8 ms·
Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to Prevent 3-D Printer Piracy
- adaml_623 14y agoI'm not a patent lawyer but does the fact that Neil Stephenson basically described the same thing in The Diamond age in anyway affect the validity of the patent?
- saurik 14y agoI am not a lawyer at all, but people were asking the same question with regards to features from the iPhone and the movie Minority Report, and someone (who may have not even been a person: probably they were a dog) said that fictional representations do not count: you must have concrete and operational implementations (even though the actual thing you are discussing is just a relatively simple idea; one so simple, you might have gotten it while watching a movie or reading a book published years earlier).
- martythemaniak 14y agoLet me paraphrase our new patent overlords: The software on the Myhrvold side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changes everything right there.
- mtgx 14y agoWhen is the Government going to put an end to these patent-gathering entities?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 14y agoPatented? Good! Now nobody will implement it. Seriously, I can't see anyone in the Maker crowd endorsing this plan, which pretty much kills it.
- jellicle 14y agoKills it... until the first law gets passes which encourages printers to incorporate this DRM. The 3D printer world is still at the hobbyist stage now. When Best Buy is carrying them for $99, the ones carried by Best Buy will have DRM incorporated.
- tankbot 14y agoJust to clarify: This isn't DRM, it's a patent on how DRM would be implemented.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThe Maker crowd won't be the ones making mass-market versions of these devices though.
- georgemcbay 14y agoEven if this did manage to get widely deployed, it would only harm legitimate users. Like every other non-interactive content DRM system ever created, it will be easy to subvert any restrictions. HDCP did nothing to prevent movie piracy, the various music DRMs did nothing to prevent music piracy and this will do nothing to prevent "thing" piracy. Myhrvold is smart enough to realize this won't work in practice but he'll still probably profit from it. Corps will inevitably call for this sort of DRM to be forced on commercially sold 3D printers and when they do Myhrvold will be laughing all the way to the bank unless some substantial patent reform has taken place in the meantime, which it probably won't.
- deleted 14y ago
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoThis is file sharing all over again.
- s_tec 14y agoLook at the bright side. Anyone who wants to create consumer-unfriendly DRM-protected CAD files now needs to jump through hoops and pay fees to Myhrvold's company. With any luck, this patent will actually reduce the incentive to apply DRM protection to 3D manufacturing.
- dllthomas 14y agoIt will probably reduce the incentive; it may increase the ability. We'll find out which effect dominates.
- noonespecial 14y agoSo who's going to cost the economy more in the next 30 years or so, Myhrvold and co. or terrorists? Seriously, I do hope "cunning" is being used ironically here. There is absolutely zero cunning involved in "DRM, but for 3d printers!"
- dlss 14y ago1. I think there is something very cunning about a plan to force people to pay royalties on the method of collecting their royalties 2. If they set the price high enough (which they will for the same reason that music prices are so high), then this is the best possible outcome for the future of 3d printers
- lhnn 14y ago"cunning".... that word doesn't mean what you think it means. This is DRM.
- techpeace 14y agohttp://cunningplan.com/ http://cunningplan.com/
- jerf 14y agoAnd now the circle is closed. After decades of patenting "Physical idea X, but on a computer!", we are now patenting "Computer idea X, but in the physical world!" Seriously, the idea that "Hey, let's apply DRM to files describing physical goods" is absurd, even on patent law's own terms. DRM is just DRM, it doesn't particularly care what's in the file being DRM'ed. This patent should be denied on obviousness grounds.
- wlesieutre 14y agoIt's barely even different from the digital situation. This is basically taking HDCP and saying "Instead of pictures on a TV, now it's 3d shapes on a printer." Both are digital output devices, one of them just lasts longer than the other. Plus we already have printing prevention on physical 2D printers, but it's only used to stop paper currency counterfeiting, instead of being for private parties. Never tried it myself, but my understanding is that printers will cut it off and give you a link to http://www.rulesforuse.com http://www.rulesforuse.com instead.
- confluence 14y agoSorry for asking so bluntly but: Can someone explain to me what exactly makes Myhrvold such a dick? I mean he's already rich - and unlike some lawyers put under the pump to do evil things he has absolutely no reason to do so.
- noonespecial 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
- humdumb 14y agoMy theory: He's a wannabe lawyer. As CTO at Microsoft he probably had to deal with lawyers and patent issues constantly. Maybe they upset him? Or they excited his curiousity? I could be wrong, but with IV, he is running what amounts to a patent law firm or a corporate patent department that has no corporate client. They just obtain patents and collect payments. They produce nothing, except patents and lawsuits, hiding behind shell companies. They take no risks and thus can offer no gains to society. They just collect money. They are a tax on creativity and production. You are not the only one who has pondered this question. Why? He put up his own money to finance this business.
- jonny_eh 14y agoMaybe by just luck he's found himself in possession of a business that's strength turns out to be patent trolling. He's probably rationalized to himself that what they're doing is "right", and since they're good at it, they keep doing it. The fact that it makes boat loads of money is probably secondary.
- lwat 14y agoHe struck it rich with Microsoft, survived cancer, and to thank the universe for all this amazingly good luck he decided to become an asshole patent troll. Sometimes I just don't understand how people think.
- dlss 14y agoExactly. A patent this broad is anticompetitive, and will cripple the future of the DRM industry. Clearly Myhrvold has made the world a worse place. The only thing I can think of that's worse was IBM's patenting the process of patent trolling. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-you-get-a-patent-on-being-a-patent-troll http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-you-...
- ktizo 14y agoGiven the development of 3d printers that print their own parts, I think this terrible idea is thankfully just pissing into a hurricane. Who is going to buy the DRM-enabled printer from the factory, when someone down the road can knock you up a cheaper one without the restriction.
- shriphani 14y agoThis patent is extremely technically weak. I have seen more interesting approaches to copy-protecting 3D-printed objects: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/papers/aliaga/eg2009.pdf http://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/papers/aliaga/eg2009.pdf (One of the authors on that paper was my advisor in college).
- humdumb 14y agoThe "threat" of 3D printing is not piracy it's prototypes. Potentially anyone can make a prototype, find a manufacturer in Asia and start a business. In other words, it spreads the power of creativity to more people. Patent trolls, the parasites that they are, want to piggyback on others' creativity.
- Tichy 14y agoHow can this get a patent, isn't every other DRM scheme already prior art? It seems irrelevant that the files are to be used to print some real world objects.
- ajenner 14y agoAs well as the problems mentioned in other comments, this idea suffers from a massive "analog hole" just as with audio. If you can print an object, it would be extremely easy to sample the pulses sent to the stepper motors and run a "virtual 3D printer" algorithm on those waveforms to turn it back into an unencrypted 3D model suitable for unlimited printing on any printer. The only way around this would be to forbid 3D printers from printing unsigned objects, and forbid people from making their own (unencumbered) 3D printers. Given how many people have made their own repraps, that's already a non-starter.
- nooneelse 14y agoThe DRM could embed something analogous to a watermark in unseen parts/layers of the physical structure printed, like in the particular path used to fill in some layers. A recording of the stepper motor commands would still have that information encoded in it.
- duskwuff 14y agoIf someone came up with a specific method of embedding a physical watermark in infills which was easily detectable via nondestructive methods (i.e, without sawing the object in half -- perhaps something that would leave a pattern on X-ray or ultrasound?), but which didn't significantly affect the model's density, that would be nifty and likely patent-worthy. (In the best possible way: it'd necessarily be innovative, and would only cover the specific method described.) The method described in the patent, on the other hand, is largely uninnovative -- it simply describes a "phone-home" licensing scheme. It doesn't even appear to describe the "object code" as being encrypted, which would make it rather trivial to bypass.
- mullingitover 14y agoIf you find yourself in the dystopian future where this is built into your $99 Best Buy 3D printer, just use your printer to make a new printer that's not DRM-encumbered.
- pbharrin 14y agoThis article title is totally incorrect it misses a layer of logic. A better title would be: "Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to get royalties from 3D printer DRM software". Nathan Myhrvold was issued a patent on 3D printer DRM software, good it will put a barrier in place for anyone wishing to make DRM software which fights piracy, so actually Nathan Myhrvold is helping 3D printer piracy.
- jrockway 14y ago"It's like all previous DRM schemes, but this time it will work!" Uh huh.
- grecy 14y agoUh-Huh. CRM worked so well for DVDs and Blu-ray discs, surely it will be just as good on 3D printers! It's un-hackable(TM)!
- malero 14y agoTIL futuristic 3D-printers will have a 3.5" floppy disk drive and 2 sets of arrow keys on the keyboard. I can't wait for the future!
- jsilence 14y agoI read "Now Intellectual Vultures...", realized my reading mistake and stopped reading the article. Somehow felt like I grasped the essence.
- fjorder 14y agoMyhrvold is thinking about printer "piracy" in exactly the same way that RIAA thinks about music "piracy", and we all know how productive that's been! Placing artificial legal limits on distribution technology simply doesn't work. Makers of objects that are 3D-printable need to learn from the recording industry's mistakes. Instead of trying to legislate away "piracy", they need to find ways to provide enough perceived value to consumers that they can compete. They need to learn from companies like Apple, Amazon, or Valve, not BMI, Sony, or Warners. 3D-printing is going to be rather limited at first. You're not likely to be able to 3D-print something as simple as a thermos-mug for quite some time! However, there is going to be room to use materials and construction methods that make traditionally manufactured goods distinct and desirable. There will also be ample opportunity to provide services surrounding the sale of 3D models, as Valve, Amazon, and Apple currently do for software sales. One thing that is different from the music industry is that there will likely be a big market for bespoke designs. People are going to want items that are unique and tailored to their needs. Designing for mass production could give way to designing for individuals and industrial design could become a cottage craft. In this scenario, designers would make most of their money off of bespoke commissions. There may actually be an explosion in demand for designers since traditional manufacturing processes are not really suited to produce more than a few designs at a time. While bespoke designs may wind up being shared by buyers with "pirates", buyers will pay the cost of losing the uniqueness they paid for if they do share models. This is quite different from music. While people want their friends to listen to the music they like, they generally want to have distinctive items from them. Similar to the labels that used to serve as distributors for music, manufacturers who only produce goods that can also be 3D-printed will be the big losers. Just as Artists who have treated "piracy" as the "new radio" have benefited, designers could also greatly benefit in a world with ubiquitous 3D printing. e.g. If a coffee mug you designed is trending on the "pirate" sites, you'll probably get a lot of bespoke commissions! The prospects provided by 3D printing are especially enticing for consumers, and not just because it will be possible to find free designs and (presumably) save money. Consumers will have direct contact with designers and freedom from the constraints on design imposed by mass production. We are going to see the design of 3D printable models evolve to meet consumer needs faster and more effectively than at any point in human history. Whatever you're doing, the tools are just going to get more and more dialed in and perfect. You also won't need to go looking for a new design when you have an old design that was perfect, as we so often have to do now. The only reason for DRM to exist is to protect the dinosaurs. Hopefully we've learned enough from the music and movie industries that we can be happy just letting them evolve or die.
- joeycfan 14y agoI bet if you pinned a tail on that plan, you could call it a weasel!
- zeruch 14y agoDRM has worked so well in other areas so far :|