Saw this user named Meksin who is selling my minecraft kit cards over at CrealityCloud without permission from me. I posted a comment on the model page itself and it appears it’s effective since he immediately took down his listing but I kept a screenshot. I also reported him to CrealityCloud admin but not sure what sort of punishment he would get from it.
Unfortunately, you have to. I did that myself as well. At least, even if you don’t intend of posting in CrealityCloud, you secure your username/handle there.
You can sell models for points on creality cloud. Maybe this provides more incentive to steal. The model of mine that I reported is still up. I reported the whole account, but I wasn’t about to spend an hour collecting evidence. All of their 51 models are stolen.
@MakerWorld
We need to add a time stamp to uploads in addition to the date. The thieves are uploading new designs the same day they are uploaded here. With a time stamp, it would be easy to prove which upload happened first.
Really this should be the job of the maker, not relying on Bambu. You can easily put visible watermark on your photos and everyone on Makerworld should be thinking of doing this as a standard practice in order to protect your work.
It goes without saying that the watermark should be strategically placed so as to cover the whole image and not in the corner such that the image can be manipulated enough to allow someone to remove the mark.
Maker name, a timestamp and the weblink to the direct model(s) on where the user can download them should be sufficient to deter those trying to pass off the models as their own.
Actually, MakerWorld offers such support as part of the exclusive program.
The Maker has to make the first attempt to have the model removed.
MakerWorld reaches out to designers to alert them when they notice and give the designer a week to try and resolve it themselves, if the theft isn’t removed, MakerWorld get involved after a week.
It improves MakerWorld if MakerWorld plays their part or the MakerWorld ecosystem will quickly fail as yet another service that failed to protect itself and becomes the Wild West.
Sure, I understand the exclusive program but not everyone will want to make their models exclusive to Makerworld. Also, from some of the posts I’ve read about the exclusive program, it doesn’t always seem that everyone is getting the consistent support as stated.
We all know there are unscrupulous people on the internet who will take advantage if they get the chance, and I am not going to put all my eggs in one basket to rely on a third party to promise to help me if there is a way for me to take a proactive approach and implement something myself as the first line of defence that makes life a little bit harder for those trying to claim something as their own.
So, I still stand by what I said in my previous post but each to their own.
In these times watermark means nothing, and someone who steals won’t worry about such a small thing. I even think most regular users won’t pay attention to it. I’ve seen many stolen models with watermarked photos, as well as creator’s sign embedded in the model geometry.
Not to mention, it is usually very easy to remove the watermark.
Like I said, each to their own as to how they want to protect their own work. Nothing is perfect and especially so with AI becoming more involved in various ways that make it easier for people to work around things. Perhaps I’m just a little different to everyone else in my thinking.
I don’t know if this helps, but I use this website to search known 3D printing websites. It’s not perfect, but it saves a lot of work. It’s a Search Engine for 3D printable Models. Of course, this assumes that people use at least somewhat similar names, which is usually the case.
