[Editor’s note: A few days later, it looks now like Prusa pulled the models of their own accord, because of their interpretation of the copyright law. Creative Tools and NTI claim that they were not involved.]
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.
Are you raising the white (filament) flag?
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.
No it isn’t. You are clearly confusing trademark law and copyright law. They aren’t even related to each other in function.
Funny, I get a “connection refused” accessing 3dbenchy.com. DDoS?
More likely turtle and hide until the story blows over.
My guess there is a deal in the works foe a movie with a 3dbenchy character in it and they want that sweet sweet kids toy money.
Creative Commons licenses are a default grant, and are non-exclusive. They are certainly free to offer up alternate licensing for individuals or for specific contests or the like; this does not change the default grant of the base model.
If you can prove that you obtained a Benchy model under a more permissive license that was granted by the copyright holder, then you can continue to use it under the terms of that license. I see no evidence that Benchy was ever placed under such a license.
Instead of fighting or lawyering it, probably more effective to just make a new benchmark and make benchy irrelevant.
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.
Using an STL and having it be modified as a result of that usage is different than redistributing it after making those modifications.
This license actually means that Bambu is in violation as they provide a pre-sliced gcode that’s derived from the STL.
No it doesn’t, this is like saying a saved pdf or postscript file of a document is infringing. The derived gcode is a postprocess necessary for printing the unmodified benchy on their hardware. Now they could be requested to stop distributing it, but it is not a violation.
The modifications they are trying to prevent are changes to the model design, or rehashes that intend to make modifications easy. This is about control over that design.
What are you talking about? MP3 wasn’t free or distributed, nor was it a standard. It was a proprietary encoding technology developed for, and sold to, music publishers for their catalogues. Reverse engineered codecs and encoders made it popular despite that and the developer did initially go after people in Europe. XML is an open standard, do you mean OOXML?, the sham “standard” that Microsoft pushed just long enough to hurt litigation for open documents? Likewise, “machine vision” is a descriptive term that can apply to anything from counting machines to modern navigation equipment, it’s not proprietary.
What? It’s a 3D model; you can always download the official model if you don’t want a modified version. There is no integrity concerns here; the benchmark for its intended purpose is only really useful to the end-user anyway. The license has everything to do with restricting freedom and almost nothing to do with saving any so-called “integrity.” You can, for instance, print any model with purposefully botched print settings to try and get a false warranty claim through; there are no special integrity checks that this license somehow enables in that capacity.
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.
I’m sorry, but a Benchy is a hyped, overrated, prestige object that is claiming to be a testing object. There are far better print objects to calibrate your printer than a Benchy. I don’t think you would want to change settings in between Benchy prints. See it more as “I’ve completed dialing in my printer, now show the rest of the world my Benchy!”.
It works perfectly fine as a simple test print and is not bad for dialing in print settings, especially for new materials.
Is there anything special or unique about it? No. It is just convenient and suitable. It isn’t the most scientific or functional test either but it doesn’t need to be.
Ahh it’s hard to argue with the truth. You’re right in that if I was tuning any particular setting I’d get a test specific to that setting. But I still like the Benchy a lot. It’s the combination of test object + cute trinket that makes it popular, sharable, comparable. It’s the bow and the proofmark all in one.
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!
ChatGPT is not a lawyer unfortunately, and really should be viewed with an extraordinarily high level of skepticism when it comes to legal advice.
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.
All it’s going to do is cause people to move to a different benchmark they aren’t special.
Because the 3d printing community in reality is small it will piss off pretty much everyone and the company will become more of a stigma rather than a benefit. Ultimately unless they backpedal really really quickly which i doubt they will this will do more harm than good.
Anyone remember Makerbot? Yea. That’s what happens when you screw around and find out.
time to develop OpenBench?
Open Willie would offer so much commentary on copyright and weird conversations with whoever is monitoring your search history… https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/e/e0/Steamboat_Willie_itself.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160427203649
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
Hey! I am one of those idiots. Regardless of what happens to Benchy now, it won’t change what it meant for me. An incredible design created by Daniel Norée that I strived to print cleanly a decade ago. :)
I hope their page is getting DDOSd
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/ERHwNdOTh0
Link ain’t working capt’n
It still works for me… Hmm… Here’s what the post reads as of this moment:
“About 3DBenchy… Someone else owns the rights now. That’s why.
TL:DR, a new entity owns the #3DBenchy, and they seem to be far more intent on enforcing the original license, which is where all the takedowns are coming from. Please don’t flame the original creators, it’s not them. SOURCE, from Daniel Norée, the man who made it.
So some of you may have seen these posts about 3DBenchy derivatives suddenly being being taken down (context). People are (IMO, rightfully) getting pissed off that their models are suddenly being taken down. That anger is totally valid, but right now it’s largely misdirected. This isn’t Creative Tools suddenly deciding to enforce the license after not giving a hoot for years. Creative Tools as a company is no more, and another entity has acquired their assets, including the IP of 3DBenchy. This new entity is enforcing the existing license, which is where the takedowns are coming from. Please do not go yelling at Daniel Norée or those who worked at Creative Tools, cause they’re not the ones doing this.
This seems like a hell of a low blow to me, and totally pointless, but here we are.
If you want to read about the Benchy and end of Creative Tools, Daniel wrote about it here.
Open source all the things!
(I am in no way affiliated with any of the involved parties, this is just a PSA)
EDIT:
For those asking who owns the rights now, it appears NTI Group bought Creative Tools. The link on the Creative Tools Facebook page now redirects here: https://www.nti-group.com/se/branscher/media-och-underhallning
Please be civil everyone.”
One nice move would be to print a lot of benches and then physically cut them in half and recombine them in a massive sculpture of a mid finger to be delivered at their door 🤣. They own the model but if you print it and then manually change it I think they can’t do much. I I have a Fender Stratocaster and I customize it chopping of bits, changing the pickups there’s not much Fender can do about it.
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”?
I never noticed that bridge pun before. Thanks for pointing it out!
As others have pointed out the site appears to be down currently, but normally there’s page on there where you can compare your printed boat with the ideal result and narrow down what your particular issues might be. So if you see wavy lines in the hull, do B. If the roof of the cabin looks bad, do C. That sort of thing.
But there’s nothing on there that any halfway modern printer would actually struggle with anymore, so while it might have started as a “torture test” it has now become more of a rite of passage for new printer owners.
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?
i care about the things i care about. just because i don’t care about aesthetics doesn’t mean i don’t care about the things i care about. don’t give me this garbage.
i guess this comment was worthy of a better response. because i said i don’t care about aesthetics.
so i do care about something. i care about engineering. so my process is generally that i characterize my printer. i don’t have numerical perfection in this characterization but i know what kind of overhangs i can accomplish, and i have a good idea of when i can get away with 1mm walls or when i need thicker or with ribs or whatever. and i am pretty good at it because almost everything i make fails to the fact that pla turns into brittle garbage after 2-8 years of the humidity we have here.
so i engineer to a certain standard, defined by my needs and my printer as it is today.
i could improve my printer. i could clean up its defects. i could spend my hobby time a lot of different ways and without a doubt i could make an improvement on my printer. and then i would get higher quality prints, but what does that mean?
it means i would engineer to a certain different standard, defined by my needs, and the printer as it would be after i did that work.
it would still have limitations and i’d still have to characterize them and accept their shackles as i design my parts. and, specifically, they would still all succeed pretty well except for the fact that pla turns into brittle garbage after 2-8 years.
engineering means designing to the printer you have, no matter how good it is or isn’t.
anyways after 8-9 years every piece of pla on my printer turned to brittle garbage just like all of its products, and now i’m getting a new printer that can print petg! and i still won’t print a benchy and i’ll still be conservative with overhangs and holes until i learn what its limits are. i have a variable “ee=0.3;” at the top of my openscad that defines my dimensional tolerance and will i improve it to “ee=0.1” ??? i hope so but i don’t care if i do.
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.
They think they’re going to monetize the benchy. I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to go how they think it is going to go.
Yep getting to work on an Open Source freely remixable Benchy of my own now. Never using OG Benchy again screw your download traffic.
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.
Or BrianBenchBoat!
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.
Someone has already made a Boaty and is planning to release the stl shortly.
It’s a model of a park bench.
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1hxk3wn/i_created_this_great_test_print_which_tests/
Someone needs to collect all of the derivative benchys available and put them on the Pirate Bay.
Never printed one. I had a decapi-cat instead.
I suppose we could do a 3DMousey since Mickey is now in the public domain…
Benchy is stupid. A million better calibration models out there. The fact that they want to enforce the copy right agreement, like a benchy isn’t just a waste of filament… good for them. They should take their dumb little boat and keep it all to themselves, the 3D printing community will survive…
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.
Looks like CreativeTools released 3DBenchy via MyMiniFactory with remixing turned on
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-3dbenchy-the-jolly-3d-printing-torture-test-6544 on 11/04/2015
Isn’t a print of the benchy technically a derivative work? It’s not the model, it’s a representation of the model?
The CC license is for a boat called “3DBenchy.” And yes, the new owners can task enforcement of “non-derivatives” if they so choose, and own all the ill will will from the printing community. I’m sure one of their IP lawyers said, ‘hey, if you don’t enforce this, 3DBenchy becomes a common name and loses CC licensing restrictions. And “we” did buy 3dbenchy.com, so why did we waste our money if we aren’t going to protect it?’
So yeah, they’re enforcing takedowns and betting on no one will have the time and money to take them to court. Just like it’s easier to for companies to remove content from a takedown notice and repost it later once the smoke has cleared.
No this enterprising person has posited this as printer test piece instead. (https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1hxk3wn/i_created_this_great_test_print_which_tests/)
I think that person should call it a “Benchy” because you know, the other one is CC’d as “3DBenchy” and this one, well, is a bench.
Ever hear of Estoppel? If they failed to enforce a license for years, then they have chosen to waive that license. This gotcha stuff shouldn’t fly at all.
I vote we respect their wishes and walk away from 3DBenchy. We the community need to get-together and create a set of park bench models with overhangs and small details etc; and then have a “bake off” to select the best one with the best license, and then we can all start using that instead.
Since their trademark is on 3DBenchy not “benchy” we don’t even have to come up with a witty name for our new park benchies…
Yeah you must obey the patent trolls
I just bought a flashforge AD5M and one of the test gcode files included with the printer is a boat clearly inspired by benchy, only slightly modified, and I noticed it prints with some unusual toolpaths, I think the gcode has been tweaked to make it print faster. I tried to print an actual bench on the printer and I was unable to get it to print even close to the speed of the custom file.
I have seen all the Benchy derivatives I ever care to see already. There is no more stretching, bending and scaling that can be done to this thing, the potential hes been exhausted. Just like there’s the guy above here that has never printed a Benchy, I bet there’s some 14 yr old on r/3dprinting who has printed ONLY Benchies of different sizes and shapes. (I’m sure he adds the Rock’s head, or Groot, or baby yoda to it at some point, but every print has Benchy)
Frankly, I was already tired of it years ago. It is for the better.
Time to sink the benchy.
The very first time I heard of Benchy was in an article here written by Brian Benchoff. I actually thought for quite a while that it was named after him.
Can’t wait for generative AI to start making better models. I tried a few for a VR video game I am making with my 5 year old but not quite there yet so I still need to keep my blender chops up to speed but clearly that will be a game changer and a lot of copywrite, or whatever, owners will crap their pants and yell on the internet which is a bonus.
Isn’t being a standard immutable reference the whole point of a benchmark?
Testing an optimization/rendering/printing workflow on a precooked file is pointless unless you are trying to defraud someone.
On the other hand are you allowed to give someone a printed benchy? I mean that would be distributing a derivative work wouldn’t it? Or publish a picture to show the results of testing? Or does this only apply to digital files!
I do not have a dog in this fight (as the saying goes), but what we need now is for people to come up with other boat models based off of historic cabin boats, and make a new model that is completely free. Yes, they have the right to protect their IP, and we have the right to take our printers some place else…
I was thinking the same thing. If I had confidence people would align behind it, I’d model a funny little boat in a few hours and release it totally freely, no strings attached. So sick of corporate greed.
I don’t have a strong feeling about the derivative work of Benchy as I wasn’t 3D printing at the time, but I’m always sad seeing creative work of literal tens of thousands of designs destroyed. I’m curious how far they’ll go. If it’s only the direct derivatives. Say, Benchy with a Santa hat or arms. Or if they’ll also attempt to remove all work that even resembles the boat or uses the word ‘benchy’.
Maybe some dedicated people want to build a website to commemorate the 3D printing history, including a subsection on Benchy derivative work. If you do so, make it educational, and archive as many of the photos and videos of the 3D printed objects. Just don’t redistribute the files.
Why? Why waste even more resources? Why even try to fight this shit? It’s a damn ugly boat. If something more worth of saving into the future gets saved instead of this, the better.
Maybe create something better that isn’t under some corporate threat. Let them keep this.
Never printed the damn boat and never will.
I don’t know if it’s worth preserving. I see it as an example of remix culture to a degree I’ve not seen in recent years. Most aren’t great works of art, but there are a lot of them. The rise and fall of Benchy could be a chapter in the book on 3D printing history.
This community is large enough and friendly enough that there will quickly be a free alternative and Benchy will just be boycott for pulling such a shady move.
Go watch “3DBency Takedown Mystery” from “Lawful Masses with Leonard French” YouTube.
Summary: It appears that Prusa Research removed the 3DBenchy derivatives from Printables.com ON THEIR OWN VOLITION based on an unnamed 3rd-party report. Neither the original creators nor the current owners, NTI, requested or knew about the removals. NTI stated publicly they did not and do not intend to enforce the “no derivates” aspects of the license and they are now in contact with Prusa to work on a resolution.
Hackaday really needs to investigate further, everyone may have jumped the gun.
Also note that Printables is hosted in a country that doesn’t have DMCA protections, so without the safe harbor law they can’t take any chances if they find out something is infringing copyright on their platform.
That’s interesting! It does look (now) like Prusa took these steps on their own, out of (possibly, but I’m not their lawyer) an overabundance of caution.
We can’t see into the future, but our posts stick around, so I’ve tossed in a note at the top of the article to prevent confusion.
It would seem to me that a lot of these derivatives would fall squarely under the “parody” fair-use exemption in copyright law. AFAIK license agreements can grant additional rights but cannot remove existing rights (such as fair-use).