I could not help but make my own post on this subject inviting people to review the list of items the person has for sale and see if their IP was stolen by the person too.
The problem you have is that it is not an original work but one derived from an original work. Because of that it most likely would not be protected directly by the copyright.
What you should do is send an email to ebay with a copy of the license you release it with. Most likely ebay will remove the listing.
The other thing you might want to do is contact Thingiverse and get them to yank his account for using an item against the license it was published under.
He may have been using more than just Thingiverse to find the designs. Maybe check for him on the alternative STL file sites.
@Jim_Cline_OutWest_Sy this eBay store has flat-out admitted he had copied @Louise_Driggers ' Aria, and then basically told her to get stuffed.
There is no “derived” work here, and no reasonable judge would decide otherwise.
Looky what I found. (evil grin)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-d-simms-7b987865
This Ebay Store scumbag is arguing the “transformative” nature of a 3D printer’s operation somehow insulates him from copyright violation!
That’s like arguing that printing a copyrighted image onto a T-shirt is “transformative” … because first it was a jpeg, and now it’s now a T-shirt…? Huh?
Points for a truly novel legal argument, but it totally fails the test of reasonableness. A 3D printer does not “transform” original artwork in any way that is relevant to the meaning of that word under copyright law.
I would love to see this idiot face a court and bring that argument with him as a legal defense!
I truly hope that he ends up writing lots of $200,000* cheques for each of his commercial violations of copyright.
- The penalty for each offence for an incorporated companies who blatantly violate copyright under Australian law.
Pretty much got the same canned response from just3dprint, I didn’t even ask him to take it down, just to comply with the license and instructions I had on my Thingiverse page. If anyone finds it useful, I’ve posted my conversation with them in the comments. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:809003/#comment-800226
This Ebay Store idiot is inventing bogus legal defences.
His assertion that “No court in the USA has yet ruled a CAD model an original work or art.” is total garbage.
A huge part of modern Hollywood movie production is designed and rendered using CAD (Computer Aided Design) technology. Every bit of the CAD artwork made for the movies is protected under copyright law, and so is the work of smaller artists like @Louise_Driggers .
Art made using digital technologies is still art. There has never been any requirement that ‘art’ must be in a particular medium to be classified as art.
Nobody will blatantly make money selling their own figures of BB-8, Shrek, Buzz Lightyear. Minions, etc, etc, etc without the lawyers who act for those very wealthy copyright owners tearing them to pieces.
The difference here is this scumbag’s presumption that @Louise_Driggers , and others just like her, cannot afford the legal representation to assert their rights under copyright law.
@Stephen_Shimatzki it looks like the whois results for his page. I came up with his linkedin profile too.
here ya go, they want to connect:
http://www.just3dprint.com/connect.html
I don’t know if it has been mentioned before, but:
If the object in question has an NC licence (obviously it does) on it someone that has a 3d printer can’t print the specific design on his own and sell it, but a client could ask him to print it for him and compensate him for the printer time and not for the object.
I wonder if anyone around here is a lawyer…
The questions about the CC licenses are pretty long standing, especially because they license the design and not the physical object created from them. You could argue, probably pretty convincingly, that the physical object created from the design is a direct derivative of the digital design and carries the same license… but I couldn’t predict your odds of success on that. That would also mean going to court, which you’d have to be doing essentially on principle because you wouldn’t get enough in damages to make it worth your while.
I did look through his designs to see if any of mine (which are all CC-BY-NC) were in there so I could justify sending a threatening lawyer letter his way, but I didn’t see anything.
He’s not right about fair use, though. Fair use cuts off completely when you turn a profit on what you’re doing. And he’s clearly in the wrong using other people’s photos to advertise, putting them online without an explicit license attached to them doesn’t make them public domain or forfeit your copyrights to them. You could probably use those as the basis for a DMCA takedown request with ebay, though.
@Louise_Driggers Did you fill out a VeRO form with Ebay?
http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/vero-rights-owner.html
This guy has over 2000 listings on ebay, almost all for 3d models from others.
@Wylie_Hilliard heh I mentioned the same thing about some vero guy.
IMNALB… Could @Louise_Driggers take him to small claims court for the max amount allowable? Also, there are multiple officers in the company and advisors that are all taking part in this and profiting from her cc-by-nc licenced design. ( assuming you could prove he actually sold any as listing prints is not same as selling if nobody buys one…) but if you filed against each one separately in small claims you might be able to cause enough financial stress that they change their bad habits or at least reimburse you for lost revenue.
(ok, I might be stretching my faith in humanity here…)
Also, it may require you to file locally in their jurisdiction and attend their local court so you’d incurre travel costs. I don’t know how that plans out. It looks like they are on the Philly area. IIRC, Lots of folks file small claims against big companies and sometimes companies find it more cost effective to not show up and just pay up than to pay for a high priced representative, so the plaintiff has a good chance of winning. ( or so I read on the internet…) but since this is a small company so you may have to face him face to face in a judge Judy like setting.
Also, could @Louise_Driggers get any representation from the likes of EFF orgs or similar? Maybe class action from multiple ‘Versers’?
My goodness - have you seen the comment Just3DPrint left on my Sad Face model:-) Do go and have a look…