The issues of 3d printing

[skunkwerks]

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/21...s-first-c.html
Read this article at boing boing and it got me reminiscing about a teenage pocket money spent buying and painting Warhammer minatures.
Crazy with details, these tiny tin & lead (cheaper ones were plastic) characters used to leave me wistfully thinking wouldn’t it be great if they were bigger.
Affordable consumer printers (will always be a niche market I’m sure) can’t be more than 5 years away. What will be the issues surrounding 3d content? I’m immediately thinking of the enormous content of meshes that are available from the likes Daz3d, easily reworked and then sold on for personal download and 3d print and painting. How would copyright be enforced? How many times could you print a figure out, would you be allowed (if a skilful painter) to market them on Ebay?
Would you make your work available for 3d printing? Do you think it could become a viable revenue stream for 3d artist?

[xpoc]

I was thinking about this myself just yesterday.

I believe that investing in a 3d printer could easily pay off for a talented 3d artist. There are a million non-copyright characters/ideas that could be sold (off the top of my head Santa/evil santa models sold at christmas). The main variable is the cost of printing. I have absolutly no idea how much 3d prints cost, although I am sure that cast plastic models would be cheaper for mass production. At least for the moment.

Just think of all the awesome creature sculpts that grace our corner of the internet. I don't know about you, but I would certainly pay good money to have a few of the models from the gallery sitting on my desktop.

As for your copyright question. It is no different to people printing their own shirts with brand logos on them I suppose. Either using iron-on printer paper, or through a site like zazzle.

Small scale infringments can't be stopped, but you can be sure as hell that if you started making good money from it, the copyright holder would be all over your ass!