Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to Prevent 3-D Printer Piracy

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429566/nathan-myhrvolds-cunning-plan-to-prevent-3-d/

by rdp • 14 years ago

42 50 14 years ago

technologyreview.com

mtgx• 14 years ago

When is the Government going to put an end to these patent-gathering entities?

duskwuff2• 14 years ago

Patented? Good! Now nobody will implement it.

Seriously, I can't see anyone in the Maker crowd endorsing this plan, which pretty much kills it.

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

The Maker crowd won't be the ones making mass-market versions of these devices though.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Considering how fast iPhones are jailbroken, breaking the DRM won't take much time.

ktizo2• 14 years ago

I wouldn't bet on that.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

Even if this did manage to get widely deployed, it would only harm legitimate users. Like every other non-interactive content DRM system ever created, it will be easy to subvert any restrictions. HDCP did nothing to prevent movie piracy, the various music DRMs did nothing to prevent music piracy and this will do nothing to prevent "thing" piracy.

Myhrvold is smart enough to realize this won't work in practice but he'll still probably profit from it. Corps will inevitably call for this sort of DRM to be forced on commercially sold 3D printers and when they do Myhrvold will be laughing all the way to the bank unless some substantial patent reform has taken place in the meantime, which it probably won't.

finnw• 14 years ago

Be careful - ACP[1] for VHS recorders was patented, and manufacturers were forced to implement it (and pay the royalties.)

[1]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision#Content_protection_...]

bryanlarsen• 14 years ago

Nobody in the Maker crowd is going to endorse this plan, but eventually somebody's going to try to apply the "cheap razor / expensive blades" model to 3D printing once a compelling use case for consumer 3D printing is found.

Printer companies like HP and Canon use extensive DRM in their ink cartridges. They wouldn't hesitate to add it to their input validation, either.

wiml• 14 years ago

The big commercial 3d-printer companies (like Stratasys, Z-Systems, Objet) already use that model; you buy consumables from them at a rather higher than commodity price.

jellicle• 14 years ago

Kills it... until the first law gets passes which encourages printers to incorporate this DRM.

The 3D printer world is still at the hobbyist stage now. When Best Buy is carrying them for $99, the ones carried by Best Buy will have DRM incorporated.

tankbot• 14 years ago

Just to clarify: This isn't DRM, it's a patent on how DRM would be implemented.

Florin_Andrei• 14 years ago

This is file sharing all over again.

s_tec• 14 years ago

Look at the bright side. Anyone who wants to create consumer-unfriendly DRM-protected CAD files now needs to jump through hoops and pay fees to Myhrvold's company. With any luck, this patent will actually reduce the incentive to apply DRM protection to 3D manufacturing.

dllthomas• 14 years ago

It will probably reduce the incentive; it may increase the ability. We'll find out which effect dominates.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

So who's going to cost the economy more in the next 30 years or so, Myhrvold and co. or terrorists?

Seriously, I do hope "cunning" is being used ironically here. There is absolutely zero cunning involved in "DRM, but for 3d printers!"

dlss2• 14 years ago

1. I think there is something very cunning about a plan to force people to pay royalties on the method of collecting their royalties

2. If they set the price high enough (which they will for the same reason that music prices are so high), then this is the best possible outcome for the future of 3d printers

lhnn• 14 years ago

"cunning".... that word doesn't mean what you think it means.

This is DRM.

techpeace• 14 years ago

http://cunningplan.com/

jerf• 14 years ago

And now the circle is closed. After decades of patenting "Physical idea X, but on a computer!", we are now patenting "Computer idea X, but in the physical world!"

Seriously, the idea that "Hey, let's apply DRM to files describing physical goods" is absurd, even on patent law's own terms. DRM is just DRM, it doesn't particularly care what's in the file being DRM'ed. This patent should be denied on obviousness grounds.

wlesieutre• 14 years ago

It's barely even different from the digital situation. This is basically taking HDCP and saying "Instead of pictures on a TV, now it's 3d shapes on a printer." Both are digital output devices, one of them just lasts longer than the other.

Plus we already have printing prevention on physical 2D printers, but it's only used to stop paper currency counterfeiting, instead of being for private parties. Never tried it myself, but my understanding is that printers will cut it off and give you a link to http://www.rulesforuse.com instead.

confluence• 14 years ago

Sorry for asking so bluntly but: Can someone explain to me what exactly makes Myhrvold such a dick?

I mean he's already rich - and unlike some lawyers put under the pump to do evil things he has absolutely no reason to do so.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

humdumb4• 14 years ago

My theory: He's a wannabe lawyer.

As CTO at Microsoft he probably had to deal with lawyers and patent issues constantly. Maybe they upset him? Or they excited his curiousity?

I could be wrong, but with IV, he is running what amounts to a patent law firm or a corporate patent department that has no corporate client. They just obtain patents and collect payments. They produce nothing, except patents and lawsuits, hiding behind shell companies. They take no risks and thus can offer no gains to society. They just collect money. They are a tax on creativity and production.

You are not the only one who has pondered this question. Why? He put up his own money to finance this business.

jonny_eh• 14 years ago

Maybe by just luck he's found himself in possession of a business that's strength turns out to be patent trolling. He's probably rationalized to himself that what they're doing is "right", and since they're good at it, they keep doing it. The fact that it makes boat loads of money is probably secondary.

lwat• 14 years ago

He struck it rich with Microsoft, survived cancer, and to thank the universe for all this amazingly good luck he decided to become an asshole patent troll.

Sometimes I just don't understand how people think.

dlss2• 14 years ago

Exactly. A patent this broad is anticompetitive, and will cripple the future of the DRM industry.

Clearly Myhrvold has made the world a worse place. The only thing I can think of that's worse was IBM's patenting the process of patent trolling.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-you-...

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

He clearly wouldn't describe himself as such, and would see himself as the good guy.

Assholes never think of themselves as assholes. If they're assholes in a socially acceptable manner, then they see themselves as simply following the crowd. If they're assholes in a legally acceptable manner, they see themselves as hacking the system. If they're assholes in a manner most people detest, they may either not care, or see themselves as crusaders bringing truth to the unwashed masses.

Myhrvold is an asshole in all three senses. He's a patent troll who games the system; he brings harm to everyone by "protecting business interests", and he likely sees himself as a crusader against the evils of copyright infringement perpetrated by those who are too ignorant to know better.

In short, he's a grade A asshole, but he likely views himself as unjustly persecuted and justified in his actions.

PanMan• 14 years ago

I read an article a few years ago that did portray him as a hero: He was spending all this money on inventing new things, often across domains (having engineers create new medicine, etc). And then he was nice enough to licence these new inventions to whomever could use them, for only a modest fee!

It was quite convincingly written (and before all the patent troll stories surfaced). I guess he sees himself as that person.

I looked for it, and think it was this one, or a similar piece: http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/401437/the-in...

ktizo2• 14 years ago

Given the development of 3d printers that print their own parts, I think this terrible idea is thankfully just pissing into a hurricane. Who is going to buy the DRM-enabled printer from the factory, when someone down the road can knock you up a cheaper one without the restriction.

shriphani• 14 years ago

This patent is extremely technically weak. I have seen more interesting approaches to copy-protecting 3D-printed objects:

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/papers/aliaga/eg2009.pdf

(One of the authors on that paper was my advisor in college).

humdumb4• 14 years ago

The "threat" of 3D printing is not piracy it's prototypes. Potentially anyone can make a prototype, find a manufacturer in Asia and start a business. In other words, it spreads the power of creativity to more people. Patent trolls, the parasites that they are, want to piggyback on others' creativity.

Tichy• 14 years ago

How can this get a patent, isn't every other DRM scheme already prior art? It seems irrelevant that the files are to be used to print some real world objects.

ajenner• 14 years ago

As well as the problems mentioned in other comments, this idea suffers from a massive "analog hole" just as with audio. If you can print an object, it would be extremely easy to sample the pulses sent to the stepper motors and run a "virtual 3D printer" algorithm on those waveforms to turn it back into an unencrypted 3D model suitable for unlimited printing on any printer. The only way around this would be to forbid 3D printers from printing unsigned objects, and forbid people from making their own (unencumbered) 3D printers. Given how many people have made their own repraps, that's already a non-starter.

nooneelse• 14 years ago

The DRM could embed something analogous to a watermark in unseen parts/layers of the physical structure printed, like in the particular path used to fill in some layers. A recording of the stepper motor commands would still have that information encoded in it.

duskwuff2• 14 years ago

If someone came up with a specific method of embedding a physical watermark in infills which was easily detectable via nondestructive methods (i.e, without sawing the object in half -- perhaps something that would leave a pattern on X-ray or ultrasound?), but which didn't significantly affect the model's density, that would be nifty and likely patent-worthy. (In the best possible way: it'd necessarily be innovative, and would only cover the specific method described.)

The method described in the patent, on the other hand, is largely uninnovative -- it simply describes a "phone-home" licensing scheme. It doesn't even appear to describe the "object code" as being encrypted, which would make it rather trivial to bypass.

adaml_623• 14 years ago

I'm not a patent lawyer but does the fact that Neil Stephenson basically described the same thing in The Diamond age in anyway affect the validity of the patent?

saurik• 14 years ago

I am not a lawyer at all, but people were asking the same question with regards to features from the iPhone and the movie Minority Report, and someone (who may have not even been a person: probably they were a dog) said that fictional representations do not count: you must have concrete and operational implementations (even though the actual thing you are discussing is just a relatively simple idea; one so simple, you might have gotten it while watching a movie or reading a book published years earlier).

martythemaniak• 14 years ago

Let me paraphrase our new patent overlords:

The software on the Myhrvold side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changes everything right there.

mullingitover• 14 years ago

If you find yourself in the dystopian future where this is built into your $99 Best Buy 3D printer, just use your printer to make a new printer that's not DRM-encumbered.

pbharrin• 14 years ago

This article title is totally incorrect it misses a layer of logic. A better title would be: "Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to get royalties from 3D printer DRM software". Nathan Myhrvold was issued a patent on 3D printer DRM software, good it will put a barrier in place for anyone wishing to make DRM software which fights piracy, so actually Nathan Myhrvold is helping 3D printer piracy.

jrockway• 14 years ago

"It's like all previous DRM schemes, but this time it will work!"

Uh huh.

grecy• 14 years ago

Uh-Huh. CRM worked so well for DVDs and Blu-ray discs, surely it will be just as good on 3D printers! It's un-hackable(TM)!

malero• 14 years ago

TIL futuristic 3D-printers will have a 3.5" floppy disk drive and 2 sets of arrow keys on the keyboard.

I can't wait for the future!

jsilence• 14 years ago

I read "Now Intellectual Vultures...", realized my reading mistake and stopped reading the article. Somehow felt like I grasped the essence.

fjorder• 14 years ago

Myhrvold is thinking about printer "piracy" in exactly the same way that RIAA thinks about music "piracy", and we all know how productive that's been! Placing artificial legal limits on distribution technology simply doesn't work. Makers of objects that are 3D-printable need to learn from the recording industry's mistakes. Instead of trying to legislate away "piracy", they need to find ways to provide enough perceived value to consumers that they can compete. They need to learn from companies like Apple, Amazon, or Valve, not BMI, Sony, or Warners.

3D-printing is going to be rather limited at first. You're not likely to be able to 3D-print something as simple as a thermos-mug for quite some time! However, there is going to be room to use materials and construction methods that make traditionally manufactured goods distinct and desirable. There will also be ample opportunity to provide services surrounding the sale of 3D models, as Valve, Amazon, and Apple currently do for software sales.

One thing that is different from the music industry is that there will likely be a big market for bespoke designs. People are going to want items that are unique and tailored to their needs. Designing for mass production could give way to designing for individuals and industrial design could become a cottage craft. In this scenario, designers would make most of their money off of bespoke commissions. There may actually be an explosion in demand for designers since traditional manufacturing processes are not really suited to produce more than a few designs at a time. While bespoke designs may wind up being shared by buyers with "pirates", buyers will pay the cost of losing the uniqueness they paid for if they do share models. This is quite different from music. While people want their friends to listen to the music they like, they generally want to have distinctive items from them.

Similar to the labels that used to serve as distributors for music, manufacturers who only produce goods that can also be 3D-printed will be the big losers. Just as Artists who have treated "piracy" as the "new radio" have benefited, designers could also greatly benefit in a world with ubiquitous 3D printing. e.g. If a coffee mug you designed is trending on the "pirate" sites, you'll probably get a lot of bespoke commissions!

The prospects provided by 3D printing are especially enticing for consumers, and not just because it will be possible to find free designs and (presumably) save money. Consumers will have direct contact with designers and freedom from the constraints on design imposed by mass production. We are going to see the design of 3D printable models evolve to meet consumer needs faster and more effectively than at any point in human history. Whatever you're doing, the tools are just going to get more and more dialed in and perfect. You also won't need to go looking for a new design when you have an old design that was perfect, as we so often have to do now.

The only reason for DRM to exist is to protect the dinosaurs. Hopefully we've learned enough from the music and movie industries that we can be happy just letting them evolve or die.

dredmorbius2• 14 years ago

The structural effect of legally sanctioned DRM was to make large-scale for-profit audiovisual media replication (and services predicated in whole or part on this) impossible. It did rather less to save the old oligarchy (the entertainment-industrial cartel) though it may have slowed its decline somewhat, than it did quash the emergence of smaller-scale, decentralized upstarts.

Instead, we've ended up with Apple iTunes Store, YouTube, and a handful of streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify.

I see the Myhrvold patent as less a threat in itself than of a very strong indicator of how and what he's thinking of. And I don't care for what it suggests, though I don't know how bad the effects will be.

A huge factor for 3-D printing will be that replication isn't merely a copyright issue anymore, but that we'll be staring straight into the abyss of wide-scale patent infringement. A patent incurs infringement on anyone who ... "without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent".

Big ole' can o' worms there. And IV looks to be sitting right in the middle of it.

humdumb4• 14 years ago

"... without authority makes, ..."

There are exceptions, e.g., for research and development.

Would printing a prototype of a product to be produced overseas (and never imported) be infringement?

When patent trolls start being linked to loss of jobs, i.e. linked to impeding the creation of new jobs, then IV is going to have a more serious PR problem.

pIt is the aggressive pursuit of the small inventor^1 that will signal the eventual demise of the trolling business, because at that point it will have become more than just tax collection on innovation from existing businesses. It will be an impediment to the formation of new businesses and the creation of new jobs.

1. Ironically it was the small inventor, with the help of an enterprising litigator like Niro, approaching the large company producing products, like Intel, that motivated to the term "patent troll". But truthfully, some small inventors do want to produce products. Some of them do start companies. All large companies were once small ones. If the trolling business is taken to its natural end, building an impenetrable thicket that can block any player in a given industry, are potential entrepreneurs going to pay a troll for a license just to _start_ a business? What do you think?

zeruch• 14 years ago

DRM has worked so well in other areas so far :|

Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to Prevent 3-D Printer Piracy

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