Now we can *scan* and print in 3D

[White Tiger88]

If you even think about putting a GW mini in there you will be sued so fast.......

[Luke Licens]

Step 1: Replicator
Step 2: Holodeck
Step 3: ????????
Step 4: Profit!

[Defenestratus]

If you even think about putting a GW mini in there you will be sued so fast.......

As long as you're not reproducing them to give or sell to others, according to US Law you can do it all you like.

How is it any different than this:

[archimbald]

Im confused as to what Defenestratus is doing, a RTV silicon mold of what?

[Blusox69]

They look like ruin bases to me

[Nabterayl]

As long as you're not reproducing them to give or sell to others, according to US Law you can do it all you like.

How is it any different than this:

It's not. That's copyright violation too, at least in the US, assuming the items you're copying are copyrightable - which they certainly seem to be to me. [EDIT: Eh, "certainly" is too strong. But if they're copyrightable, you're committing copyright violation by copying them without permission.] You can't copy somebody else's copyrighted work solely on the grounds that you're not going to profit from it.

[Blusox69]

I'm siding with Nabterayl. You could argue that by not having had to spend money buying X amount of a copyrightable product for personal use because you copied it you are in fact financially better off and have profited at their expense.

[Wolfshade]

In England & Wales casting is also not covered by "fair use", I thought it was until a little while ago when I researched it a bit more and discovered that I was mistaken.

[Blusox69]

Along the lines of "why would we ever need a 3D printer", any one seen the company producing gun part 3D blueprints for these printers? They also posted a video of an AR-15 being fired with these parts incorporated. Although I'm not too sure of the ethics in this case you can see the huge potential for rapid distribution of a product with real world use. Imagine being able to order car/bike parts, or furnature and have them in your hand in a few minutes from a company the other side of the world.

[Nabterayl]

I'm siding with Nabterayl. You could argue that by not having had to spend money buying X amount of a copyrightable product for personal use because you copied it you are in fact financially better off and have profited at their expense.

That is precisely the argument. At least in the United States (if I can strip out some legalese to make the point), copyright exists so that people who want a thing have to buy it from the person who created it, and if they want more than one of the thing, they have to buy them all from the person who created it. The whole point is that the person who creates a desirable thing be able to turn people's desire for it into money.

The cases in which copying is non-punishable have to do with incentivizing activity that society has judged to be useful even at the expense of taking money out of the pockets of creators of desirable things.* Copying something because you want a copy is, perhaps obviously, not one of those situations. As the legal adage goes, fair use != personal use.

* For instance, you aren't allowed to copy your favorite portion of your favorite book just because. If you are posting in an online discussion forum disputing the meaning of that favorite passage, you are [generally] allowed to copy it. This is not because you aren't profiting from it, but because society has judged that people discussing the meaning of particular passages of books is so valuable - and that it would be so hard to do so if one were never allowed to quote the passages under discussion - that it is worth letting people trample on creators' copyrights to incentivize.