
The Pirate Bay Wants You To Really Download A Car - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-wants-you-to-really-download-a-car-120124/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
======
Sukotto
Cory Doctorow has an interesting take on the ramifications of this in his
(2006) short story _Printcrime_ which is slightly too long to post here.

Go read it. It will only take a couple of minutes.
[http://craphound.com/?p=573&title=PrintCrime](http://craphound.com/?p=573&title=PrintCrime)

~~~
repsilat
Cory's novel Makers[1] deals with the same thing in longer form.

1: <http://craphound.com/makers/download/>

------
flatline
Charles Stross' _Rule 34_ dealt with this concept: fabricators with DRM that
only allowed them to print legitimate items, and a thriving black market of
hacked fabricators and illegal or unlicensed designs. Good stuff - futurism,
but perhaps the not-too-distant future.

~~~
wmf
I think that idea appeared 15 years earlier in _The Diamond Age_ , although
people were setting their sights higher then.

~~~
lukejduncan
fantastic book; and the first thing I thought of when I saw the original
article

------
nrp
This isn't really about printing a car, in the short term at least. This is a
response to the kinds of DMCA takedown notices that Thingiverse has been
getting lately, on Warhammer figurine models for example.

[http://groups.google.com/group/thingiverse/browse_thread/thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/thingiverse/browse_thread/thread/599c4e60f459af8f)

This sort of thing will only increase as 3d printers go mainstream.

~~~
asmithmd1
Does copyright apply to physical object? I understand a sports jersey has to
be licensed because it has a copyrighted logo on it, but if there is no
trademark or logo on a physical object I don't think you can copyright it.

Of course patent laws apply and there is such thing as a design patent:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent>

I would think unless an object is covered by a patent, design or functional,
it is fair game to print out

~~~
onemoreact
I think copyright apply's to sculpture.

~~~
asmithmd1
That would make sense.

I would bet there is some kind of functional vs. ornamental test. Yes you can
copyright a sculpture, but no you can't copyright the bolt pattern of a fuel
pump to prevent others from making a replacement part.

If that is true, then I would think a figurine is more ornamental than
functional.

~~~
objclxt
No, but you could patent the bolt pattern if it was a novel way of achieving
the connection, as Apple do with their Magsafe connectors.

------
VBprogrammer
I really like this idea, but with current technology its a non-starter. 3D
printing would need materials which improve in orders of magnitude upon the
strength, the heat resistance, the hardness and the printable accuracy. Not to
mention that the materials must be available in a reasonably abundant supply.

I do however think there is probably scope for 3D printing small replacement
parts (I'm thinking of things such as plastic pump impellers etc) , if not at
home certainly at a main dealer. I doubt this would come cheap but that might
be balanced against the reduced turnaround times and ability to maintain a
smaller supply chain.

~~~
joshu
You can print a wide variety of metals, as well as use them for molds for
casting. There's also 6d CNC milling etc.

I bet you could manufacture a car if you wanted.

------
firefoxman1
So...just looking really far down the road here, but it seems that a common
theme among lots of films set in the future is that currency is a thing of the
past. If you could print any physical item, especially if you could pirate the
plans, then there would hardly be a need for a currency because everything
would almost be free. The only way to make money would be to either produce
the printers or create new products and sell the plans.

~~~
backprojection
Well, presumably you could print the next generation of printers using the
previous generation.

You'd still need to pay for the energy/raw materials to run them though. Maybe
if LFTR works out, energy will be next-to-free also.

~~~
firefoxman1
Both very good points. Printing a printer is quite a thought.

~~~
icebraining
_Printing a printer is quite a thought._

Check out the RepRap project. They're trying to design a cheap, open source 3D
printer that can print itself: <http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap>

~~~
firefoxman1
Oh that's insane. It says it's self-replicating, but can it assemble the parts
it creates or is a human needed? And what about the microchips? Those still
take expensive machinery to produce, right?

~~~
icebraining
Well, their _goal_ is to make it self-replicating, but it's far from it for
now. I think it can essentially make the specialized parts, but you still need
to buy various common parts and assemble it yourself.

See the BOM of non-printed parts: [http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel#Non-
Printed_Parts_.28.22...](http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel#Non-
Printed_Parts_.28.22vitamins.22.29)

~~~
cabalamat
> Well, their goal is to make it self-replicating, but it's far from it for
> now.

Indeed. Replicators are at roughly the same point today that personal
computers were in 1975. So expect that in a few decades everyone will have one
in their house, able to make a very wide range of objects.

------
Dove
I remain convinced that coming up with a fair and practical method for dealing
with intellectual property is the most important question of the age.

~~~
ZeagleFiend
I oppose the concept of Intellectual Property as we know it. It is something
up with by the entertainment industries to line their own pockets, and it
stymies progress and good art.

For the majority of human (art) history, no such concept existed. Ideas were
communal (for instance see Bach's famous "Goldberg Variations", which borrowed
a lot from popular songs of the time). In what sense is an intangible idea
property at all? In what sense do I "own" a riff if I randomly strum it out
one day on my guitar? It didn't create it. It existed prior to me playing it.

It has been shown the monetary incentive is not required for great things to
be produced. Projects like wikipedia are testament to this, as is the
immensity of excellent fiction, music and other art that is available for free
on the internet.

The concept of Intellectual Property is outdated, and the world needs to
realise this as it adapts to deal with the incredible implications of the
developing internet.

~~~
gurkendoktor
This is a thread about printing cars and your answer is "whatever, kill the
RIAA"? This proves that the whole discussion has been reduced to meme-
pingpong.

Have you considered that you are not paying for materials when buying a car,
but also for R&D?

~~~
ZeagleFiend
1\. Your reductive analysis of my comment inculpates you, not me. "Whatever,
kill the RIAA" is not what I said at all.

2\. I was reply to someone who was talking about intellectual property as a
concept. Thus, I was engaging in discussion with him, not with the thread in a
more general sense.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I am sorry for my annoyed response.

What bothers me is that the whole issue is always reduced to the most
vulnerable example, which happens to be music. But there is no reason for why
the role of IP should be the same for music as it is for movies, or games, or
cars, or ... - even copyrights and patents work in different ways.

To name one notable difference, great music can be produced on a hobbyist
budget by a single person nowadays, and often is. The R&D that goes into cars
cannot. Yet, the results of millions of dollars of R&D are just as "always
existent" as an MP3 of Lady Gaga is, so by your logic must not be protected.

The interesting question is, then how do we fund it? What is the incentive for
any car company to waste money on crash tests if people will copy their car as
soon as they have a matching 3D scanner?

~~~
Dove
It is not a simple situation. In my opinion, the existing systems are all
broken in some way -- including even the fully open ones. I don't _want_ all
of R&D to look like YouTube and Wikipedia.

I believe there are four hard truths about information that any solution must
address:

(A) Copying is easy, and will continue to get easier. This is the essential to
nature of information, and fighting it is not practical.

(B) Creating is hard, and will always be hard. Failing to recognize and
compensate creators is not fair.

(C) Creating by improving on a copy is more than just an effective way to
create. It is essential to the nature of creativity. Fighting this effect is
not practical.

(D) Creative contributions are not additive. Determining the exact value of
any one creator's contribution to a project is not practical.

Copyright as a concept fails hard on (A) and (C). I think licensing doesn't
handle (D) very well. Fully open solutions have varying problems with (B). The
best solution I can think of is academia's system of tenure and elaborate
recognition -- and even there, the system's failure on (B) pushes people to
resort to secrecy, which damages (C).

I don't have a good answer. I haven't even heard a good answer. I even think
it's likely that the best answer will be many answers -- secrecy here,
censorship there, openness here, copyright there, depending on the field. But
I do know the problem will get a lot harder when the objects in question are
not merely valuable for entertainment, but might be highly valuable for
survival, highly expensive to produce, and dangerous or even potentially
criminal.

------
joshu
There are open-sourced cars: <http://www.local-motors.com/>

I've driven one!
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5741482536/in/set-7215762...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5741482536/in/set-72157626642540489/)
... same car that was on top gear, too:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn6rvj08__0>

~~~
Estragon
Super exciting, but at $75K for the privilege of taking a week to assemble
your own car, it'll be a bit out of my price range for a while.

~~~
joshu
I've driven a lot of different cars, and this one was... interesting. Probably
too much for a daily driver.

------
icefox
Board games are at an interesting cross. On the one hand they don't usually
require tight tolerances for their parts so 3D printers seem a perfect fit for
printing board games. On the other hand you have board games moving to the
digital devices like tablets. How will things play out?

~~~
teamonkey
I'm watching Games Workshop with interest on this one. They make a large
amount of their income on selling tiny, expensive plastic figurines and are
notoriously litigious. They stand to lose out big time if people start fabbing
their own models.

~~~
Fargren
Some people already make their own molds out of miniatures and use the to
build their own. It's a lot harder than printing them, though.

------
losvedir
I'm really excited about the potential for personal 3D printing. One thing I
wonder, though, is how much would actually be made that way. It seems like
economies of scale are such that the current model is more efficient for most
products.

You still need the raw materials and the energy to construct the object.
Wouldn't large factories specialized for certain products be able to produce
them faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities, and by such a margin that
doing so and then shipping them still requires fewer resources than everyone
individually printing their own?

They're really cool for prototyping or in certain niches, but I can't imagine
it taking over all manufacturing.

~~~
jxcole
I wouldn't cash your chips in yet. We don't really know what's possible in the
realm of personal manufacturing. Theoretically, if it costs a certain amount
of materials and energy to produce something, producing it in a smaller
factory will cost the same but require more fine grained control of the
instruments. I don't think that makes it impossible, just challenging and
interesting.

Also, there is a hidden cost to re-tooling factories for new products that
goes away if you can create a factory that can produce anything with the same
tools, so you can save there as well.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_producing it in a smaller factory will cost the same_

No, it will cost massively more.

The factory that builds millions of the same thing has access to pricing and
supply chains that are completely out of reach of the factory that builds 100.
This is so different that there is really no reason for the smaller factory to
build the same thing. They will likely compete on turnaround time, quality, or
something the large producer can't do. Any of these will drive their costs
even higher.

------
sliverstorm
The million dollar question: are people expecting to print assembled cars?

It seems infinitely more feasible if you print the car part-by-part, but that
kind of kills it for anybody unprepared to assemble a car!

(I know, I know, taking it far too seriously)

~~~
rwmj
No, but I _would_ like to print car parts. For example, the bit of plastic
that fell off the back of my rear windscreen wiper in the carwash, which
undoubtedly would cost me $$$ to replace, could easily be printed by me at
little cost if I had the plans for my "open source car".

~~~
pndmnm
I spent a ton of time years ago making molds for some of the hard-to-get
plastic parts for an unusual car of mine so that I could produce my own spare
parts. Simply being able to print them would be amazing.

Of course, many of those parts might have physical requirements (elastic
deformation tolerance, heat resistance, et cetera) that would not be met by
3D-printed materials, so it's not a panacea.

~~~
cschneid
Print mold. Use actual material you want. (win?)

~~~
justincormack
The initial use of 3D printers was largely to produce parts that could then
have moulds made from them. Moulds are pretty cheap and depending on the
materials it is easier to print the part to copy than the mould, although both
can work.

------
MrMatters
The way they talk about spare parts, sneakers, etc. makes me wonder how we
would ever be able to store all of that material. Maybe there will be ways in
the future, but with that much variety in things they think we'll be able to
print, literally how will we be able to keep it all stocked? Printer ink is
hard enough for some people. Of course, this entire thing is about how stuff
we take for granted now seemed absolutely ridiculous in the past, so I won't
dismiss it.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Shhh! You're not supposed to think about that :-)

You are correct, of course. One of the things I find amusing about the
breathless talk about replicators is that people conveniently ignore such
mundane problems as maintaining material inventory, the various types of
material in any nontrival product and the ability of the consumer to evaluate
the quality of a design they downloaded off the net. If I give you a design
for a new replacement part for your car how do you know it won't cause more
harm than good? Now we've moved the concept of malware into the physical
realm.

3D printers are certainly an exciting technology with a bright future. But
it's just another manufacturing method that's better in some ways than what's
popular now, and worse in others.

But saying that doesn't get pageviews.

------
sbov
Cars and 3d printers? That's short term thinking. Just wait until we have the
technology to print people. That's when people will really get pissy about
pirating.

~~~
kaybe
I'm looking forward to it. It is one of the major angles on recreating organs
for transplantation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissue_engineering>

[http://www.createitreal.com/index.php/en/organ-
printing/prin...](http://www.createitreal.com/index.php/en/organ-
printing/principle)

~~~
sbov
I look forward to that too, although I was thinking something more similar in
use to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot>

------
AdamFernandez
In this likely future you won't really download items 'for free'. You will
still need the raw materials (plastics, metals, thread, etc.) that you would
have to pay for. You will simply download designs/blueprints that your
printer/fabrication machine can manufacture. You could probably get a bulk
shipment delivered to your house of these materials. Or you could just go to
'resources' depot and pick them up.

Granted there are many issues that would arise regarding pirated and
trademarked designs. Research, development, marketing, and other costs go into
the price of these products when they are sold to us. The disruption this
could cause corporations will make our current worries over music, books, and
movies seem trivial. Then again, imagine open source product designs.
Platforms for creating physical designs that can be sold, and unparalleled
product customization. It should be very interesting.

------
jmodp
What you'll be able to download real soon, if not already, are LEGO blocks. I
wonder what LEGO is planning to do about it.

~~~
jamesgeck0
LEGO bricks are made to fairly rigorous standards. I suspect DIY bricks would
be closer to existing knock-offs: very much like LEGO bricks, but they don't
necessarily fit together "just so" all the time.

------
HPBEggo
It seems to me that, in many cases, getting one's hands on the materials
necessary for printing a car would make things prohibitive for the individual.

Still a very interesting idea, but I'm not seeing something like a car being
printed without some major economic shifts.

~~~
pwg
> It seems to me that, in many cases, getting one's hands on the materials
> necessary for printing a car would make things prohibitive for the
> individual.

Seventy-five years ago (1937), in the era of cellulose film, your statement
would have been identically applicable to the equipment and materials
necessary for recording a "motion-picture".

Move forward seventy-five years to 2012, and you can walk into just about any
store, and for a small amount of money walk out with a "motion-picture"
recording device, affordable by an individual, that can record a "motion-
picture" every bit as good, if not infinitely better, than what the
"professionals" had to work with in 1937.

Seventy-five years from now (2087), 3D printing just very well may have
advanced to the point where it would be quite feasible to "print" a car, and
at a price perfectly affordable to an individual.

~~~
DougN7
Interesting idea. So you go to a download site and grab the latest offering
from Ferrari... Everything of value is then IP -- ie the plans and design.
Does Ferrari bother selling it's designs if they can be downloaded from a
torrent? How does Ferrari stay in business at that point? I've never taken
"open source" like this to the logical conclusion before, where anything
physical can be constructed if you have the materials and a 3D printer...

~~~
swombat
Let me get this straight.

We propose a society where scarcity is a thing that only exists in fiction and
history books, where all physical items can be copied at will, where the idea
of "owning" a physical thing is as pointless as the idea of "owning" an idea
is, where (as a natural consequence) world hunger is probably a thing of the
past, as are poverty, industrial labour, and many other things we take for
granted...

And your first question is "How does Ferrari stay in business?"

Worth noting that this is more or less the same thing as what's happening with
art at the moment. I could paraphrase it as:

"We propose a society where information scarcity is a thing that only exists
in fiction and history books, where all information (sound, video, text, etc)
can be copied at will and instantly all around the world, where the idea of
"owning" a bunch of bytes is as pointless as the idea of owning the shape of a
cloud in the sky, where (as a natural consequence) education, art,
civilisation and all those things that make mankind worthy of existence are
infinitely more powerful than before because of their ubiquity and
availability to all, and your first question is... How does Sony Music stay in
business?"

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
The 3D printer is just a manufacturing method. The scarcity problem will still
exist in the form of raw materials -- somebody's got to pay for it.

Information is a completely different animal. If there were actual physical
costs to the person downloading copyrighted material illegally, do you think
the RIAA and MPAA would be as agitated as they are?

~~~
swombat
Matter and energy are somewhat interchangeable (with SF technology, anyway,
which is what we're talking about).

We (as in, the face of the Earth) receive 1.7E17 J of energy from the sun
every second. That's 53.6E23 J of energy per year.

Worldwide energy consumption as of 2008 was 4.74E20 J. It's risen a bit since
(thanks China!), but not by more than an order of magnitude. So that means
we're receiving enough energy from the sun to power today's civilisation a
hundred times over. And that's just the energy which lands on the face of the
Earth.

My point is, really, that energy (and hence matter) is quite plentiful if you
know how to make efficient use of it. By the time we have cornucopia devices,
we'll probably have the technology so that accumulating the energy/matter for
making a car is just a question of leaving it outside in the sun/rain/air for
long enough and/or dumping a bunch of dirt into it.

------
majmun
this technology of 3d printing and self-replication is probably postponed
consciously because it means the end of todays economy system. and danger if
it goes out of control. I mean printing guns and stuff like that.

~~~
nhaehnle
The parent comment is perhaps a bit too thin on content and too much on the
conspiracy theory side (edit: it was grayed out when I wrote this reply), but
it does touch on an interesting question: is our progress limited more by
technology, or is it limited more by socio-economic factors?

Consider that a toy steam engine was built by Heron of Alexandria around 2000
years ago, and yet nobody got the idea of harnessing it to replace human
labor. Perhaps this can be explained in part by not-quite advanced metallurgy,
but what about the fact that society back then relied on very cheap slave
labor? What role did that play?

Think about what the business model for making 3d printers pervasive could be.
If you manage to do that, you might become the next generation's Bill Gates.
Too bad I don't have an answer there...

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"Consider that a toy steam engine was built by Heron of Alexandria around 2000
years ago, and yet nobody got the idea of harnessing it to replace human
labor. Perhaps this can be explained in part by not-quite advanced
metallurgy,"

Exactly, it is explained by not quite advanced metallurgy and tools.

The steam engine works thanks to the small tolerances industrial lathes gave
us that let a cylinder to carry a piston without fluids getting out. Watt had
to create himself special tools for the creation of his engine.

I have a link somewhere in my browser but zotero search is bullsh*t.

------
wtvanhest
There is no doubt in my mind that this step must be taken, but I'm fairly
certain that as the number of parts and types of material increase any cost
benefit from 3d printing will be wiped out.

Sneakers for example would be really tough to just print out and assemble due
to all the different types of parts.

Scale in assembly continues to beat out lack of scale. It could change, but I
think 3d printing is better for custom applications rather than mass market
goods.

------
yesbabyyes
I think RepRap et al could have a huge impact in poorer countries. Spare parts
for out of production goods can be impossible to find, and replacing an old
(regular paper) printer or something like that is a big cost. Imagine a small
factory in every village. :-)

Fablab is also a very interesting project. They provide free access to 3d
printers, scanners and other equipment, provided you share your design. GPL
IRL!

~~~
justincormack
Easy maintainability is a general policy in third world countries already
though, eg India makes 1950s design british motorbikes and cars (Norton,
Morris Oxford) because they can have replacement parts made by low tech means.

However 3D printers potentially do make more kinds of materials buildable,
especially when combined with printable electronics.

------
nazar
I am wondering, if something in that "printed" car fails to operate and leads
to a crashes with lethal resolution, who will be to blame? The printer
manufacturer? The plan developer? The material provider? I really don't want
to see that coming in future, I better go and by a car from Toyota and put all
responsibility on them rather than have myself doing all the hard work.

------
mrcharles
Someone needs to figure out how much it takes to get one of these made. I
think I'm probably going to order one.

I'll do it later tonight if I remember, if someone else doesn't do the heavy
lifting first.

------
Serentiynow
Recently added to ted.com : Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing:
<http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=OhYvDS7q_V8>

------
benvanderbeek
I apologize for my lack of imagination, but what does this mean? "We’ll be
able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a
recipe, but the full meal."

~~~
iamwil
Researchers have been able to print organs from tissue. You basically have a
gel medium for the tissue to grow in, and then you spray human tissue (stem?)
cells into the medium, layer by layer, and given enough time, they'll grow
into an organ.

By that notion, it's not too infeasible to print your own food. If you can
print organs, you can probably print muscle meat, or plants. But this sort of
thing is a long long ways off.

~~~
benvanderbeek
Makes sense, thanks for connecting the dots while my imagination was not
working.

------
phogster
Are any 3d printer companies public?

~~~
asmithmd1
yes: 3D Systems Corp. NYSE: DDD

Stratasys, Inc. NASDAQ:SSYS

~~~
phogster
Great! Thanks.

------
mrcharles
It costs about $80 to get the pirate bay model made. I have one on the way!

------
lancerp
How do we feed the programmers, artists, and designers whose work appears on
this site? As a distribution platform Pirate Bay is absolutely amazing, as an
ethical business, not so much, Pirate Bay is making money from ads.

------
paulhauggis
The same government forces that protect a company's IP protect employees in a
union.

Many times, companies can't automate certain jobs (not just in the US) because
it would mean one less job for a person and the wages are artificially
inflated.

Wages are usually high because of scarcity (IE: not anyone can do it). Unions,
like copyright, allow workers that would normally get paid $8/10 to get $20-30
an hour because of government sanctions.

However, many people here on HN hate copyright but are pro-union. Doesn't
really make any sense.

~~~
throwaway64
Unions are a voluntary arrangement, copyright is not.

Please do not address the "HN Hivemind", that has a strong tendency to be a
straw man argument that does not really address any specific points, or
anyone.

~~~
paulhauggis
"Unions are a voluntary arrangement, copyright is not."

oh? can GM kick say "no unions"?

I will address the "HN hivemind" when I see fit. Especially when it holds
true.

------
ilaksh
Technology is at odds with capitalism. We need to upgrade our belief systems
and our societal structures. See also a related issue
<http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

------
shrub
Think about printing a car when we have point to point instantaneous
transportation (beam me up, Scotty)? Perhaps cars will become just another
form of entertainment. Perhaps the cost of recycling the material your boat
(used to be your couch and XBoxen-5D) into a car via some futuristic process
will be negligible, such that it would resemble downloading an MP3 today
(after all, you do need some sort of storage medium that you bought to hold
the MP3).

