3d printing and our rights in the makerspace

The Sussex Humanities Lab has a 3d printer.

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Thingiverse is the main place to get digital files for printing. Most of the content on Thingiverse is open licensed, meaning that – in most cases – the uploader of the digital file claims copyright and the right to apply to Creative Commons licenses (or similar) to their copyright.

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A quick survey of Thingiverse suggests that uploaders may not have the right to apply open licenses to some of the content they upload. Borderline cases include:

– This file www.thingiverse.com/thing:116411 is a design plan for blocks compatible with Duplo.
– This file www.thingiverse.com/thing:2285505 is a design plan for terrain made from in copyright Google Maps data at touchterrain.geol.iastate.edu/
– The file www.thingiverse.com/thing:912478 is a model of the Eiffel Tower

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Given the academic interest in 3d printing this session will introduce 3d printing and discuss the potential future legal challenges of the technology.

Categories: Session: Play |

About James Baker

James Baker is a Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex (and the awesome Sussex Humanities Lab). He is a historian of long eighteenth century Britain and of contemporary archiving. He is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and holds degrees from the University of Southampton and latterly the University of Kent, where in 2010 he completed his doctoral research on the late-Georgian satirical artist-engraver Isaac Cruikshank. As an eighteenth centuryist, his research interests include satirical art, the making and selling of printed objects, urban protest, and corpus analysis. His near contemporary historical interests include the curation of personal digital archives, the critical examination of forensic software and captures, the use of born-digital archives in historical research, and scribing and archiving in the age of the hard disk. Prior to joining Sussex, James has held positions of Digital Curator at the British Library and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies of British Art. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar and a member of the History Lab Plus Advisory Board.