:24.600 --> 41:25.540]  And we like geeky things.
[41:25.700 --> 41:30.240]  So one of the first things I thought I wanted about 3D printing is making my own Doctor Who stuff, making my own Star Wars stuff.
[41:30.580 --> 41:35.600]  And when you start doing that at home and you have that out there, there's got to be a lot of pushback from industries in that.
[41:35.720 --> 41:37.160]  So what's Hasbro say about it, basically?
[41:38.160 --> 41:40.840]  Yeah, so this is... and you know, Todd can talk about this.
[41:43.140 --> 41:50.220]  So yeah, when you're talking about making things from movies, TV shows, you are going to be working in the world of copyright.
[41:50.360 --> 41:57.120]  And so that's really going to be... it's an opportunity or it's a challenge for those companies that own the rights.
[41:57.260 --> 41:58.420]  They can take it one of two ways.
[41:58.500 --> 42:03.820]  They can spend all their time suing the fans who are such big fans, they want to design and print their own version.
[42:04.880 --> 42:06.840]  Or they can really find a way to capitalize it.
[42:07.000 --> 42:09.640]  And the hope will be it's the latter.
[42:11.140 --> 42:12.360]  But it's sort of an open question.
[42:12.440 --> 42:14.840]  And a lot of that, again, it comes down to sort of community norms.
[42:15.040 --> 42:16.560]  And what's okay and what's not okay.
[42:16.680 --> 42:18.080]  But it's an open question.
[42:18.160 --> 42:19.160]  I don't have a good answer for it.
[42:19.240 --> 42:20.760]  But it's a good question to be asking.
[42:21.180 --> 42:22.520]  I think we have time for one more question.
[42:22.520 --> 42:25.580]  You're saying most physical objects are not protected.
[42:25.800 --> 42:33.420]  But isn't there a designer or industrial designer behind it that made that, that could claim IP in some shape or form?
[42:33.740 --> 42:36.360]  So the answer is if yes, yes.
[42:36.520 --> 42:37.120]  If no, no.
[42:37.620 --> 42:40.480]  Simply because someone made a thing, someone made this podium.
[42:40.900 --> 42:44.300]  The fact that someone made it isn't the kind of starting point for the analysis.
[42:44.460 --> 42:47.580]  The question is, what is the IP you think you have?
[42:47.780 --> 43:01.380]  And if you're talking about an industrial designer, very rarely is there, more often than not, and I don't want to get into kind of splitting legal hairs, but more often than not, there's just not going to be an IP right attached to that.
[43:01.560 --> 43:12.280]  And so if it's a functional item, it's an item that does something, if you consult engineers when you're building it, then if it's protected by patent, great, it's protected by patent.
[43:12.420 --> 43:14.640]  And that's a very real intellectual property right.
[43:15.000 --> 43:20.060]  But if it is not protected by patent, it's outside the scope of copyright, it's fair game.
[43:20.780 --> 43:21.460]  Thank you very much.
[43:21.540 --> 43:24.040]  If you have more questions, I'll stick around for a little bit, but thank you for your attention.