Nobody likes reading the fine print, least of all when you’re just downloading some 3D model. While printing a copy for personal use this is rarely an issue, things can get a lot more complicated when you make and distribute a derived version of a particular model.
Case in point the ever popular 3DBenchy model, which was intended to serve as a diagnostic aid by designer [Creative Tools] (recently acquired by [NTI Group] ). Although folks have been spinning up their own versions of this benchmark print for years, such derivative works were technically forbidden by the original model’s license — a fact that the company is now starting to take seriously, with derivative models reportedly getting pulled from Printables.
The license for the 3DBenchy model is (and always has been) the Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0, which requires attribution and forbids distributing of derivative works. This means that legally any derived version of this popular model being distributed on Thingiverse, Printables, etc. is illegal, as already noted seven years ago by an observant user on Reddit. According to the message received by a Printables user, all derived 3DBenchy models will be removed from the site while the license is now (belatedly) being enforced.
Although it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment with this license enforcement, ultimately the idea of Creative Commons licenses was that they set clear rules for usage, which become meaningless if not observed.
Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip.
In before 3DFreechy.
FreeDBenchy
Frenchy for short?
im out of white filament.
Well that’s gonna be interesting, wonder if they’re going to blow their other foot off as well?
More interesting, they seem to run competitions encouraging people to mix up and modify Benchy, the T&Cs of which might blow up their chances of trying to enforce ‘no derivatives’
https://www.3dbenchy.com/category/3dbenchy-variations/
https://www.3dbenchy.com/and-the-winners-are/
“No derivatives” is a clause that applies to you and the rest of us, not the copyright holder.
They can allow you to distribute your derivative back to them for the competition. They can even allow you to distribute it elsewhere if they choose (although I would want it in writing just to protect myself)
They can even gasp issue you a completely different license if they wish!
CC BY is to get credit where credit is due. CC ND is 100% about control.
slumber when enforcing copyright is cause for the copyright to be revoked. they’ve failed to enforce their copyright forever. see Star Wars for an example.
Funny, I get a “connection refused” accessing 3dbenchy.com. DDoS?
Imagine if other benchmarks allowed derivative works to be distributed. Suddenly Intel’s video processors would out benchmark all the other chips on the market. Or suddenly zilog’s z80 would come back from the dead and out perform super computers.
Benchmarks are closed to protect their integrity as a benchmark.
Since benchy is distributed as an STL file, every single end user modifies it for personal use (by passing the STL through their slicer with 100s of configurable options for printing). There is no integrity to be protected here. Forbidding us from sharing the millions of derivatives serves no noble purpose.
This is just a normal intellectual property trap. Someone releases a standard, sits back silently while the standard freely proliferates, and then shows up years later to troll anyone who adopted the standard. It happened with MP3, XML, and even the concept of “machine vision”.
The legal defense is called “laches”, which says you cannot entrap people by staying silent while they accidentally build up more violations.
Intel already tried that exact thing. Didn’t stop people from using PassMark, calling Intel out for lying and trying to be tricky, and for the longest time no one in the know ever recommended Intel graphics. Even when their GPUs improved, reviews for a long time after were “It’s probably crap because they habitually lie to us and have been caught doing it before. Not worth your time”
Same will (and has) happened for 3d printer makers. Destroy trust once and people won’t waste time seeing if you’ve improved.
That is hardly the same thing. Do you even know what a benchy is or what people use them for? A benchy is more of a testing tool than anything else.
Looks like 3dbenchy.com is down, which is a shame, because I was genuinely curious what their business model could possibly be…
This actually piqued my curiosity and 3dbenchy is owned by Creative Tools AB (creativetools.se) which seems to have been acquired by NTI Group which says they are “a leading full-service supplier of digital solutions for the construction, design, manufacturing and media & entertainment industries.” (from https://www.nti-group.com/home)
So basically, there is no business profit to be made from restricting it, just the fear of potentially losing profit by allowing it to be unrestricted. In other words, it’s typical corporate BS.
Acquire and kill methodology, huh?
I’m sure Creative Tools knew their license and that they technically had the ability to enforce it.
I’m also sure they knew they had a good thing going by making their original more and more popular.
Which reminds me, I’m gonna go throw away the couple I’ve printed and stick with somebody else’s files from now on.
Here’s hoping this is a massive net loss for NTI…
What is the point in throwing it away? It is still free to print and the company doesn’t profit from them anyway, so throwing away the ones you have printed seems pointless. Chances are that the community will still keep using them for testing unless something better comes along.
Every end of an era feels weird.
Especially with a close to open source everything crowd that is 3d print everything internet.
Did someone start charging for a derivative, creating a need to reinforce all licenses? Or did the creator have a mental break down and think the love is mocking his wonderful design?
Now the 3d Printering articles can end with short blurbs supporting the next meme test print that stays open source….
Nope: it’s lawyer talk for “we can make money here”
After 7 years of non enforcement they have abandoned their rights to any claims.
Gl to them in court. Especially proving damages as a company that can’t even keep a website up let alone enforce claims of IP.
Sure yep. You get right on that. Let us know when you’ve paid the thousands in court costs to reinstate the legal protection of a 3d printed tug boat. I mean everyone else might see the cost benefit there as horrible but you sir I believe in you.
I looked this up because I was curious about the long time of non-enforcement. It turns out that unlike trademarks, which you will loose if you don’t actively pursue infringement, licensing doesn’t expire or become nullified due to lack of enforcement.
However, it can become difficult to actually litigate. Some reasons for that might be:
Doctrine of Laches: Courts may apply the doctrine of laches, which prevents legal claims if there has been an unreasonable delay in bringing them. A defendant might argue that your delay in enforcement misled them into believing you would not assert your rights.
Perception of Abandonment: Failing to enforce your license over a long period may create a perception that you are not serious about enforcing it, which could weaken your bargaining position.
Also if you try to enforce it selectively, the defense may argue:
Risk of Claims of Unfair Enforcement: Defendants might argue that your selective enforcement is inequitable or inconsistent, which could influence a court’s judgment.
License Terms and Equal Treatment: Some open-source licenses are based on principles of fairness and equal treatment. Selective enforcement may be perceived as contradictory to these principles and could raise community backlash or reputational issues.
Waiver Risk: While open-source licenses generally specify that failure to enforce a breach does not waive rights, a court could potentially consider selective enforcement as evidence of implied waiver or as undermining your credibility.
Interesting! Thanks!
All it’s going to do is cause people to move to a different benchmark they aren’t special.
time to develop OpenBench?
I feel sorry for those people that made the life-size working Benchy boat.
Yes, I know… forbidding distributing derivative works is not the same thing as forbidding making them.
But… in a few years, when we are all using some new open-source print and have forgotten about Benchy they will have a silly plastic boat that they put all that time and effort into but no longer has the same meaning.
Always read the license before basing a significant amount of work on something pre-existing!
How about all of those idiots that got Benchy Tattoos… “No Ragrets” there. :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/ERHwNdOTh0
At least the wheel and axle aren’t under Creative Commons…
At least until it is found on a clay tablet written in cuneiform!
I haven’t ever printed a benchy. It became this silly, stupid source of pride for me.
I’m curious why this was ever a thing, and why now are they enforcing it. It’s not like the market is finally primed for benches and they can cash in. It’s a stupid, simple object that has a handful of challenges for FDM manufacturing.
I support the choice to have it be no-derivatives, and their choice to enforce or not, but seriously – what’s going on?
The blog says it was a diagnostic aid.
“3DBenchy model, which was intended to serve as a diagnostic aid by designer [Creative Tools]”
Other than “is it working?” what other diagnostics does it provide?
Good for testing some basics, overhangs, dimensional accuracy, first layer, etc.
But more importantly, it was a model that many/most people were familiar with, so it made a good reference.
https://all3dp.com/2/benchy-troubleshooting-guide/ this has some common troubleshooting info w/ a benchy
In the infancy of home 3D printing, Benchy was actually challenging. The roof is not only a printed bridge (and also a pun), but if your slicer does dumb things with the order it prints inside/outside lines the whole middle will be printed in midair. The curved hull was difficult for early printers to replicate smoothly. The slanted roof and gunwales highlight layer steps. The scupper/anchor hole is a round hole, even at a time when most people printed holes as a teardrop. The rear flag holder is a tiny detail that some printers would mangle and some slicers would totally ignore. The roof and smokestack have small open-air overhangs. And many of the features have precise even-numbered dimensions that allow you to check your printer’s calibration without printing a boring cube.
Take a look at some recent speed-Benchy efforts. Ten or fifteen years ago your printer would spend two hours making something that mangled.
Thanks, Ben!
That helped!
speaking of puns … would the news coverage of this be called “bench press”?
yeah benchy doesn’t fit me either. when i build things, i specifically think about the shapes i need…overhangs, bridges, holes, etc. i don’t want some abstract / aesthetic / subjective measurement of how well-dialed-in my printer is. i just accept it as it is and design for its observed limitations.
after a decade with my Mixshop Kossel, i’m getting a new printer and i guess i’m excited to see if its print quality is good enough to change my design habits. a good way to contrast me from the users that do print benchies is that i’ve owned and loved this printer for a decade and printed 120 objects i designed myself (mostly utility), and only used 7 rolls of filament in that whole time.
but some people are setting up dozens of printers or are printing for aesthetics so they want to quickly diagnose a wide range of problems that i don’t care about. so i definitely see a need for an object with a range of overhangs and fine details. don’t know why it has to be ‘cute’. does feel like it would be nice if it was well-known, a defacto standard.
but i guess the people who are printing for aesthetics prefer to have a cute test object. that’s fine. i don’t think the downsides of this crappy licensing even matter that much for them. reading about 3d printers on reddit has convinced me that people only get into it for mandalorean cosplay so ignoring unfriendly licenses seems baked into the game.
So in other words you have barely printed anything? Less than 1 kg per year. Likely what you have printed isn’t very large either.
You can say you don’t need aesthetics all you want but you actually do, especially for functional prints. The print looking good means it is printed properly. If it has rough walls and holes in the surfaces then it hasn’t printed well and is likely weak and on top of that it won’t be dimensionally accurate.
Printing a benchy means that the printer can manage to print in that material all of the features of a benchy, overhangs, bridges, small layers, towers, etc. which makes it good for testing if the printer is working well and if the slicer profile is good for that material. It’s good for testing things like retraction settings, temperatures, fan speeds, print speeds, etc. You might not need any of that if you only print basic objects with basic materials at slow speeds but even in functional designs and even when designing for 3D printing there are times when adding those kinds of features to your parts is very useful or even necessary so knowing ahead of time that the printer is capable of printing those features is useful.
Running test prints (benchies or otherwise) is always a good idea when dealing with new materials, it is good to separate your own design from a new material and make sure that you can print the material well before you try your own design.
There are other, more functional and scientific test prints you could do but for most people the benchy is fine and if you can make it look good then why not?
Well, something was going to be the most 3D printed object ever. It just happened that in this universe, it turned out to be a model boat that capsizes when introduced to water.
I suppose it varies in different jurisdictions.
But isn’t the idea of copyright for patterns a bit ambiguous anyway? You can “copyright” (it’s a design patent”) the pattern, but not the look as such. The whole fashion industry is predicated in the fact that changing colors or material or even deriving a new pattern without copying using the original is permitted.
I assume an STL could have a design patent, or even a copyright claim for the resulting “character”. But the derivatives would specifically not be covered by the design pattern. So possibly you could claim copyright on the original STL, but given that there is no copyright on technical drawings, I don’t see how that would work.
I actually think the ND license is not enforceable but rather a polite request.
All that said IANAL.
i think technical drawings are generally copyrightable.
i’m curious if someone made a different tugboat-themed benchmark and called it mcbenchface, what sort of trouble they’d run into.
The design was all screwed up anyway – it didn’t float without flipping over. I have no idea why it was so popular :-)
Time for a new design – maybe Boaty
Boaty McPrint Face.
Hahaha ok you beat me by 7 minutes. I must have been reading the article and comments when you posted.
I think we can all agree it should be a small tugboat wearing a clearly fake nose, mustache and glasses.
I forsee Benchy McBenchface hitting printables soon.
So, lawyer here – this very much smacks of post-acquisition territory marking — probably being done by some poor in-house paralegal or junior attorney who was told to get a bunch of takedowns out. It makes zero business sense since I can’t find any money being made off the original and hiring a law firm to do this would be an insane waste of cash.
I’m thinking new acquisition, new year, some exec said “let’s make sure our IP is all secure” and the brown stuff rolled down to some junior cog who is now spending their time on google looking for derivatives and sending out a bazillion form letters.
Can’t imagine they would actually take anyone to court over this.
Also, I’m not sure the term “illegal” is correct although (1) I’m not an IP lawyer and (2) the DMCA is definitely an effed up piece of legislation.