After MakerBot changed the Terms of Service for their popular 3D printables site, Thingiverse, there was an uproar in the 3D printing community about the ownership rights relating to 3D models. The change was, according to the company, meant to grant MakerBot permission to host the images and files of its users, protecting them from potential lawsuits. While many have begun looking elsewhere for a 3D printables site with more open ToS, there are few sites as extensive as Thingiverse. Fortunately, YouMagine, one of the larger competitors to Thingiverse, has announced the beginnings of its own ToS and an open source license, to protect community members’ property rights and enable their ability to share and collaborate.
Explaining that they’d like to “make the plumbing for 3D printing and make things as malleable as memes”, the YouMagine team is in the process of “creating the necessary infrastructure on top of which others can build.” To do so, YouMagine is allowing its community to guide that infrastructure, by contributing to their Terms of Service and writing the rules for Share3D, their open source, open source license. The community itself will develop the means for outlining the Share3D license, with some broad goals laid out by the site’s Community Manager, Joris Peels.
Peels explains that the Creative Commons license doesn’t quite fit the world of digital objects, particularly when complex objects like 3D printed houses and commercial products developed by the open source community are concerned. To bring the principles underlying the Creative Commons license from the world of 2D data and software into the world of 3D printing, Peels asks YouMagine’s members for input:
- Open Source or Free Software?
- If Mary makes a design file for a hinge and Bob adapts it. Should Bob & Mary be considered the designers of the object? Or should Mary be designated as the designer and Bob the “adaptor” of it?
- If a team of ten designs an object together should they be listed in order of the level of their contribution? Or should they all be considered the designer of the object collectively & equally?
- Should a designer be able to specify that their object can not be remixed or changed in any way?
There are many more questions, as Peels is trying to start a dialogue that address the wide variety of concerns the community may express. In this way, YouMagine is truly trying to embody the role of a facilitator, instead of dictator. Think of it like one of those classes you had with a really hip teacher that has the students themselves create the Ground Rules (Rule 1, Respect: This is a safe zone. Anything that’s said within the group, stays in the group). The same goes for the site’s ToS.
Rather than write up ToS and imposing them on their users, in a top-down approach, YouMagine wants the community to come up with the terms, while fulfilling the needs of YouMagine. Peels, lays out the sorts of ToS that YouMagine hopes to fulfill. Things like:
- We want a huge corporate platform and a one man band to both be able to let people remix and share online without falling foul of relevant laws.
- We also want a ToS to be available that respects community member’s rights. We want this ToS to be as clear and concise as possible and via bullet points point out the major legal implications to users.
- We want this ToS to be functional in reducing legal risk to platform owners and community members alike across the breath of criminal, IP & other tort risks.
- We want to preempt the first serious legal challenge for patent infringement on a platform by doing what we can to mitigate the impact this would have on an organization or individual.
- We want to preempt the first serious product or manufacturer liability case by clearly reducing the risk to the 3D printer operator, end user and platform.
There are more on that list, that give an even clearer idea of what YouMagine is after, but these terms not concrete, as you can tell from the language invoked above. Peels goes on to ask the community for feedback on the extensive list with questions such as:
- Of the things mentioned above, what do you disagree with?
- What have we missed?
- What are some IoT or open hardware projects emerging that we should pay special attention to?
- For automobiles, drones and the like liability poses a high risk. Should we exclude these things from the license? Make a another license for high risk things?
- What do you feel we should do about guns? We could exclude these completely or let them be shared?
- Is it fair to the user to in a blanket way just label everything that is made with IoT, Open hardware & 3D printing experimental? Is it tenable in the long run?
Over the next three weeks, YouMagine will used the community’s feedback to develop its Share3D License and ToS with an Alpha version of both to be completed by the end of September. If all goes well, YouMagine may be able to craft an open source community for 3D printable designs and, more importantly, lay the basis for a new approach to property management in the 21st Century. Want to participate in this futuristic utopian experiment? Email [email protected].
