Angela Daly_Inside 3D Printing Melbourne

Darcy Allen @DarcyWEAllen
Angela Daly @angelacdaly
Cultures of sharing in
Thingiverse

Swinburne
SCIENCE | TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION | BUSINESS | DESIGN
Culture of sharing in Thingiverse
- We conducted research to show how intellectual property is
managed – and thus information exchanged – in Thingiverse
- We look at how intellectual property in the form of design files
is ‘shared’ among Thingiverse participants and between those
participants and MakerBot (Thingiverse parent)
- Analysis of IP provisions in T’s terms of use (and the disputes
around them) and then empirical research examining licence
choices for 68,000 ‘Things’ in Thingiverse (all data from Jarkko
Moilanen)
- Forthcoming academic journal article written in collaboration
with JM (Tampere) & Ramon Lobato (Swinburne)
2
Overview

Swinburne
Cultures of sharing in Thingiverse
3
What is Thingiverse?

Swinburne
- Most popular online repository for sharing design files for
3D printing
- Owned by MakerBot, which itself was bought by Stratasys
- MakerBot’s printers were initially developed based on the
RepRap 3DP open source/open hardware project designs
- Thingiverse is the design hub in MakerBot’s 3DP
ecosystem – over 100,000 designs held – M provides
online platform, users provide online designs for free – M
doesn’t have to pay designers to create design files for
use with their printers -> adding value to M’s printers
(where the ‘real’ money is)
4
History and role of Thingiverse

Swinburne
5
MakerBot’s sharing rhetoric
“If you’re not sharing your designs, you’re doing it wrong.”
- Bre Pettis
We’re hoping that together we can create a community of people who create
and share designs freely, so that all can benefit from them.”
- Thingiverse

Swinburne
- We looked at ‘sharing’ in two ‘directions’:
- ‘vertically’ between MakerBot & Thingiverse users
(hierarchical relationship)
- ‘horizontally’ among Thingiverse users (peer relationship)
- What we mean by ‘sharing’ is the least restrictive use of
intellectual property rights (mainly copyright) by MB & users
over their creations
- i.e. no cost to use IP (gratis); can reproduce, remix, use for any
purpose the IP (libre) -> typically actions restricted by
traditional/orthodox use of copyright law
- This kind of ‘sharing’ of materials & software often attributed to
maker and hacker communities
6
Sharing between and among MakerBot and Thingiverse users

Swinburne
2012 was a game-changing year for MB – they got a
US$10m injection of venture capital funding
Causation or correlation? MB started changing their terms
and practices around IP that year!
7
Sharing ‘upwards’: MakerBot & Thingiverse users

Swinburne
- Unlike previous printers,
MB did not release the
designs for that printer’s
components – move
away from ‘open
hardware’ ethic
- Also released software
to accompany R2 which
was not open source
- highly controversial
among maker
community
8
Sharing ‘upwards’ controversy #1: Replicator 2

Swinburne
In 2012, Thingiverse updated its Terms of Use:
“You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have
the right to grant, to Company and its affiliates and partners, an
irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid,
worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display
and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into
other works, and otherwise use your User Content, and to
grant sublicenses of the foregoing, solely for the purposes of
including your User Content in the Site and Services. You
agree to irrevocably waive (and cause to be waived) any
claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with
respect to your User Content.”
9
Sharing ‘upwards’ controversy #2: Occupy Thingiverse

Swinburne
- Changes:
- Thingiverse could now
assert moral rights over
users’ IP
- T could use those
designs for its own
commercial purposes
inc incorporating them
into 3D printer hardware
10

Swinburne
However, Thingiverse’s justifications for these changes
framed in terms of ‘sharing’:
The assertion of moral rights by the original users would be
‘fundamentally inconsistent with the intention of Thingiverse,
which is to share things and their derivatives’
11
BUT - backlash from users: Occupy
Thingiverse
Many users chose to remove their designs
from Thingiverse site to give them more
control than Thingiverse’s terms
GitHub was a popular, ‘openness’ friendly,
alternative

Swinburne
These examples demonstrate MB’s willingness for
users to share with them, but no longer their
willingness to share with users (aside from
providing the Thingiverse platform) – representing a
distancing from MB’s open roots
12
Sharing ‘upwards’: MakerBot & Thingiverse users

Swinburne
- ‘Primary’ Licences – Thingiverse users must accept the Terms if
they want to use the platform vis-à-vis what MB can do with their
designs.
- ‘Secondary’ Licences – Choice of ‘secondary licence’ determines
how other users use the Thing
- Choice includes Creative Commons and a few free software licences
Thingiverse encouraged the use of CC licences by users so “that
anyone can use or alter any design”
- Act as a general permission for others to use the work (in accordance
with any stipulations) – normally copyright would require specifically
asking the rightsholder each time
- ‘Public’ / ‘Private’ Things
- ‘Work in Progress’
13
Sharing ‘sideways’: Thingiverse user licence choices

Swinburne
- Variety of CC licences, each with varying degrees of ‘openness’
- Most ‘open’ and high ‘sharing’ factors are CC licences which only
require attribution to the original creator when using or remixing
- Most ‘restrictive’ CC licences are those which do not allow
derivative works (i.e. no adaptions and no changes) and do not allow
the works to be used for commercial purposes
- Also important is the ‘share alike’ restriction which permits derivative
works but only if they are licensed under the same terms as the
original work. This is known as ‘sticky’ as it ‘sticks’ to all future,
modified versions of the original work
14
Sharing ‘sideways’: Thingiverse User Licence Choice

Swinburne
15
Creative Commons Licences

Swinburne
- Empirical analysis of metadata of 117,450 Public and
Private Things in Thingiverse
- Information extracted by screen-scraping with a custom-
built Ruby program by our collaborator Jarkko (extracting
information from the site by parsing its web pages)
- What does the metadata tell us?
- Public, Private and/or ‘Work in Progress’
- For Public Things:
- The licence chosen by creator
- Number of ‘makes’
- Number of ‘remixes’
- Number of times added to a ‘collection’
16
Empirical Data

Swinburne
17
A Thingiverse Thing

Swinburne
18
Number of Designs
Release of MakerBot Customizer in January 2013

Swinburne
19
‘Things’ Over Time

Swinburne
20
Top 5 Secondary Licence Choices
Data: For ‘Public’
Things as of 11/2013

Swinburne
21
By ‘Makes’ and ‘Remixes’
Data: For ‘Public’ Things as of 11/2013

Swinburne
22
By ‘Makes’ and ‘Collections’
Data: For ‘Public’ Things as of 11/2013

Swinburne
- Surprisingly, 42% of files are Private – they have not been
made available to other Thingiverse users via the platform
- They are not ‘shared’ – or, may only be shared by a small
group of collaborators who have access to login &
password of that user account
- Seems that over time, number of Private Things has been
growing
- Why? We are not sure!
- But seems that ‘sharing’ among users not as
prevalent/dominant as Thingiverse’s rhetoric suggests
23
Going against the sharing grain: Private Things

Swinburne
- Conduct of Thingiverse/MakerBot & users in terms of
sharing somewhat contradictory/inconsistent
- Thingiverse is the ultimate by-product of user innovation
fertilised by open source/maker culture – but it is a
commercial, proprietary platform owned by a large global
corp with self-interested conduct vis-à-vis IP
- Users also not consistently ‘sharing’ – while CC licences
used for 89% of all Public Things, a large proportion of
Things overall is kept Private - adds a thick layer of ‘off-
stage’ activity to what is intended to be an open,
transparent system dedicated to sharing
24
Preliminary conclusions

All graphs and tables used with
permission of Jarkko Moilanen.
@social3dprint
blogs.swinburne.edu.au/3dprint

Angela Daly_Inside 3D Printing Melbourne

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (14)

En vedette

En vedette (10)

Similaire à Angela Daly_Inside 3D Printing Melbourne

Similaire à Angela Daly_Inside 3D Printing Melbourne (20)

Plus de Mediabistro

Plus de Mediabistro (20)

Angela Daly_Inside 3D Printing Melbourne