Brett Myers tweeted a link to a blog post examining the legal questions surrounding the recent availability of files for 3D-printing your own Settlers of Catan components.
The analysis’s short answer: This probably does not violate any laws.
Should this be illegal? Probably not. If this were illegal, it’s hard to know how the law would be written in a way that’s not more oppressive and horrifying than the things it would stop.
The part of me that finds that just a little bit alarming draws comfort from the fact that musicians, writers, and filmmakers have solved, or are in the process of solving in sensible ways, the problem of making a living in a world where the replication of their work is trivial.
I don’t know anything about post author Michael Weinberg, or the group Public Knowledge. Of the former, the site says only that he’s been a member for 3 years 21 weeks. The latter “is a Washington DC based public interest group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture.”
As a board game designer, this certainly has interesting implications for the future of my craft. However, until it’s as easy as sharing mp3s I don’t think it’ll really have an appreciable impact. Honestly, it makes me want a 3D printer of my own for prototyping my own games–no more card board and Exacto knives for me!
I am interested in how this interpretation might affect a fan-site like boardgamegeek.com, which has had it’s share of difficulties with publishers for hosting fan-generated content based on protected IP. A certain UK-based miniature wargame manufacturer has been especially egregious in these cases, demanding take-downs of files with translated rules, fan-created player aids, unofficial expansions and the like, including many for games years out of print.
I can understand a publisher not wanting people to ‘pirate’ their games whole-cloth, but this seems like a costly and time consuming way to test drive a new game. I see this as something deeply fannish at this point, like elaborate cosplay. This isn’t something people are likely to do unless they’re already fans and have purchased their own copy of the game, etc. Once everyone has a desktop 3D printer it’ll be a different story, but by that time, there should be an “app store” for 3D printed objects (and of course, an active “torrent” community for the same).
Games Workshop’s policies and elbow-throwing in the areas you cite are, in my opinion, self-destructive. There is a legal point that if they don’t throw their elbows in defense of their IP to a certain extent then they may accidentally lose control of their own material if there’s ever a legal question, but GW’s legal department (or those they direct) display cluelessness, at the very least.