I got myself a 3D printer a few months ago. Still haven’t set it up, too much stuff going on.
I have been looking around various sites at what files are available for printing. I could name hundreds of comic book or movie characters that are certainly under copyright. If I knew anime better I could probably name hundreds more.
Almost zero of these sites have any kind of copyright notice from the creators. Some put copyright language on their product of some sort.
It’s not only that they sell a generic Spider-Man figure that would , I think, still fall under copyright. They make figures where you can actually name the original artist. Bruce Timm’s Batman characters and J. Scott Campbell’s women of all kinds are all over the place. Often they will label something different, like a Black Cat figure will be labeled “woman dressed like cat.”
It’s not just the odd small site, Etsy and ebay have thousands of these items.
Do companies just not care? Is it already too far spread to do anything effectively about it? What about the " defend your copyright or you may lose claims on it"?
Between gamers, miniature painters and collectors, there must be hundreds of million dollars involved here. I just can’t see Marvel-Disney-DC not trying to claw some of that money their way. It’s their characters and artwork, why give it away?
As someone who paints a lot of miniatures, I’ve known for a long time that you can buy cheap knockoffs from Asia and eastern Europe where it may be hard to enforce. Since 3D printing became a thing, many of these sites seem to be located in the US.
I suspect they care, as much as they’re aware of it. But playing whack-mole with hundreds of trivial anonymous violators could cost as much or more than they could make. Especially if they don’t have licensed products in that particular niche (where their upside is zero). And if there are licensors, they may have the greater burden since their exclusive and their revenues are on the line.
That’s a thing that doesn’t exist. You’re thinking of trademarks. Copyright is yours at creation and nothing can extinguish that (assuming the creation itself is legit).
I’m not clear: are you referring to people selling printed objects, selling .stl files, or free .stl? The first could fall under paying for filament and labor, the last for fair use. Sold Ultimately, it’s not worth it to pursue both because of scale and anonymity, but Disney has shown themselves to come down hard when they feel they need to.
My understanding of the law is that the site hosting the material isn’t responsible for finding copyright violations, but that the copyright holder has to find these things and then report them to the hosting site. For the same reason, YouTube has lots of television shows, movies and music that’s under copyright.
All three, since the people doing this have no license to produce these figures in the first place. Even distributing them for free.
But they don’t have license to do the first and selling hundreds or thousands of your copies of Bruce Timm’s art for cash isn’t fair use.
Depends where you are. In England it seems if you don’t use your copyright to produce a product, the originator of the product gets it back. If you held copyright to The Beatles catalog and didn’t release albums The Beatles themselves can start releasing their catalog.
I think you are right about the US tho. Looks like life of the creator plus 90 years, whether you protect it or not.
I must be out of step (hard to believe, I know) but I thought they had really cracked down on that in the last few years.
Funny enough, Disney is one of the most popular companies that this happens to. There are no end of various Princesses out there that aren’t licensed.
Isn’t this the same issue with any other site hosting fan art of characters? There were always plenty of those even before 3D printing became a thing.
Copyright and trademark are both things that could potentially apply, here, but this case might fall into the cracks between them. Copyright applies to specific creative works. If you duplicate and distribute an existing comic book, you’re certainly violating copyright, because a comic book is as a whole a creative work. If you duplicate one specific scene from a comic book, with such-and-such characters in specific poses and so on, that might be a violation of copyright, since that scene could be considered a creative work. But if you’re just creating art of character who’s wearing the same costume as a comic-book character (but is not in a specific pose, context, etc. copied from the book), is that enough to be considered a “creative work”? What if the art is colorless (as an STL file is)-- Can you really say that it’s a “copy” of Spider-Man’s red-and-blue costume?
On the other hand, individual character designs can be trademarks, because they can be used to identify a particular business’s products or services. If you make a comic book that has a character on the cover wearing red-and-blue tights with a black spider emblem on their chest and big white eyes, a buyer might reasonably be led to believe that this is a comic book created by Marvel, because that character appearance is distinctive of Marvel comic books. And so you could be in trademark trouble for that. But on the other hand, if the nature of your use is such that nobody could confuse it for the actual company, then trademark protection doesn’t apply.
I don’t think so. I don’t think most people made, or tried to make, any money off of fan art. It was just fan art. Deviantart has a ton of fan art for copyrighted characters. Maybe the difference is that it’s actually their own art, not a direct copy like many of the .stl files are.
I’m not sure you could come up with a pose that isn’t similar to one used somewhere in the comics. Some of these have been around for close to a century.
There is more than color to Spider-Mans various costumes. The look of the costume can tell you exactly which Spidey you are dealing with, color or no.
It’s generally a bad idea to sue your biggest fans, and the people making and buying these creations tend to be the biggest fans of the original work. Some companies are happy to sue their fans, but many, particularly for this small scale stuff, just let it slide. Some even encourage fan creations.
It can also be a priorities thing. Do you spend your legal budget going after the counterfeiting company selling thousands in fake merchandise on Amazon, or after some random fan who has sold 6 copies of an stl file on Etsy?
If they really care, they’ll send a DMCA notice to Etsy and get the file taken down.
This is pretty safe for the copyright holder. They can tolerate some infringement as long as they want, and change their mind later. There is no danger of genericazation with copyrights.
I am most familiar with the Warhammer40K crowd. Some of the folks in some of these circles are doing it just to stick it to the manufacturer and or expand the hobby. Many of them just want to see the people be able to play. When a box of 5 plastic minis costs $40 and baseline battles might need at least 30-40 minis…it doesn’t take long for a small 3d printer to become cost effective. many do sell (as far as I know) STL modification packs with alternate weapons and poses that can be added to existing authentic models. Marginally skilled mold makers can also copy the authentic models and make virtually identical versions then claiming that they are selling painted originals (which would be a totally legal service) even though they are reproductions that cost a fraction as much.
