LAST week saw the launch of a new category on The Pirate Bay, the controversial file-sharing site known for making copyright material freely available. Alongside music, films and e-books, the site offers "physibles" - digital objects that assume a physical form thanks to a 3D printer.
At the moment such printers are the domain of hobbyists, spitting out small plastic trinkets, but improvements in the technology mean more complex materials and shapes will soon be possible. Could The Pirate Bay's move open the door for a new wave of piracy as people scan objects using a 3D scanner and share them online?
The prospect may seem unlikely, but remember that MP3 players were a niche market until free music from the likes of Napster fuelled demand for the iPod. So perhaps file-sharing could do the same for 3D printers, bringing them into people's homes.
The music industry responded to illegal file-sharing with digital rights management (DRM) techniques that prevented a song from playing on an unauthorised device. Could companies that sell physical products do the same?
One option is placing a marker on objects that a 3D scanner could detect and which would stop it operating. In 2002 University of Cambridge computer scientist Markus Kuhn discovered this technique is already used to prevent banknotes from being photocopied, but he says it would not work for 3D scanners as pirates could simply cover the marker with tape.
He suggests borrowing an alternative method from music DRM. Some companies watermark their audio files by encoding copyright information in frequencies outside the range of human hearing, which are normally discarded by compression algorithms. Kuhn says the equivalent in physical objects is the mechanical tolerances used in manufacturing - one side of an object might be specified as 300 ? 1 millimetres, for example. A marking algorithm could etch a tiny pattern in the unused section that a scanner would detect.
Tony Rodriguez, who works for Oregon-based digital watermarking firm Digimarc says that valid 3D files could be marked by subtly altering the 3D design without changing the printed object. This would let a 3D printer distinguish between a manufacturer's file, which contains the alteration, and one made by scanning an object, which does not.
Perhaps such techniques will not be relevant. Michael Weinberg, staff attorney for Washington-based intellectual property (IP) advocacy group Public Knowledge, says that while text, music and video are automatically copyrighted, "the vast majority of physical objects aren't protected by any sort of IP right". Copying inventions protected by patents is illegal, as is replicating a trademarked logo, but measuring a desk and building a replica is not.
Panicking companies may push for stronger IP laws if 3D printing becomes more widespread, but Weinberg says this would be a mistake. He suggests companies learn from the media industry's mistakes and embrace the new opportunities it affords, perhaps by encouraging the legal downloading of object files. "If everyone has access to a 3D printer I can go online, pick an object that I want, customise it and print it out," he says. "That's an incredible opportunity for companies."
They will not want to miss the boat again.
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