Ebay Shop Scrapes Thingiverse, Sells Designs In Violation of Creative Commons (all3dp.com) 138
He Who Has No Name writes: A little over a week ago, Thingiverse user Loubie posted Sad Face! to Thingiverse, protesting the use — without permission — of their designs and those of others by JustPrint3D, an Ebay seller marketing physical prints of the designs in question (over 2,000 by some counts). Despite a terse and legally shaky denial of any wrongdoing by JustPrint3D, there are obviously multiple violations of various iterations of the Creative Commons licenses (several forms of the CC license are options for Thingiverse uploaders to assign to their Things when uploading, and one is the default). Now MakerBot itself is wading into the uproar firmly on the side of its users, and has released a statement mentioning potential legal action.
Empty (Score:5, Informative)
Their Ebay store is empty.
Re:Empty (Score:4, Informative)
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Looks like in the intervening time between when I submitted this yesterday and it was posted today, JustPrint3D either removed everything from their store, or Ebay swung the ban hammer.
Interesting...
fits the pattern (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:fits the pattern (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay only takes action against illegal things when there is bad press.
That is a smart and effective policy. There is no competitive advantage in being ethical if nobody notices.
Re:fits the pattern (Score:5, Insightful)
Said like a true sociopath!
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Said like a true business leader!
FTFY.
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Said like a true business leader!
FTFY.
Not sure I'm seeing what was fixed there...
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> FTFY.
I dunno... Seems redundant to me. ;-)
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Hey, hey, where did 'ethical' come from?
We're discussing legality here.
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We're discussing legality here.
Legality is irrelevant unless you go to court. There is about 0% chance of any creative commons contributor suing eBay over this, and even if they did, they would be unlikely to prevail. It is hard to show monetary damage from diminished "sales" of a free product, and eBay is not the party doing the infringing. They are just providing a marketplace.
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I think you just coined my new sig. Thank you for that!
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You hate corporations? Hmm... That seems a bit misguided. Do you actually know what a corporation is? No, seriously, do you know what a corporation is? It's okay to say you do not. There are quite a few people who seem to have absolutely no clue what a corporation is.
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I know what a corporation is. I work for a big one and I have considered creating a small one in the past. Not too much paperwork, but the lawyer wanted paying.
Re:fits the pattern (Score:5, Interesting)
I have considered creating a small one in the past. Not too much paperwork, but the lawyer wanted paying.
You do NOT need a lawyer to form a corporation. You can start a corporation on-line for about $200, in about 30 minutes. I own four: One California corp, one Nevada corp, one Delaware corp, and one company in the Cayman Islands. All except for the California corp are just private mailboxes, but they are still useful for shuffling money around to minimize taxes. Unless you make all your money on a W-2, you are foolish not to incorporate at least once.
It is also nice to take a vacation to the Caribbean, and write it off on my taxes as a business expense. All I have to do is schedule a board meeting, with only myself as sole board member in attendance. I don't even need to rent a meeting room, since there is no law that the meeting can't be held on the beach.
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Do you have to publish the minutes?
"I move that the board drink another Pina Colada....All in favour?"
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They're relatively inexpensive and the paperwork is tit-easy. It's easy enough that I can do it. I don't, but I can. I've done it and had it checked. I have oft-repeated that many folks here should look into the benefits of incorporation and hiring an accountant. Chances are good that the two will save you more than they cost. You don't need to hire an accountant but it's not easy to stay up-to-date with tax law changes and an accountant can often get better results than you can. On top of that, an accounta
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Do the paperwork yourself and have it checked by a lawyer. It's really not expensive. You can do it on your own if you want but I've never done it without getting it checked. I mostly get it checked because I want to share liability. ;-)
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Looking through their recent listings, they have a ton of IP issues outside of the MakerBot issue. I see unlicensed Star Wars, GoT, Pokemon, etc. Some big company is going to come along and sue the shit of them.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Printed-Star-Wars-Boba-Fett-Snowflake-/262162335249?nma=true&si=wyM1YxdtOGe4SFwnw6uBtUnCZUE%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Printed-Game-of-Thrones-Xbox-One-Faceplate-/252024331176?nma=true&si=wyM1YxdtOGe4SFwn
But the license does NOT ban profit (Score:4, Informative)
What's the problem? Did the author pick wrong license by mistake — and will they apologize to the folks now harmed by eBay's overreaction?
Re:But the license does NOT ban profit (Score:5, Informative)
Mixed in among the 2,000 odd items lifted by JustPrint3D - not just Sad Face! - were various forms of the CC license, including Non-Commercial. Beyond simply profiting, JustPrint3D wasn't providing compliant attribution on anything. It was a mess.
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Well, sir, then your write-up is screwed-up. Because, according to it, the problem was the "scraping" and the use without permission (rather than "without attribution").
Really, this isn't that hard.
1. They were using it without giving attribution.
2. The creator didn't give permission for unattributed use.
3. They were using it without permission.
The fact that permission would have been available, if they had followed the terms of a license, doesn't mean they almost had permission, or mostly had permission. Nope, since they didn't accept the license offered, they have no license granted whatsoever.
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That's not necessary at all. According to clarifications from the submitter, for most items the problem was simply lack of attribution. So, if they just included the link to the originals and to the license in their eBay descriptions, they would've been in the clear for most items (including the one used by the submitter as an example).
The work-around you are suggesting could have worked
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They could charge just for the printing service and require the consumer to download the files directly
Not necessary the customer has to be forced to do it directly... they could use a 3rd party mirror of Thingaverse, which is some separate website that provides all content in a CC-compliant manner.....
Then through the magic of "Web services APIs"; in their Online checkout store, provide a User Interface, where the user can just select from the library the file to direct-download which
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I like this idea, but there is something of a slippery slope:
* Send us arbitrary design files and we'll make it for you (for profit)
Legal, I think.
* Send us design files to make, and by the way this website is a good source of designs.
Legal, I think
* Send us design files to make, and here on our website is a handy search tool for the designs on that other website
Probably legal
* Send us design files to make, and here on our website is a handy search tool for that other website which displays their pages in a
Re:But the license does NOT ban profit (Score:5, Informative)
You must not understand CC. Since I happen to have various works licensed under it, let me explain it to you:
If you don't attribute, you implicitly do not have permission. It's that simple.
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They didn't follow the license terms evidently. I know one of the main complaints I saw was failure of attribution.
Re:But the license does NOT ban profit (Score:5, Informative)
As I type this, the license link [creativecommons.org] on the product's page [thingiverse.com] leads to the variant of the Creative Commons License, that explicitly allows commercial use:
What's the problem? Did the author pick wrong license by mistake — and will they apologize to the folks now harmed by eBay's overreaction?
You forgot the "Under the Following Terms" bit, which is the whole point!
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may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Is converting a digital CAD file into a Physical Object by printing considered a technological measure which restricts others from doing something the license permits?
Also, is a Print a derivative work of the original design plans, or is it a new work entirely?
I think this might be new legal ground, since conventionally.... engineered objects are considered non-copyrightable;
No, yes, no, might not matter (Score:2)
>may not apply legal terms or technological measures that LEGALLY restrict
> Is converting a digital CAD file into a Physical Object ...
No, it doesn't create a LEGAL restriction as DRM would (because of anti-circumvention laws).
> Also, is a Print a derivative work of the original design plans ... I think this might be new legal ground
Yes, it's a derivative work with the exact same relationship as sheet music has to the performance of the same, or a script for a play has to the performance thereof. T
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Pri... [ebay.com]
new username
That's not the license, requires attribution (Score:2)
The link points to a very short description of the license, and even that short description includes the following requirement:
"Attribution â" You must give appropriate credit,
"provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes
were made."
They didn't do those things. Here's the actual license:
http://creativecommons.org/lic... [creativecommons.org]
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As I type this, the license link [creativecommons.org] on the product's page [thingiverse.com] leads to the variant of the Creative Commons License, that explicitly allows commercial use
I was wondering about that too. I thought perhaps I misunderstood the license or had missed something, but on the face of it, it seems like what they did was legal (perhaps a little sleazy, but still legal).
If someone more familiar with this could explain specifically what they did that was infringing or illegal, I'd be interested to know what it was.
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They failed to give attribution and failed provide a link to the license. Can not say if they modified it at all or if they were clear that it was licensed under the same
Since they failed to abide by the license they did not have one. Most of the license allow for including in a commercial protect etc, few to none allow you to use it and call it yours.
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They failed to give attribution and failed provide a link to the license. Can not say if they modified it at all or if they were clear that it was licensed under the same
How do we know? Anything appearing on the eBay listings itself would likely be fair use in the engagement of sale of the work. Did somebody buy some of their objects?
Since they're selling physical objects made from designs, they could stick an attribution and link in 6-point Arial as an adhesive label on some surface of the object,
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And what if it was a Font distributed under a CC license? If you make a printed poster with words rendered from those fonts, does it have to have attribution of the font authors? A font is instructions for producing a shape (much like the 3D design files).
However, that might just illustrate the limitations of copyright law. I'm not sure it's 100% fair to the creator, either.
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Your fine the license for that font probably allowed you to print things out with it and not require anything.
It's litter different if he was selling fake barbie dolls that were straight up knock offs.
Re: But the license does NOT ban profit (Score:2)
It's nothing to do with license. The output of running code is not subject to the copyright of the code itself. A font is a program for generating text. A drawing made in Photoshop is not subject to Adobe's copyright either.
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For a font it definitely does, if you do not have the rights to use the font the output is also tainted since it's just many copies of a copyrighted work. Not that it means the text falls under the fonts copyright. That's far different than using unlicensed software to create a picture.
By failing to attribute the authors they lost their right to use those things. I can not print out a copyrighted picture and sell it without being granted that right by the copyright holder thats pretty much settled law an
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For a font it definitely does, if you do not have the rights to use the font the output is also tainted since it's just many copies of a copyrighted work.
Not in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You may not be able to embed the font in a PDF due to copyright, but if you're printing there are zero legal restrictions. You just can't embed the font (copyright) or use the font's name (trademark).
A 3D Printer isn't printing out an image. It sort of depends on the file format structure - if it's a 3D "image" vs programmatic instructions. The output of a computer program is not subject to the same copyright as the program itself. AutoCAD files are where
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Font cant be copyrighted in the US so it's an apples to oranges. I was incorrect in assuming fonts can be copywritten in the US.
You're splitting hairs related to how it's encoded with pictures. A PNG is simple enough but encode it in an SVG and suddenly it looses copyright? I realy doubt a sane court is going to care about encoding when at the end of the day you made a visualy exact duplicate. By your logic if I make a bit of code to print out a barbie doll it's perfectly legal to do so? Pretty sure Ma
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It's apples to oranges unless the fonts set a dangerous precedent. I agree with the font ruling for a lot of good reasons.
SVG is really not code. It's still a description, just using polygons and color fills instead of pixels. Fonts are literally programmatic code.
By your logic if I make a bit of code to print out a barbie doll it's perfectly legal to do so?
That's a violation of trademark, not copyright.
downloading them for commercial use broke copyright well before any prints were made of them.
You can't violate copyright without copying. Downloading to your computer does not count as a copy.
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Downloading code most certainly violates copyright.
Calling ti a barbie violates trademark just making a doll that looks exactly the same is copyright.
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Read your own link: attribution is required with the CC-BY license. The eBay seller was not providing any attribution to the creators of the designs, and when they were called out on it, they claimed that it was eBay's fault for not letting them post links. Moreover, not everyone was using the CC-BY license. Many of them were using the CC-BY-NC [creativecommons.org] license that requires attribution and disallows commercial use, yet the eBay seller was both using those designs commercially and failing to provide attribution.
Pretty much a non-issue due to licensing. (Score:4, Informative)
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who cares? if slashdot thinks it's ok to copy and share movies and music, there is nothing wrong with this
Au contraire mon ami
/. does NOT condone such activities! The link to the torrent site must be included.
You left out the part where the music is then burned to an optical disc and sold without a link to the torrent site you got it from.
You mean off with his wallet (Score:2)
You can't kill a corporation, you can only sue them out of existence and take all of their assets. I'm sure statutory damages for willful infringement would have been sufficient. but nobody bothers to register their CC works, so it's merely treble damages. And no lawyer is going to take on an IP case for $10,000 in crappy prints.
Re:Pretty much a non-issue due to licensing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without that attribution, there is no license. You're saying, essentially, that the stuff in the store is all there for people to take, and the only crime the shoplifter committed was not paying for them. Exactly. Without paying, you're not allowed to take.
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I'm fairly certain it doesn't matter according to copyright law (which may only be loosely related to specific court rulings) - even if it's transformative, it's still a derivative work, and hence should require a license to the original.
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Try printing a shirt with a a new caption on a still taken from a Disney film, and I think you'll find that very much depends on whether you have a legal team to defend your claim.
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Actually, I'm fairly certain you *can't* copyright a recipe, only a specific layout, etc. of it. And that has nothing to do with KFC - they're relying on trade secrets, which is a completely unrelated field of law.
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I agree, this reminds me of the bogus uproar about Flickr selling prints of images licensed for commercial use under CC.
There is a different issue about photos however, unless Thingverse requires uploaded photos to adhere to a permissive license then the ebay store copying them would be violating copyright there.
Caveat Emptor (Score:3)
Sure the guy is a scumbag, but anyone buying from him deserves to be taken advantage of.
People list things for far more than what they are worth all the time.
I was looking to buy a Model A and look what I came across this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ford-M... [ebay.com]
The rusted out body of a Model A for 18K+ when you can buy a beautiful fully restored working Model As for as little 16,000
If you don't shop around expect to be taken advantage of.
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Sure the guy is a scumbag, but anyone buying from him deserves to be taken advantage of.
People list things for far more than what they are worth all the time.
I was looking to buy a Model A and look what I came across this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ford-M... [ebay.com]
The rusted out body of a Model A for 18K+ when you can buy a beautiful fully restored working Model As for as little 16,000
If you don't shop around expect to be taken advantage of.
In defense of that guy, a lot of people don't know what something is worth, or understand that they need to price their products at market level. If you get angry at overpriced Ebay listings, don't go shopping on Craigslist for anything with a steep depreciation curve. Sometimes the prices are laughable.
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The rusted out body of a Model A for 18K+ when you can buy a beautiful fully restored working Model As for as little 16,000
The E-bay listing is for an unassembled export model Phaeton with right hand drive. A quick spin around Google suggests a restored Phaeton would sell for more like $30 K and up.
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https://www.mafca.com/clphotos... [mafca.com]
16,900
You should let other people do your shopping.
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From the looks of things... The tires, wheels, brakes, the mirrors, and I think the glass are all recreations and the rubber's not even anything that was available for that model - never mind that it looks like they're radials (I can't really be certain but the sidewalls look pretty strong so they're almost certainly belted). I suspect the body is, at some point, still original in that, yeah, it had some original metal left.
So yeah, a "restored" A might be worth that. I didn't view your original link but an
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I'm thinking
Nahh you've demonstrated you aren't.
But I gotta say you got balls. Not many people will bullshit like you just did and expect it to pass.
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Hell I was going to save this but what the hell.
While I love your stream of bullshit demonstrating how much you know about the pricing and what goes into a model A phaeton,
It would be so much more impressive if you could tell what model the car was.
Here's what a phaeton looks like
http://f.images.boldride.com/f... [boldride.com]
vs the Sedan
https://www.mafca.com/clphotos... [mafca.com]
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Well, that explains why it looked funny.
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Posting them on Ebay is the service ?
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Deserves to profit? I think not. He deserves exactly what the market gives him.
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Hello Big Dawg "Originals"! Same with toy trains (Score:1)
There's another ebay seller involved in doing similar things with model trains.
Goes by the name "Big Dawg Originals".
As if the "Originals" is fooling anyone. He makes (bad) molds of other manufacturer's models, casts them, and sells them.
The response was totally dickish (Score:2)
"Ha ha! Ur clueless noob! I haz gots ur files for free!"
Dumb-ass.
Instead he could have said, "Oh, I didn't realize there were multiple licenses and that some require attribution. I'll go ahead and fix those now. It will take me a couple of days to get them updated." Would have maintained plausible deniability, this whole thing would have blown over, and he'd still have a shop.
What, you expect him to give it away for free? (Score:2)
This is the same silliness as the court decision which shut down Aereo [wikipedia.org]
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Most of what's on Thingiverse appears to be available under CC-Attribution, all that's needed would be to do that attribution and he'd be in the clear. Thingiverse even has an API to get the information automatically, to verify license status.
Instead, he seems to think that anything on the Internet is public domain and he can do whatever he wants. Good luck with that!
I don't know if the "no commercial use" CC licenses would bar this - sell it as a service to print designs for an individual rather than sel
Better headlines please (Score:5, Insightful)
Actual: Ebay Shop Scrapes Thingiverse, Sells Designs In Violation of Creative Commons
Q? who sells in violation? Ebay or Thingiverse...
Correct: Ebay Shop Scrapes Thingiverse, Who Sells Designs In Violation of Creative Commons
The other one yesterday:
Actual: Mercedes-Benz Swaps Robots For People On Assembly Lines
Q? Which way is it going people out or robots out
Correct: Mercedes-Benz Removes Robots For People On Assembly Lines
Or is this a new strategy Huffinghtonpost style - creating questions in headlines to make people look at content - new in the beginning but now sucks overall.
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Ebay Shop Scrapes Thingiverse and Sells Designs In Violation of Creative Commons
You think that's bad? (Score:2)
That's but a breeze compared to the hurricane that's gonna blow our way once people start printing car parts and car manufacturers get up in arms over not being able to sell some plastic parts worth 5 cents for 50+ bucks.
Re:"scrapes"? (Score:5, Informative)
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But they were NOT "scraping" the designs. They were downloading the design files directly, using an interface set up for exactly that purpose. Do you call it "scraping" when someone uses Github? This is no different. The downloading was perfectly legal, and there is no technical barrier to them, or anyone, who wants to do so. The (possibly) illegal part was the selling, not the downloading.
Note: What JustPrint3D was doing may not actually be illegal. Anti-trust laws in America prohibit a manufacturer
Re:"scrapes"? (Score:4, Informative)
Anti-trust laws in America prohibit a manufacturer or distributor from fixing prices.
Anti-trust laws do not prevent the copyright owner from fixing prices, however, and they can.
Occasionally copyright owners provide a distribution agreement where 99% or 100% of all profits go to the copyright owner, and the merchant/distributor is only allowed to resell according to the author's policies.
Also, copyright owners occasionally provide gratis copies for special purposes --- for example, pre-release reviews or screeners. Just because there is no fee, does not mean the movie theaters that received these exclusive media can legally make and distribute copies.
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I disagree. They were scraping. Scraping doesn't have any additional connotations unless attached. It may even be done with permission. Knowing that you like to argue, I've gone ahead and grabbed a citation for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Because the author/editor assumed on site that bills itself as "News for Nerds" that most users would be able to understand the lingo - and if not could use a search engine to find the answer.
Oh come now! What you posit requires a bit of time and an an attention span longer than that a gnat...
all of which interferes with efficient, knee jerk, first snark type responses.
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that most users would be able to understand the lingo
We do understand the lingo. Thats the problem. Its the author/editor that doesn't.
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lol
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Socialists are reactionaries wanting to return to the politics of the 1930s.
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Funny because it's true!
Re:"scrapes"? (Score:4, Informative)
IMO they are different things. Copying might mean that an employee of the shop downloaded designs from thingiverse and listed them for sale on ebay. Steals or infringes is pretty vague in terms of is actually happening.
It seems reasonable for the author to assume that the audience of this site knows what scraping is, and it is a more precise word for what happened than copying, stealing or infringing. Scraping implies a scripted, automated effort with little human intervention past the point of building the script. There is no selection in terms of, 'hey, this looks neat - I'm going to sell those'; it is a complete replication of a catalogue without intervention.
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Oh you want this place to be an Asperger's echo chamber, got it.
Sorry, I don't get it? You have obviously learnt something nerdy from the headline, what more do you want from a site that promises "news for nerds"?
Re:"scrapes"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to say this but it's true. Many, I dare say most, people aren't actually interested in learning. They're not interested in constructive dialogue. They're not interested in changing their minds when presented with new information. They aren't interested in honest debate. They're not interested in accepting that they're wrong and adjusting their beliefs accordingly. They're sure as hell not interested in improving themselves because improving themselves involves both work and admission that they're less than perfect.
And, more on topic, scraping is a more specific type of copying. Being specific is a good thing. It means less confusion for those who actually understand the issues. Those who don't understand the issues probably don't have opinions of any value and can be discounted or ignored. Why they feel compelled, or perhaps entitled, to have a valued opinion is probably also a matter of ego - akin to needing to admin that they're not perfect in order to be willing to learn.
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Crawl back under the rock you've obviously been hiding under, dimwit. Everybody else knows what it means, the term "scraper" in the context of web apps is hardly unusual.
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Then why not just say COPIES!?? For fuck's sake! Because "screen scraping" doesn't mean pressing print screen, it means using scripts to get data off a screen when an interface doesn't exist...
Scraping is when you remove a portion of something you fetch. Like you can fetch a page on ebay, and scrape the price. If price has decreased x% since last check, you add it to a list.
It's called "scraping" and not "copying" because it is more similar to "scraping". Imagine a webpage as a painted piece of wood. You want just a section. So you "scrape" that section off.
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I don't understand the entire artticle never mind the headline. If the guy objects to his designs being used without his permission he should have reserved copyright.. instead of assigning CC to it. Dumb. As far as people using an actual copyrighted design or whatever to sell on ebay.. lately it looks to me like ebay has been really sloppy allowing questionable items to slip by (cassette tapes in my case). Personally I don't give a rat's #$$ about if they're there or not becase I can tell the difference
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