By accident, while searching on thangs.com, i stumbled upon 2 links to 2 of my models uploaded to downloadfree3d.com. They were originally uploaded to makerworld.com under the Standard Digital File Licence and this is the only site i uploaded them to. It is a direct copyright infringement since the Standard Digital File Licence clearly prohibits redistribution in any form including hosting on other digital platforms.
The person uploading it even went as far as to edit the description and delete the links i put in there refering to different versions that would link to the models on makerworld and left the text partly cryptic.
Upon further investigation i realized this page seems to take a lot of designs from makerworld. Have a look at the “3D-printing models” tab. It looks like a selective copy/paste from the makerworld trending page and i even found 2 models of a friend of mine posted there. If your model has been trending in the past few months, chances are it got copied there aswell.
i wrote an email to the support of downloadfree3d to take the models down. if they take any action remains to be seen but i highly doubt it. Also i requested the links on thangs to be taken down, so this wouldn’t get any more attention from their site.
Is there anything we can do as a community or makerworld against such things? I mean, i’m not in for the money and i generally just want to make functional models for free, but i just don’t like the idea of others redistributing my work without consent and enriching themselves with such practise.
thanks for your attention, sincerely
fmod
EDIT: the files have been taken down on downloadfree3d. that was actually a quick response. i’ll still keep this post up to bring awareness to others that might have their model uploaded there aswell. cheers
Then please have a look at yeggi. I did a Google image search and found some of my models there that are under the Standard File Licence. What do you need to follow up on this, thank you!
as far as i see it yeggi is a 3d model search engine, same as thangs. found my models there aswell but they link directly to makerworld and i see nothing wrong about that. they do not host the files there, they just provide a link to the original upload
A download to Makerworld and subsequent upload to the 3D printing service offered there is suggested.
If you do not earn from the 3D printing service offered directly on Yeggi and have not authorised the use of your models in this way, this is clearly an infringement of your copyright.
Yeggi will commercialise your model by offering it for sale virtually as a physical model, without any involvement or compensation to you.
It is a grey area if the licence conditions do not go far enough.
Adapt licence conditions: Makerworld could adapt the licence conditions so that any transfer to third parties, including 3D printing services, is prohibited.
Makerworld could prevent the mere downloading of files / designs under such a licence and only permit direct printing via the platform by non-commercial users. Perhaps MW could add an option that allows the designer to make exactly this selection.
After all, this encourages me in a suggestion I made elsewhere to only offer models of limited quality to the general public.
Someone who generates enough downloads via Makerworld will not be bothered by this, as they will indirectly receive remuneration anyway. But other users work hard on their designs and these should not be fair game for third-party 3D printing services with which the designer has no contract for remuneration through physically created models.
Yep, also found my work over there as well. It’s a pretty scummy looking website. Their contact page has an image of their email address instead of just being text adding one more step for you to request that they take it down.
well, it’s been over 10 days now and downloadfree3d.com is happily continuing to copy models off of makerworld and provides them on their website without a link to the original or any license statement.
i’m gonna go ahead and personally contact some of the bigger designers on MW that i recognize, so they are aware of that problem and can contact the page themselves.
@MakerWorld have any steps been taken to prevent this in the future? have they been contacted?
To be fair, unless you’re willing to take legal action, they probably aren’t going to care, looks like the website is based in Lithuania so you would need to attempt to sue someone across borders
And unfortunately copyright laws do not apply globally they are only really valid in the country of origin, so i doubt you would really get that far and it would prove costly
There is now at least 8 hosting sites filled with stolen content.
And while I am glad to see Bambu stepped up here and tries to step in, it won’t help to fix the reasons.
For starters, quite a few of these sites are hosted on servers our legal systems can’t reach.
And then there is issue of how the models are stolen and used.
Take https://specialstl.com/
It is just one guy doing it !! LOL
And there is not a single model that is not stolen on this site.
Our problem is that the licenses we have available can’t really be enforced against the individual CRIMINAL.
We can only do so by using lawyer we can not afford and even then often face the issue of the criminal being in a different country.
Bambu made a first step here and I do hope it is just the start.
What we need is PRO-ACTIVE hosters that actually care about the creators making them rich.
Take ownership of what your creators provide in the form of actively checking for copycats and such on other sites.
Do this as a team and have all hosters participate!
Enforce fully verified accounts for those wanting to post or upload models.
Not to make things harder but in order to have the details required for legal proceeding on behalf of the creator
A really good measure is a cooling off period - a model uploaded won’t be available to the public until it was verified and deemed genuine and free of license violations.
Provide trust levels for creators AND those downloading!
A trusted creator won’t face delays or restrictions for how many models he or she can upload.
And some untrusted user with unverified account only get’s limited downloads.
While so really no one like DRM protections I do think it would be beneficial for good and top creators to have an optional DRM protection for their files.
Wouldn’t even take much to include this option into 3MF files.
No need to go hardcore like for movies…
Just things like:
Blocking the export of 3D files.
Blocking the saving or export as a new 3MF with a different name.
The original creator or link to the model should show up in the slicer.
Changes a user might have to make for the filaments or print settings shall be saved into an additional file to keep the original unaltered.
And well, of course it would be nice to abuse the call home options from Studio to keep a count on how often someone might try to get around those measures…
With a simple MD5 Hash check thieves can be exposed quickly.
Some new model uploaded? Let’s do a hash check against other hosting sites…
Seems it was uploaded already somewhere else a few days ago, better check if it is the same creator or a criminal…
Our legal team is still working on how to remove MakerWorld models from these websites in large amounts and will get back with our official response when we do have an approach. In the meantime, we will be continuously alerting designers who have had their models stolen to contact these websites and ask for the stolen models to be removed. Thanks
