Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Regulating Revolution: An Introduction to 3D Printing and the Law

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Socio-Legal Aspects of the 3D Printing Revolution

  • 1187 Accesses

Abstract

Additive manufacturing or ‘three-dimensional (3D) printing’ has emerged into the mainstream in the last few years, with much hype about its revolutionary potential as the latest ‘disruptive technology’ to destroy existing business models, empower individuals, and evade any kind of government control. This book examines the trajectory of 3D printing in practice and how it interacts with various areas of law, including intellectual property (IP), product liability, gun laws, data privacy, and fundamental/constitutional rights. Before the detailed examination of law and 3D printing, this opening chapter introduces 3D printing as a technology, along with some of the high-level themes which permeate its interaction with areas of law. A particular comparison is made with the Internet as this has been, legally speaking, another ‘disruptive technology’ and also one on which 3D printing is partially dependent.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    W. Twining (2008) ‘Law in Context movement’ in P. Cane and J. Conaghan (eds.) The New Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

  2. 2.

    F. Pasquale (2014) ‘Symbiotic Law & Social Science: The Case for Political Economy in the Legal Academy, and Legal Scholarship in Political Economy’ (Jotwell 5th Anniversary Conference, Miami).

  3. 3.

    J. Reidenberg (2005) ‘Technology and Internet Jurisdiction’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 153(6), 1951–1974; D. Svantesson (2014) ‘Sovereignty in international law – how the internet (maybe) changed everything, but not for long’ Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 8(1), 137–155.

  4. 4.

    See: T. Birtchnell and W. Hoyle (2014) 3D Printing for Development in the Global South (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

  5. 5.

    See: R. White (2012) ‘Police Cooperation’ in M. E. Beare (ed.), Encyclopedia of Transnational Crime and Justice (Thousand Oaks: Sage).

  6. 6.

    M. Michael (2014) ‘Process and Plasticity: Printing, Prototyping and the Prospects of Plastic’ in J. Gabrys, G. Hawkins and M. Michael (eds.) Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic (London: Routledge).

  7. 7.

    B. Cumptson, M. Lipson, S. R. Marder, J. W. Perry (1999) ‘Two-photon or higher-order absorbing optical materials’ US Patent Application PCT/US19991008383, http://www.google.com/patents/WO1999053242A1?cl=en, date accessed 10 September 2015.

  8. 8.

    A. Bowyer (2006) Keynote Address on the RepRap Project (Seventh National Conference on Rapid Design, Prototyping & Manufacturing, High Wycombe), http://reprap.org/wiki/PhilosophyPage, accessed 10 September 2015.

  9. 9.

    3D Printing Industry (2014) History of 3D Printing, http://3dprintingindustry.com/3d-printing-basics-free-beginners-guide/history/, accessed 10 September 2015.

  10. 10.

    RepRap (2014) ‘About’, http://reprap.org/wiki/About, accessed 10 September 2015.

  11. 11.

    R. Courtland (2013) ‘Resources Profile: Bre Pettis’ IEEE Spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/bre-pettis, accessed: 10 September 2015.

  12. 12.

    See, for example, Trimensional, http://www.trimensional.com/, accessed 10 September 2015; ETH Zurich, ‘Transform your smartphone into a mobile 3D scanner’, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/news-and-events/spotlights/mobile_3dscanner.html, accessed 10 September 2015.

  13. 13.

    R. D’Aveni (2015) ‘The 3-D Printing Revolution’ Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2015/05/the-3-d-printing-revolution, accessed 10 September 2015.

  14. 14.

    C. Arizmendi, B. Pronk and J. Choi (2014) ‘Services No Longer Required? Challenges to the States as the Primary Security Provider in the Age of Digital Fabrication’ Small Wars Journal; L. Grant (2014), ‘Bits to Bullets: Australian Military 3DP’s New War-Making Strategies and Tactics’ 3D Printing Industry, http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/07/14/bits-bullets-australian-military-3dps-new-war-making-strategies-tactics/, accessed 5 September 2015; J. M. Pearce and A. S. Hasselhuhn (2015), ‘Intellectual Property as a Strategic National Industrial Weapon: the Case of 3D Printing’ Engineer: The Professional Bulletin of Army Engineers, 45(2), 29–31.

  15. 15.

    The Economist (2012) ‘The third industrial revolution’, http://www.economist.com/node/21553017, accessed 10 September 2015; C. Anderson (2012) Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (New York: Crown Business).

  16. 16.

    J. Rifkin (2014) The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

  17. 17.

    J. B. DeLong and A. M. Froomkin (2000) ‘Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow’s Economy’ First Monday, 5(2).

  18. 18.

    M. Weinberg (2010) It Will Be Awesome If They Don’t Screw It Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology, Public Knowledge White Paper.

  19. 19.

    M. Lemley (2014) ‘IP in a World Without Scarcity’ Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 2413974, p. 2.

  20. 20.

    M. Kayser (2011) ‘The Solar Sinter’ http://www.dezeen.com/2011/06/28/the-solar-sinter-by-markus-kayser/, accessed 10 September 2015.

  21. 21.

    Better Future Factory (2012) ‘Perpetual Plastic Project’ http://www.betterfuturefactory.com/work/perpetual-plastic-project-ppp, accessed 10 September 2015.

  22. 22.

    P. Wolf, P. Troxler, P. Y. Kocher, J. Harboe and U. Gaudenz (2014) ‘Sharing is Sparing: Open Knowledge Sharing in Fab Labs’ Journal of Peer Production, Issue #5 Shared Machine Shops.

  23. 23.

    J. Moilanen, A. Daly, R. Lobato and D. Allen (2015) ‘Cultures of Sharing in 3D Printing: What Can We Learn from the Licence Choices of Thingiverse Users?’ Journal of Peer Production, Issue #6 Disruption and the Law.

  24. 24.

    J. Söderberg and A. Daoud (2012) ‘Atoms Want to Be Free Too! Expanding the Critique of Intellectual Property to Physical Goods’ Triple C Communications, Capitalism & Critique 10(1).

  25. 25.

    J. P. Barlow (1996) ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html, accessed 10 September 2015.

  26. 26.

    J. P. Barlow (1996) ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’.

  27. 27.

    E. Dyson, G. Gilder, G. Keyworth and A. Toffler (1994) ‘Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age’ http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/futureinsights/fi1.2magnacarta.html, accessed 10 September 2015.

  28. 28.

    G. J. Michael (2013) ‘Anarchy and Property Rights in the Virtual World: How Disruptive Technologies Undermine the State and Ensure that the Virtual World Remains a “Wild West”’, SSRN Working Paper, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2233374, accessed 10 September 2015.

  29. 29.

    Y. Benkler (2000) ‘From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulations Towards Sustainable Commons and User Access’ Federal Communications Law Journal, 52, 561–579.

  30. 30.

    Y. Benkler (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press).

  31. 31.

    J. M. Pedersen (2010) ‘Conclusion: Property and the Politics of Commoning’ The Commoner, 14, 287–294.

  32. 32.

    A. Daly (2015) Mind the Gap: Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law (PhD thesis, European University Institute).

  33. 33.

    J. L. Goldsmith and T. Wu (2006) Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

  34. 34.

    M. D. Birnhack and N. Elkin-Koren (2003) ‘The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Environment’ Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, 8 (6), 1–57; J. Cohen (2012), Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code and Everyday Practice (Yale University Press), p. 177.

  35. 35.

    See: D. Lyon (2014) ‘Surveillance, Snowden and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique’ Big Data and Society, 1–13.

  36. 36.

    J. Boyle (2003) ‘The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain’ Law and Contemporary Problems, 66, 33–74.

  37. 37.

    See: A. Daly and B. Farrand (2015) ‘SABAM v Scarlet: evidence of an emerging backlash against corporate copyright lobbies in Europe?’ in D DeVoss and M Rife (eds.), Cultures of Copyright (New York: Peter Lang).

  38. 38.

    J. Zittrain (2008) The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (New Haven: Yale University Press).

  39. 39.

    M. Ward (2014) ‘Tor’s most visited hidden sites host child abuse images’ BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30637010, accessed 11 September 2015.

  40. 40.

    S. Dodson (2008) ‘The machine that copies itself’ The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/03/copy.machine.reprap, accessed 2 September 2015; J. M. Pearce (2015) ‘Applications of Open Source 3-D Printing on Small Farms’ Organic Farming, 1(1), 19–35.

  41. 41.

    See: A. Portes, M. Castells and L. A. Benton (eds.) (1989) The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press); E. L. Feige (ed.) (2007) The underground economies: Tax evasion and information distortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). In the media sector, see: R. Lobato (2012) Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

  42. 42.

    See: L. Mazerolle, D. Soole and S. Rombouts (2007) ‘Drugs Law Enforcement: A Review of the Evaluation Literature’ Police Quarterly, 10(2), 115–153.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia

    Angela Daly

Authors
  1. Angela Daly
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Daly, A. (2016). Regulating Revolution: An Introduction to 3D Printing and the Law. In: Socio-Legal Aspects of the 3D Printing Revolution. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51556-8_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51556-8_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51555-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51556-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation