Unauthorized sales and stolen designs

There are people who steal photos and projects on makerworld and resell them on Etsy despite the non-commercial license. Here is one of them.
Check that there isn’t also one of your projects and report it to Ersy

https://www.etsy.com/shop/get3Dthings?ref=l2-about-shopname&page=1#items

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Had a few of my designs on there, seems to be nothing you can do about it.

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You can ask the seller to remove the project otherwise if he doesn’t, you can report to Etsy by following the procedure. 2 of my works have been removed from Etzy

Same thing here, need some help with reporting.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/mikrofaserhalter-fuer-bauplattenreiniger

Update successful take down, thank you everyone.*

Reported, but not sure if Cults3D will do anything.

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You are probably right with your assumption but how do you know they are unauthorized. There are a lot of creators that provide commercial licences.

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At least for my radius jig he did not got the license…

He was even too lazy to use his own pictures :person_facepalming:

Unfortunately this is very true. So nothing against “China” but it’s even worse if your model/design makes it over there and is used because they absolutely don’t follow intellectual property or creative common policy’s… it’s free game…

This is also very true within the United States since there isn’t anything statued over 3D printing copyrights. I’ve looked deeply into this because of our business. This is also why I didn’t and still don’t plan to release anything anywhere else. Our files and work is done strictly with clients so it’s end to end protected and the files aren’t anywhere but our encrypted work drive.

It would cost an individual tens of thousands of dollars and resources to go after 1 person for copyright infringement. The only people able to do it are major corporations such as disney, nintendo, lego, etc. Of course you’d have to gain their attention first.

All in all, if you don’t want anything stolen. Don’t give anyone something to steal.

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This sums it up perfectly. From what I have heard, Etsy will take it down nonetheless. It is just not worth for them.

bugele18 | Published - MakerWorld This is the user who sells the designs on Etsy

I have occasionally filed copyright claims with Cults3D, and they have always responded quickly and removed the uploads in question.

They have handled this far better than Makerworld, Printables and Thingiverse.

It’s frustrating to see this happening, especially when they’ve also used your photos of the models! I think contacting Etsy to have them taken down would just end up being a cat and mouse game as even if they remove it, another will pop back up.

I have suggested a couple of updates to Bambu which they’ve acknowledged and sent over to the relevant dept.

  1. Prevent users from being able to copy the model photos from your site. There are ways to prevent this that can be written into the website code.

  2. Stop allowing users to be able to export to STL from Bambu Studio when they have selected to copyright their models, or at least give the uploader the option. This would help to prevent this from happening and still allow genuine users to print the models.

I’m going to work through my images and watermark them, which I can already seen a number of users have started doing.

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Now this is something I’m going to do for sure starting in the morning! Thanks for the idea!

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Disclaimer: I am a Full Stack Developer

There is no foolproof way to prevent this. You can make it somewhat more time-consuming, but that’s about it. Ultimately, the image has to be transferred to the user’s computer to be displayed. Mechanisms aimed at ‘preventing’ image download, such as blocking right-click actions, using canvases, or employing tiled images, can be easily circumvented. However, these measures might still serve to reduce image theft. It’s worth noting that these approaches also inconvenience legitimate users, and I have not encountered any cases where addressing this problem has had a significant impact. And will this deter people from selling stolen models on Etsy? Probably not.

How does this prevent individuals from printing the model and selling it on Etsy? If anything, this primarily affects legitimate users. The 3MF file essentially acts as a zip file, containing the STL file within as a .model file. It only takes seconds to open the 3MF file and extract the model.

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Watermarks at least make it a slight bit easier to identify who own its. But from what I have seen, the thieves don’t care about watermarks and generally upload the full image even when it would’ve been possible to trim down.

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Id suggest a time and date stamp to help prove any copyright or ownership claims.
and could this also be included in the stl or 3mf file ?

You have the ability to adjust the timestamp of any file to reflect the specific value you desire.

Can you not use read only ? to prevent that

Fair points but it’s more about deterring the opportunist than solving the problem. As I say, it’ll always be a cat and mouse game.

I think watermarking will help as will preventing them downloading the stl files.

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One thing came to my mind:
As Makerworld focuses on their own eco system they should be able to provide only the G-Code for the prints. They could keep the 3MF and STL files secure on their server. But I think this would take away too much from the user experience as it would not be possible to change anything.

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