Let me start by saying that I am not a designer contributing some great designs to MW, or any other platform for that matter - I only wish for now that I had the skill set to do so. (I am just starting out with Blender, so hopefully one day I will be able to contribute.) In the meantime, I am extraordinarily grateful to those with such skills who design and then share their creations with the rest of us on these platforms. It takes a special kind of person to share their creations with the world, & their wishes should be honored.
I was surprised & absolutely amazed at first to see folks uploading beautiful designs for an individual to print and enjoy. And I was equally amazed that some designers are ok with an individual printing their model for themselves but wish to prohibit selling the models. I guess I am archaic enough to know that there are those individuals in the world who, unlike most of us, will jump at the chance to make a buck off someone else’s creation. I am also ancient enough to know that in order to stop such individuals, it very often takes considerable time & money to stop them, and most of us don’t have the time nor resources to successfully do so. After 70+ yrs roaming this Earth, I have no illusions about mankind (i.e., I am jaded by experience).
Now, if I were to design something that I was proud enough of and wanted to share with the world, I would only do so IF I didn’t care if someone else took my model and produced it and sold it. If I didn’t want my model sold, I wouldn’t share it. To me (and your mileage may vary), if you put a model out in public, and it really is something cool, unique &/or especially useful, expect to have someone somewhere selling it, whether it be on their own webstore or a platform such as eBay, Etsy, etc.
Several weeks ago, I came across a really nice 5.25" floppy disk cleaner device on MW, downloaded & printed it and it really works well. I was then on eBay and, since I refurbish and make a few of my own design items for the vintage Apple II computer, I frequently search for items, such as floppy disks. And what should turn up in my latest search but someone selling the exact same device as I downloaded from MW. I contacted the designer via MW and inquired as to whether he was selling his model on eBay, and he indicated that he wasn’t. So I provided the links on eBay to the several listings for his model. He filed all of the necessary paperwork with eBay officials under their copyrights infringement policy, and as of 3 minutes ago, those listings were still on eBay. Now, if you complete all the paperwork and are willing to sign a statement declaring you are the copyright owner, why doesn’t eBay immediately suspend those offending listings until their investigation/legal review is completed and a decision is made either way. That’s not how things work, so he is allowed to continue to sell & profit off a model he has no rights to. In my opinion, that is not fair (but again, your mileage may vary) but that’s the reality of it all. In the case by pixelWAVE, why didn’t MW lock the offender’s account from being able to download anything more until their investigation was completed? The answer is simple: Any public site such as MW doesn’t have any legal authority to impose legal restrictions,but even if they did, it is still up to the designer to enforce and take the appropriate legal action when necessary. And those who pay no attention to a designer’s stated wishss rely on that.
Quick an dirty solutions:
- If a designer does not want their model stolen (aka sold) by others, don’t post it.
- MW should have a designation or dedicated subsection for “free models”; i.e. those models that their developers wish to share & don’t mind what others do with the model, including selling it.
- MW should have a designation or dedicated subsection for models that are only available by commercial license only. The designer can post photos & descriptions of their creation, the price & any other parameters of the license, but not the source files. Anyone interested in the model for commercial purposes contacts the model owner in order to sign a legal contract stating the parameters of the license and, once signed and the payment made, then gets access to the source files. This way, the model owner has a legal document in hand in case the need arises to take legal action and that legal document may make it easier to enforce the terms of the license. I would bet a kidney that by simply having a legal contract would reduce enforcement issues (such as continuing to sell the item after the license ends).
- End the category of “free to download & print for your personal use but not for commercial use” as this doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. Yes, it would eliminate a slew of models free to us non-commercial users
How would folks feel if MW (& other platforms) had a 2-tier system based on 2 & 3 above? The current system doesn’t seem to be working very well so maybe it is time to try a different scheme.