If any of you want Zack's shirt, it's from this Etsy seller: www.etsy.com/listing/1595887767/do-you-even-benchy-white-font-3d (Not sponsored/we don't know them, my sister just bought Zack's shirt here and gave it to him as a gift)
@UFJoy I'm very well aware of the suppression on the platform. I'm one of those accounts that are marked to have all of my comments aggressively moderated. Even benign stuff is frequently removed. BTW when I tag you it deletes your name from my comment.
If you do manage to buy the rights to the Benchy, before making it available to the general public under any license, you should 3D Print the "World's Only Privately Owned Benchy" in some esoteric filament :)
@@consciouscode8150 so they don't have to think about it (read: spend internal lawyer man hours approving the change) and instead they marginally profit from selling it, would be my guess
@consciouscode8150 i thinkwd the same but i if contries have difrent laws that may be a reson,example country a cant make anything public domain (i seen that in some countries owners just say that they WONT ENFORCE any rights to that work but they cant just abandon rights)
imagine having a benchy hole in your wall like they used to have for razor blades in bathrooms where you just shove every benchy you make for someone to find later when renovating.
I saw the first shots of the Cigarette Holder War. When it started, noone expected it to end in a literal casket of 9,000 cigarettes. Between that and the seemingly freudian obsession with phallus-ifiying every possible model, i'm pretty sure "getting carried away" is the default state of the community lmao
Gotta stand up for myself, my friend. My Tom's Hardware report didn't say "DMCA takedown". I quoted the glitched out Benchy guy's Reddit post (who said the owners were sending lawyers) and I quoted Prusa who said they were working with NTI and looking for a way to keep the Benchy remixes up as transformative works. At the time of reporting, Prusa's team was saying the complaint came from NTI, and I had no reason to question Prusa Research.
To be honest, making a benchmark tool "non derivative" kinda makes sense. You don't want someone (more likely a company) designing an easier-to-print benchy, and sneaking it into their 3d printer's free files, thus making their machine performs better than it should. So yea, I can accept the explanation that the benchy needs to be consistent to be valuable as a benchmark tool. Perhaps the license should be tweaked such that derivatives are allowed but cannot be published using only the "Benchy" name. Instead if it's like "Benchy parody" etc, it can be allowed because it will be obvious that it's different from the Benchy used for benchmarking. Afterall I love seeing how creative people can get with remixing Benchy.
But that also means the license giver can create benchy in a way that it works best on their own product, artificially inflating their own performance numbers at the expense of others.
@@KaitouKaiju you raise a very good point. Disclaimer: I don't know much about the benchy other than printing them but I know alot more about benchmarking as one of the products in my portfolio in my previous company is a benchmark in my industry. Other than consistency, what makes a good benchmark is that it's impartial. A benchy that is developed by a 3d printer company is going to be much less desirable than a benchy that is developed by a company that doesn't make 3d printers.
@@KaitouKaiju They can already do that. It changes nothing. In fact, this very thing is true of the original benchy, except they weren't selling printers.
Its 2075, Zack Freedman dies. His epitaph reads: "Here lies the only man in history ever to have bought a boat and not eventually lived to regret it in some way. #3DBenchy"
This man is gonna leave such a void when he dies. The mirage's firmware. Hextraction. Gridfinity. and now the legal owner of the rights to the most popular 3D print.
Thank you for your excellent dive into the ocean of copyright. Appreciate the effort and speed at which you slung out this masterpiece. I was active in the EU SWPAT fight in the late 90's. GG WP Zack
@@Nevir202NTI is the group that bought Creative Tools, the company that made the original benchy. Sorry that everyone was mean to you, you can try searching “NTI Group” and that should return the results you’re looking for.
One thing Zack: "public domain" is... tricky. If you want it to be Public Domain you actually have to use something like the MIT license, because for example Germany's public domain framework is very particular. Personally I would do CC BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution and Share-alike). Which is "do what you want, just give credit to the original authors, and release that version under this license".
@@ZhilBearCC0 would be "something like the MIT licence", in that it's a specific licence that, at least for CC0, explicitly imparts all of the rights you would normally have to a public domain work. 8 think their mention of CC-BY-SA was more their personal preference for a default open licence than an equivalent to public domain (share alike is more robust in that derivative works and third party copies must also be accessible, CC0 means that downstream copies and derivatives can be released under restrictive licences, apart from the obvious this also means the original disappears from the public in the quite possible event that the original copy goes offline and only restrictively licenced ones are still available)
@@bosstowndynamics5488 Yup, I know all this, I actually publish my own licenses, but thanks for explaining it I guess? Not a fan of copyleft licenses personally, I like the more free licenses like MIT over ones like GPL, but I get it.
@@chuckles1808 I had the same thought, they have an entire guide as to what is and is not "compatible" with the license the community uses. Use it however you want, remix all you like, sell for profit, as long as you 1) give credit, 2) allow others to use and remix _your_ contributions, and 3) all source material you used must _also_ have been under the same or a similar license at the time you used it. In a sentence, _exactly what's happening right now with Benchy._ (benchy as an scp when)
I was not expecting to be convinced about the "benchy cannot be copyrighted" argument, but you make a persuasive point. As a designer of functional objects, it's an interesting realization to come to. Getting a design patent on every model seems implausible.
Thing is, until 20th century Copyright worked the same way! 200 years ago, copyright lasted only a few decades and required registration. I really want to see who got bribed to change those laws.
@@willofthemakerYeah, agreed, the model file is clearly a creative work that's been fixed in a "tangible" medium (copyright law recognises digital files as "tangible" as the term refers to a medium that can be used to exchange ideas rather than necessarily a physical artifact). The fact that it could *also* be protected by a design patent doesn't invalidate that (see also Disney extending the Mickey Mouse monopoly by incorporating him in his original form into a load of new trademarks, even though he was unambiguously under copyright he's now a trademark)
I also nitpicked this. Apparently NTI is Danish but CT was Swedish, so the redirects from their old (Swedish) sites all go to the Swedish branch of NTI's site.
Under Norwegian law, if some breach of contract has occurred for a long time, (more than months), and no party to the contract has protested, the contract has been modified. Reality supercedes contracts. Ex: supplier is always three weeks behind contracted schedule for production, if the contractor is paying the agreed amount for years, then there's no way to claim breach of contract at a future time. Same goes for a job contact, the paper signed might have some salary and obligations specified, but after 5 years of raises and promotion to middle management, you can't get "reset to contract" as the contract has been modified by reality. A very nifty concept, that makes it easier to do business as everything doesn't have to be written explicitly.
One thing of note. As a contract, Creative Commons has a built-in penalty for not complying with requirements (ie. breaching the contract): you automatically lose the license. So there's no need to sue for breaching the contract. And if you don't have a license, then the general copyright law kicks in. Situation becomes the same as if you reposted a STL file without permission.
@@Matt_Matthews This argument seems absurd. Just because every element of the benchy can be explained as a technical device, doesn't mean there is no creative merit to it, because if another person were to assemble all these same elements independently, they would most likely not create a cute version of a tugboat! So the overall composition of it into its shape is a creative decision. Furthermore if there is no copyright protection on it, then what was he going to purchase off NTI? Branding rights?
@ it's the premise of his video, not mine. That said, if he is asserting that Benchy can't be copyrighted but NTI asserts they have a copyright, the only way to resolve the disagreement is in court. I suppose his offer to by the rights to Benchy is a way to say, "forget the ambiguity, I'll pay you for your claim to the copyright and then release it out of copyright to sidestep the question." FWIW, I found the argument with the example of the chair (which I understand comes from actual legal precedent) to be compelling, but I'm not an attorney.
I think Zach misunderstands what the US Copyright Office means by copyrightable with its chair analogy. While the benchy's design might be covered under patents, the STL file itself would still be covered by copyright. Distributing or modifying the STL file against the license would be a contract violation like Zach says, but the actual STL file is still subject to copyright claims. However, there are no copyright claims made, so arguing about copyright is neither here nor there for this issue. If you want a real answer, ask an IP lawyer, which I'm surprised Zach didn't do.
@@TurnerXei Zach asked an IP lawyer he says at the end of the video, but i mean that seems like a pretty far out there view. Also your interpretation has issues as well. What about the STL per se is copyrightable? Is every vertex hand placed, is that's what under copyright? There is a fundamental question whether the item is creative or functional; my point of view is that it's got creative aspects about it that are likely copyright-protected. Machine generated data, data that is output of an algorithm, are not per se copyrightable. It needs to inherit copyrightability from some creative rather than technical action by a person.
14:24 While it is true the Benchy's design is full of things necessary for its function, it seems difficult to argue that its presentation as a boat itself and the exact disposition of these elements are necessary for its function. Also keep in mind the Oracle versus Google trial, where Oracle tried to sue Google over copying the Java API, in non-programmer terms, google copied exactly what was needed to make Android work and none of the implementation. Unfortunately, although Oracle ultimately lost the case, this only happened because Google passed four conditions according to the Supreme Court. One of the conditions was that Google only copied 0.4% of the code. If you are making a Benchy with an added crest, you are copying most of the Benchy. Even if the creators themselves believe that every part of the design was necessary, it doesn't really mean it's what's going to be accepted by the court. I am not a lawyer, but I don't think a trial based around the "not copyrightable" claim would have a predictable outcome.
I don't have a dog in this hunt, personally, but I think you did a fine job with this. Thanks for the effort. I print a lot of benchies, but only for the original purpose. I hope you get to buy Benchy's copyright for not too much money. You will certainly be providing a service to the community.
It is creative from the copyright side because there are hundreds of ways to arrange the useful properties… but their choices in the modeling was “creative”. You can’t copyright a phonebooks data but it’s arrangement, layout, choice of fonts, photos, etc all are copyrightable. Lawful Masses does a lot of videos on copyright and it’s crazy how that all works
I've been waiting for a video on this. I've been seeing conflicting info, and I already heard that the "copyright owners" didn't know what was going on. I'm ready for a knowledge drop.
However, Henriette Tamasauskas, NTI’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), told 3D Printing Industry that “NTI has not taken any action to enforce the 3DBenchy license or taken any steps to have derivatives removed.” Instead, Prusa Research CMO Rudolf Krčmář confirmed that Printables has enforced the takedowns in response to a “third-party report.”
Regardless of whether CC license violations are copyright violations or breach of contract, 3D model hosting sites should make an effort to enforce the terms under which a designer chose to share their work. The 3D printing community and the consumer printer industry depends on the community sharing designs. Without that, 3D printers would be worthless appliances for the majority of printer owners, since the majority of people don't design their own models. And if the terms get violated left and right, people will eventually just stop contributing to the community.
Some copyright holders like to have some say in how closely a license needs to be followed. Sometimes they want it to be worded strictly to "cover my ass," but off the record they don't care so much. So in my opinion, it's usually good form to get some feedback from the copyright holder before taking enforcement steps.
@@swe872 Zach (quite unfairly imo) 27:41, 28:27 literally said "They were angry at Printables for deleting their models" even though he just stated that Prusa didn't have any choice.
Oh no, why would Josef Prusa incorporate in his home country?! Probably because incorporating in a different country from which you operate opens you up to a bunch of extra fees, more legal and accounting workload, increased chance of audits, possible double taxation, etc. The Czech Republic is already one of the more business friendly countries in the EU where many foreign companies choose to go when they want to operate in the EU. It's kind of strange to frame it like this was a weird eccentricity and not the default, most sensible thing for them to do just because it's inconvenient in this one very specific edge case.
That was weirdly aggressive by Zack, but I think the point made here is that the most important thing of Printables is actually its users, so Prusa should have done the research into these things and figure out that maybe hosting the site in their country would not be the best idea. He's probably just extra memeing the bit for lols, though. That said, I agree with all of your points, and it's probably not as easy as just "hey host it somewhere else with REAL laws", which was kinda the message that was portrayed in the video, and sounded a bit rude in my opinion.
@ "so Prusa should have done the research into these things and figure out that maybe hosting the site in their country would not be the best idea" I'm not sure about that either. We like the Benchy so it sucks that technically all these remixes are illegal. But I don't think being able to host license-violating content should be a major factor in deciding where to host your site or incorporate your company. Also the premise itself feels shady. Like we appreciate CC when it means we get free stuff, but ignore it when it becomes inconvenient.
Personally, I don't think the non-creative argument works because while all the features are functional the arrangement of those functions are fundamentally creative designs. Not to mention the infinite ways those individual features could have been portrayed. It's like game design. You can't copyright a game mechanic, like dice; but you can copyright expressions of those mechanics, like the symbols on that dice and their arrangement. The Benchy is not just a list of features. It is an arrangement of those features. That is design.
I had to cut this part down, but I was told that arranging the tests in a boat-like configuration also has the practical benefit of reducing print time. I was surprised how many arguments there were for AND against a Benchy copyright.
@@ZackFreedmanEven then it's still a creative work, even textbooks are subject to copyright and there's technical fact based reasons for every bit of content in them (in theory at least)
The idea that the benchy is not copyrightable seems like an argument that could potentially win if you threw enough money at a law firm to argue it. But that's different from saying that it's an interpretation that seems likely to hold up in court.
@@ZackFreedman Copyright is automatic in the US. This comment is copyrighted, owned by me. TH-cam has a license to put it on the site. They can't give others the right. The CREATORS of the bits and bytes that describe the Benchy owned the copyright, unless it was sold as an asset of the corporate merger. BTW, all those Buzzfeed lists and videos of Reddit comments are pure infringement. I'm waiting for someone to sue...
As somebody who has owned a 3D printer since 2011 and has, incredibly shockingly, somehow never ended up printing a benchy, this video was a great and refreshingly accurate summary of the situation. Thanks for clearing through the cruft and giving us the straight answers!
This is the right amount of spice Zack. You can absolutely have the original file as a benchmark without restricting it's modifications which make it no no longer benchmarkable. Now it's benchremarkable.
The Benchy is very much a creative work, and not purely tecknical. That is why we love it. Also CC license should be respected, if not, people will stop posting models under it. Which is already happening. We now see the lincense "digital file" in both Printerables and Makerworld.
I don't think there's another youtuber who is so consistently funny, clever, concise, informative, and information dense. You do excellent work! I thank you for your hard work.
I do think it's unfortunate that this all happened because the original creators had no idea how popular the benchy would be. Their logic is entirely sound, if it's intended to be a benchmark, you should want it to be the same model every time. However they probably should have changed the license when it did become popular.
The fact that the 3DBenchy looks like a boat is enough creative input for it to be a creative work. A human being used creativity to create the form of a boat. Its other characteristics do not take away from that.
Thank you. I felt like this video missed the mark in a big way. An object can be both a creative work and be patentable. It is automatically a creative work by virtue of its creation, and the fact that elements of its design might be patentable doesn’t take away from that.
Agreed. This is a classic "forest for the trees" argument and feels like a D&D player engaging in rules-lawyering in to achieve an absurd outcome. Or even, if you would excuse the awful associations, a "sovereign citizen" who takes fragments of laws and legal opinions and without real understanding of them builds a case that gets them laughed out the court. If I wrote a short song that was intended to help a singer practice or warm up, even if every part of it was composed of individual musical elements that each have a specific, functional purpose, that does not mean the song isn't copyrightable.
Also, even entirely technical documents and designs can be copyrighted, there's tons and tons of entirely non fiction media that's under copyright. "Creative work" for the purposes of copyright is *way* broader than the common language understanding
I think the fact that they made a pdf stating that it was a technical object intended to be used a certain way makes it clear that it was not intended to be a creative work. Had they made a cute boat, then went “hey look, it can be useful too”, then there might be an argument for copyright. But it was intended from the beginning to be functional, not a work of art, and they did not file patent paperwork on it.
I took cyber ethics and law as part of my IT course and I had to do a whole chapter on copyright and patent law in the US. Thank you for explaining the difference and why it applies here. It's hard to explain to people and this video does a really good job.
As a former law librarian I was all prepared to grumble about your basic misunderstanding of IP law.... but I must instead praise your succinct summary. Including the overview of the contract law elements, which hadn't even occurred to me. Well, I guess that thank-you goes to your lawyer, but still. Good job! Instead, I guess I'll have to point out that a "hawsepipe" is a very functional name - it's a pipe that a hawser passes through. :)
But he has a (massive!) basic misunderstanding. He confuses copyrightability of the Benchy design with the copyright of the STL file. Even if the design can not be copyrighted (questionable), the STL file is absolutely protected by copyright, and that is what the license applies to.
I have some experience with copyright from work. If a court had to answer the question, I think they would consider it a creative work because of the design choices themselves. A copyright evaluation considers each creative component of the work, not just the work in totality. Factors that make it a stress test (like what angles certain elements are at) are not creative components, but they can own anything that could remotely be considered creative choice (the fact it looks like a boat instead of a basic geometric shape, has port holes, a deck, etc). I believe benchy does have protected elements, but the protection is thin enough that if you made a knock off that fails the squint test you'd be OK.
IMHO the strongest protection (albeit it would be expensive to argue in court) for most derivatives would be fair use - since the original 3DBenchy was made as a benchmarking tool, and the vast majority of derivatives are memes that are intended for silly toys, they're very clearly transformative works with a different purpose that aren't competing with the original design, bonus points for the fact that the derivatives by and large don't turn a profit
Absolutely! Copyright is not blocking anyone from creating a completely different boat design with a similar list of measurable features. That won’t be the 3DBenchy - it will be another model… the more “similar” to the Benchy, more likely it could be taken to court - IF there was an interest to protect the original Copyright. Zack made it far from the reality in this video.
@@GeekDetour I wouldn't say that Zack was a *long* way from the mark - because of how strongly specified Benchy is a designer could probably create a fresh model that's very similar to Benchy that doesn't violate copyright. The 2 errors he takes are ignoring the implications of *how* derivatives are made (people don't make brand new Benchy models that deviate from the original, they take the original STL and modify it, using the original exact model means indirectly incorporating all of the minute non technical aspects like where each part of the model happens to be, aesthetic choices that aren't codified in the docs, etc), and the fact that contract law is only relevant if Benchy is protected by IP law of some description - if Benchy isn't copyrightable and range explicitly registered under a patent then you don't need a licence to use it and therefore you don't need any kind of contract to grant the right to use it in the first place.
shoutout to you and anybody else with the balls to Identify a problem, do the research and put their money where their mouth is providing a solution. Salute to you sir.
16:47 A hawser is a fat rope sufficiently strong to keep the boat from leaving the dock unattended. Yes, sailors have weird names for everything. That's because people started sailing before there was language. At the time it was all just grunting and pointing, which was confusing, so they made up special grunts for pointing to different things.
Even in the Age of Sail it's not like most would have been able to read and plenty in English fleets were press ganged so might not have even understood the language well. I'm guessing that's part of the reason why words like gunwale, forecastle, and boatswain all got kinda slurred into two syllables. While we're being educational though pH can't go negative. There's just only so much hydronium and hydroxide concentration water can have. There are a number of strong acids that have a negative pKa and would therefore love to create a higher hydronium concentration.
I don't even 3d print. I just saw this 'controversy' posted by people who didn't really seem to know the particulars and find shit like this really interesting. Thanks for doing all this research and putting in so much effort. I know so many of your viewers will find it helpful from a practical standpoint, but I just enjoy the minutia.
@@hecko-yes Right. Trump just talked to prime minister of Denmark, so everything Trump says, is now correct. Pretty much sums it up. You need to understand what an artistic expression is, comprehend it, then come back. The things he points to in his vid, is utterly and completely irrelevant for copyright. But you know this right? Right?
@@FrodeBergetonNilsen he specificially discussed this topic with him and didn't just talk to him about something else, you know what i meant either way czech republic so whatever
i think i downloaded my first benchy like 2 years ago. l’ve also been 3D printing since 2017. But i think i have printed thousands of calibration cubes 😂
It is creative from the copyright side because there are hundreds of ways to arrange the useful properties… but their choices in the modeling was “creative”. You can’t copyright a phonebooks data but it’s arrangement, layout, choice of fonts, photos, etc all are copyrightable. Lawful Masses does a lot of videos on copyright and it’s crazy how that all works. Interesting argument about how they argue it’s all functional and I’d love to get a copyright lawyers take on it. But ultimately the question everybody has to ask is… is it worth paying statutory treble damages and legal fees?
My understanding is that "public domain" and "condition of attribution" are mutually exclusive licensing terms. They might be almost the same (especially if the attribution is the only condition of the license), but in most jurisdictions that would be enough to preclude correct usage of the term public domain.
Not all jurisdicitons recognise public domain, so the responsible thing to do is to release it both to public domain AND provide a license that's functionally equivalent. It's also worth noting that public domain is for creative works, and he specifically notes that the license applies to COPYRIGHT (if it exists at all). It's a bit odd that he didn't provide a public domain-equivalent license, but also to be fair it doesn't hurt anyone to have to credit the person that made such a great model.
@@snitguckfung You make a good point. My point was simply that calling something that requires attribution "public domain" is explicitly NOT public domain in any legal sense I know of and is likely to perpetuate a longstanding, potentially problematic confusion. I have no problem with any potential attribution requirements, just with conflating them with public domain in any meaningful sense.
@ That's true, and I agree that the attribution requirement is not public doman. I just wanted to mention that technically the "public domain" and "attribution required" parts were two separate things, from what I understood. I admit though that it is pretty poorly worded, and I don't understand why he'd require attribution on copyright, when he had an entire section dedicated to why copyright most likely just doesn't apply here...
@snitguckfung If I remember his wording correctly, it was along the lines of "I promise to release it into the public domain... as long as people give attribution to the original authors." As to why a license requiring attribution, my guess would be to encourage people to cite their sources.
@@benjaminmiddaugh2729 The wording, exactly as I hear it, is: "If I gain ownership of the 3DBenchy, I promise to transfer the file to the public domain as expeditiously as possible, AND provide a blanket license for anyone to use any copyrights (which may or may not exist), on the condition that they thank the original authors." Notice how his mention of a license and copyright are in the same phrase, separate from the public domain promise. Again, the wording is vague, and I think both interpretations make sense, but I'm working under the assumption that everything after the "and" is meant to be one unit separate from the public domain part, especially because his intonation really emphasises the "and", serving as a delimiter, and everything after is basically said all in one breath, which I wouldn't expect if the "on the condition..." part applies to both before and after the "and". If that makes sense, lol.
Disclaimer: I am German, so I like to follow rules. I don't think this is related to any kind of law, ruling or whatever. This is simply a matter of following an original designer's written wish (as in license). If we don't follow those open source/hardware/whatever licenses ourselves, we can not complain about others doing the same. How are we going to stop companies from producing and selling our NC objects? It will render any CC contract useless.
Counterpoint - the original designers specified no derivatives for a specific reason and have been very clear on that reason - to keep the standardization of Benchy as a benchmark. The vast majority of derivatives are obvious changes that are clearly made as toys or even just 3D memes - there's no risk of them being mistaken for a true Benchy and muddling up benchmark results, and even more than that they would most likely fall under fair use since they're transformative (both in terms of design and, more importantly, purpose) and not for profit.
@rafaelmarkos4489 I would say it makes it easier, since none of the derivatives that I'm aware of claim to be benchmarks and they all defeat at least one of the critical features designed for benchmarking purposes from the original design
The 13:00-ish argument would suggest program code can't be copyrighted. Sorry. Purely utilitarian "tangible" expressive content is absolutely subject to copyright.
Program code can be copyrighted, but you can't copyright the function. If you write hello world one way and I'll write a hello world in another way. My hello world does not infringe on yours even though they accomplish the same task.
@ sadly, what is and is not a derivative work is the most byzantine and subjective part of copyright law. Transformative fair use is much easier, including in this case, but only applies in the US.
@@jsalsman fair dealing exists in all commonwealth jurisdictions as well as a few others, though as in all things the US variant is remarkably more liberal in it's application. Nor are these the only exceptions to copyright, such as the Berne convention for preservation of artistic merit, though this one is unlikely to cover derivatives, just backing up the .stl
The Benchy is not a hinge. It is an artistic object that embeded indirect functionality. It is extremely clever, highly unique, not of common use. The fact that every design feature serves a purpose of measurement and quality assessment only strengthens the case of it's deliberate uniqueness and creative process.
Maybe there should be two Benchys - the existing one as is with it's current license to protect the consistency of the benchmark, and another (even if it's geometrically identical) under a derivative-friendly licence, that way the derivatives will attribute the "this is for fun" version rather than the "this is a functional tool" version
I'm not a lawyer, but "creative" is meant to be a very low bar. Yes, patents are for function but the legal trick here is that there are all manner of possible ways to implement a particular function and the choice of which method to use is a creative act. The features used for benchmarking are functional but the way in which they are expressed in the benchy are a creative choice and intentional. The photo you brought up failed copyright protection not because it wasn't creative but because it was the product of a non-human... copyright is explicitly human produced creativity. Other examples include phonebook and maps, where the strict facts contained aren't copyrightable but the purely functional fakes contain enough creativity in how they are added that they produce a copyright. There was a case not long ago of someone trying and failing to use copyright to take down a leaked stream where they had turned their camera on by accident, they lost their claim because the court ruled that they failed to demonstrate any intentional or transformative choice in the material streamed, which is asserted as the lowest bar for creativity. That's the issue with IP law that people forget, things involve multiple laws. The design of the benchy could be protected under copyright (for the creativity of it), patent (for the various functional aspects), and trademark (for the distinctive design of the thing). Pick the right law for a particular infringement. Since it's not registered as a patent or trademark there's no enforceable there, copyright is the only automatic registration of the three, so there's that. The interesting problem you've overlooked is that it's possible the benchy wasn't developed *as* an stl... if it's developed in something else and then exported to that format, it might well be classified as a derivative work for extra complications. Procedurally generated material like the ape NFTs fall afoul of both this issue and the fact they aren't created by a human. Releasing to public domain... yeah, that's a whole problem of its own. Public domain is a barely defined concept that may not even exist in some countries. MIT is better but I strongly recommend looking into what public domain actually does.
Creative commons isn't inherently copyleft, it is only copylefted by the "share alike" attribute if used. Which does then require derivative works to be equally open. This is the key distinction between open source licenses like MIT and the "true" copyleft of the GPL.
All this and you missed that breaking or violating a contract isn't "illegal" or a crime. It just opens you up to legal action from the other party in the contract which is 100% NOT the same thing as illegal.
@@bend.manevitz8261All laws are *eventually* backed up by criminal law but you have to work really, *really* hard to get a criminal penalty for a copyright infringement including pissing off a lot of law enforcement and judiciary staff
I came to the same conclusion that there was no DMCA notice and that Prusa is taking the works down without the owner asking. However, your analysis of copyright and patent law needs help.
9:19 - Great transatlantic accent but... newsreels would have been black-and-white, not sepia tone. That's as close to an insult as I can come up with, Zack.
aside from being a good material tester, it's also a good way to see how a different colours look like on different parts of the benchy. I eventually ended up making a gridfinity holder for these boats and use it as a colour palette. When someone asks me to print something showing a printed model gives a better example than a small coloured square. Also a good display for extra options I can add like adaptive layers or fuzzy skin (my beloved)
No. Copyright is extremely important. Otherwise you make a video or write a book and you wouldn't have any protection on your work. Everything has it's place. If you want to release something in Public Domain, that's great. Sometimes you don't. You wouldn't be watching TH-cam videos from any professional TH-camr if Copyright didn't exist.
@GeekDetour I disagree. The monopoly the government gives you on your work, just get in the way advancement,be artistically, technological or pharmaceutical. Also the common man doesn't even has means to stop his work from being shared,as is really expensive. Copyright just protect the ones with money enough to enforce it,this is the reason companies lobby so much to extend it.
30:11 That's the issue though isn't it? Like the core of the issue is that CC licensing isn't respected in any way shape or form and at the end of the day as a community we're going to have to rectify this. If the community had respected the license for the Benchy than we would have picked some other object to meme to hell and back and we would have never run into this issue in the first place. It's not hard to adhere to a CC license, and honestly if people can't do it then maybe sites like Printables should do it for them.
As mentioned in the video, this would be a very different story if formal copyright claims had been filed. Asking content hosts to extralegally enforce copyright law has serious implications.
@@SnakebitSTI My comment has nothing to do with copyright. Creative Commons are a copyleft, or a replacement/stand in for the framework of copyright which in it's strictest legal definition doesn't allow for derivatives without individual licensing. Copylefts seek to right this and will only effectively work if they are community enforced. Again these licenses are NOT difficult to follow and it would behoove the community in the long run to actually at least try to adhere to them before some government body forces the community to adhere to more strict licensing arrangements; something we have seen in multiple communities that grew around media sharing(with each community telling itself that it was for sure the safe one).
@@CDRaff "Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law." Taken from the Creative Commons website's description of their licenses. CC licenses are copyright licenses, which are written to be enforceable under copyright law.
@@SnakebitSTIIt's not extralegal enforcement by Printables though, if they were headquartered in the US then Printables would have a constitutional right to voluntarily remove Benchy if they chose to (the first amendment includes a provision that no person can be forced to express speech they don't want to, which includes companies not being forced to host content against their will). I'm sure equivalent rights exist in the EU as well (and notably Printables isn't attempting any measures to try and penalise people for hosting Benchy derivatives elsewhere - they've purely chosen not to host them themselves under threat of legal action)
Personally I'm not convinced that most of these models violate the licence anyway - if Benchy falls under copyright law (and I think on balance of the evidence it almost certainly does, loads of technical materials do when discussing a specific example composite design, and it's been well tested that you can create a copyrightable work out of parts that are each in and of themselves not copyrightable) then it's also subject to fair use, and while I'm not a lawyer I think there's a *very* strong case that the meme derivatives are fair use, in no small part because they're *obviously* not trying to portray themselves as a way to run the original Benchy benchmark. Fair use supersedes licence restrictions because you don't need the licence at all to use the work
Zach, I have a hard time focusing on and finishing videos, no matter how visually or conceptually or however else interesting, but this video definitely caught my eye and I was able to watch it in full in one sitting, which is a big accomplishment for me. I hope the best for you acquiring the rights, have a blessed day
So Zack wants to buy the 3dbenchy - "for the community" - and everybody will pull a pikachu-face when he reveals his nefarious plan: Monetizing the thing. Everytime some poor printer spews out a boat-shaped hunk of plastic, Zack's boat-shaped hunk of steel, a.k.a. yacht, sails a bit closer to reality. Well played, sir, well played.
The big hole in that plan: The files are already available under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license, so there are already a lot of people with copies who are also licensed to share those copies.
@ygk3d Apparently it’s no time to be truthful either because in the description of your “truth about the benchy boycott” video you wrote “The rights have been sold to a large corporation and they're cracking down on license enforcement, removing all remixes from file sharing platforms like Printables and Thingiverse.”
I’m going to do the classic internet thing, where a tiny itty bitty nitpick is what I comment on. Sailors have weird names for everything, but they also shorten everything. The word “bowline” is pronounced “boh-lin” (close to how they say Bolin the legend of korra). In the same way, “Gunwale” is shortened to be pronounced “gunnel.”
12:05 considering how often false DMCA claims happen (particularly with a lot of Nintendo shit) I think it's fair to say the consequences are essentially nil and corporations would rather just take down whatever than actually verifying it granted TH-cam is the worst and most blatant offender in this regard, especially considering they have plenty of cash to actually just y'know, have their legal department verify everything
The problem with defending against a DMCA claim is that you have to have enough money to be able to defend it in court (and a big company is going to be able to throw more money at lawyers than you) and in the case of TH-cam, a takedown claim doesn't count as actual DMCA claim (and therefore have repercussions for abuse) until several rounds of claims and counter claims are gone through, which is why DMCA trolls are so prevalent on YT. The process is something like: Copyright "owner" issues a takedown claim (causing the video to be taken down). Creator issues a counter claim. Owner has about 30 days to accept or reject the counter claim. If the counter claim is accepted (or the Owner doesn't respond in time) the video gets reinstated, but the creator still gets screwed by the algorithm because the video has lost all momentum) with effectively no penalty to the Owner. If the counter claim is rejected, then the Owner has to file a proper DMCA takedown against the creator
Actually I was curious about the situation, but haven't had a 3D printer for about 6 months. I haven't watched this channel since moving and getting rid of my 3D printer, but I trust you and wanted to hear your perspective.
I had questioned the DCMA line when I had first heard about the benchy problem, and was so confused why they said it was copyright infringement vs contract breaking. Thank you for not continuing the over sensationalizing the issue and breaking down the misinformed into the crux of the situation while ultimately ending with a call to action! I've got my popcorn out just waiting to see how this plays out!
I absolutely flipping love your comedy style my dude! thank you for your amazing (high effort, well edited, brilliantly scripted) videos that genuinely make me laugh out loud!
I hate speed print flexing because what they’re entirely useless. Like claiming you wrote an entire 2000 page novel by holding the Q key. The Speed Boat races should have requirements. Like not looking horrible, being water tight after 30 minutes at 1 meter submersion, a list of tolerances that must be met, an exact weight per filament type, a tinsel strength test between the roof and hull, and a crush test from the bow to stern. Basically, whatever strength an absolutely perfect print can achieve for a specific filament, it should at least make half that. Otherwise, what’s the point of speed printing if none of it is usable?
"recognizable as a benchy" is the only requirement. Going fast is hard enough, and by putting requirements like that it really limits pushing the max speed (which is the whole point anyway, the boat is just the agreed upon distance of the race)
@@marsrover001Sure, but lots of races have additional requirements. You can't just run around the hurdles in a hurdle race for instance, even though you'd broadly be recognised as running, you have to actually clear the hurdles. Having some basic standard as to what "recognisable as a Benchy" means would be pretty reasonable
Then they would use the extreme overclocking as an example of why they shouldn't because no extreme overclocking rules demand you should build a functional PC, just one that can run the benchmark and display it for verification.
Zach, even though this is not your normal content it was still informative and entertaining. Thank you for taking the time and effort to try to set the record straight.
The 3D Benchy is most likely subject to copyright. While its purpose is technical, the artistic choice to use a tugboat design (and not, say, basic geometrical figures), would be protected by copyright and not patent. The decisions on how to arrange these technical elements into a cohesive, boat-shaped, design are a form of creative expression. The 3D Benchy is akin to a technical manual or textbook, both of which are copyright protected. It’s not the technical aspects themselves that are protected, it’s the way they are expressed. Given that the tests the Benchy performs aren’t novel, that is, they were in widespread use by the time it was creates, I would argue they are not eligible for patenting.
20:49 why are you assuming anyone who has a benchy file acquired it by downloading it from a host with disclosure wording? ... Do you think that is the only way people acquire files is by using a coprotized website?
I have not broken any deal. I did not agree to a deal and there was no deal as you described during my acquisition so no, you are incorrect. I did not.
This video is very zesty on the content and speech side, so I don't care about less flashy visuals. Your metaphorical measma of muttered messages massages my main man management core magnificently, this is why I am always here when you have something to say. Thank you for setting the record straight, some things just can't be cut short, or they become wrong.
Zack, Instead of the public domain, may I recommend one of the other Creative Commons licenses, the issue being that the concept of the public domain does not exist in all countries and would not hold force in those countries and they would likely default to the old license. You might reach out to your law friend that you passed this video by originally to get their opinion as to what license to transfer it to. That or using the MIT or one of the GPL licenses.
Thank you for this coverage, I watched the whole kerfuffle and a lot of it seemed to be outrage bait and trying to get content out asap, so respect for waiting and actually providing fact checked information. I do want to call out Lawful Masses, he discussed it and while he didn't get into the contract law aspect (from memory) he did note that it did not seem to be a DCMA issue, his conclusion was the company reducing their legal risk.
Funny how millions of people modifying a model's geometry remains illegal regardless of how little the originators care to challenge it, but enough people using a trademarked name to describe products not made by the trademark owner causes the name to become genericised and unenforceable.
wow, this makes so much sense, and was very entertaining. It's amazing to me that other people write articles and whine about how upset they are over a circumstance without a touch of research. this is why i love your channel.
Let the benchy derivatives be free! They don't impact the original Benchy, no one's trying to sell them, and they aren't hurting anybody. If they breach a contract, _amend that contract._
No. They could release a derivate, different from the original, require you to state that is a remix and credit the original. But they should protect the bench itself. Why is this so hard to understand?
@@OctahedranI think anyone arguing anything about the benchy and it's licence terms needs their entitlement checked. If the author has selected a licence, they have selected a licence.
@@Octahedran Still hard to understand? People are arguing that CC licenses are invalid and you might break them if you want to. People ARE arguing that this is NOT licensed work, because they are anarchist. Even in this very vid. There is a lot of creativity going on with the Benchy, and the copyright holder could decide to honor that creativity. If they feel like it. But given how rude this crowd is, I probably wouldn't myself. The disrespect and abuse is just ridiculous. When this crowd is called out for it, it whines and cries. It is toxic.
@ Apparently, Explain to me in very clear words what you mean. Is all your saying that you think people should be able to modify the Benchy but the Benchy itself is subject to the the laws it currently is?
The Creatives Commons license derives the maker's legal authority to license the use of their creation from copyright. Creative Commons can't be applied to uncopywritable works.
Yep simply out, there's nothing you can offer in a contract / license If you don't own anything. Same way you can't hand out permissions to walk a path that isn't on your property.
@@marian519 No, it isn't. Drawings generated by machine cannot be copyrighted, which is why companies often put things which can (like a logo or something in the design) just in case so they can prove the thing is theirs. The benchy is no different, as it has a big "CT3D.xyz" text under it.
If any of you want Zack's shirt, it's from this Etsy seller:
www.etsy.com/listing/1595887767/do-you-even-benchy-white-font-3d
(Not sponsored/we don't know them, my sister just bought Zack's shirt here and gave it to him as a gift)
Sigma Shirt
Since when have we been able to comment URL's? Mine always get removed, even if it's to another video.
@@PanoptesDreams cuz u dont matter. welcome to the club
damn, its on etsy. Im banned there and dont want to unban myself. Etsy is pure evil
@UFJoy I'm very well aware of the suppression on the platform. I'm one of those accounts that are marked to have all of my comments aggressively moderated.
Even benign stuff is frequently removed.
BTW when I tag you it deletes your name from my comment.
If you do manage to buy the rights to the Benchy, before making it available to the general public under any license, you should 3D Print the "World's Only Privately Owned Benchy" in some esoteric filament :)
or 100 different filaments in 1 print?
@@SnareGG go one further and do a different filament for every layer
Why is buying it first necessary? Why not ask them to make it public domain themselves?
@@consciouscode8150 so they don't have to think about it (read: spend internal lawyer man hours approving the change) and instead they marginally profit from selling it, would be my guess
@consciouscode8150 i thinkwd the same but i if contries have difrent laws that may be a reson,example country a cant make anything public domain (i seen that in some countries owners just say that they WONT ENFORCE any rights to that work but they cant just abandon rights)
Benchy is so common that when I renovated my kitchen, I left one in the wall to confuse whoever opens that wall up next.
That's so cute
Benchy lives in your walls
It's so common, that whoever opens it, will say "hey, a benchy!"
That's hilarious. It's almost disappointing in a way. Of all the things you could find its a 3d printed cartoon inspired boat😂.
imagine having a benchy hole in your wall like they used to have for razor blades in bathrooms where you just shove every benchy you make for someone to find later when renovating.
"But then, in a phenomenon rarely witnessed in the 3D printing community, they got carried away."
I don't think that's ever happened before! /s
Oh no! Where to?
too damned funny :D
I saw the first shots of the Cigarette Holder War. When it started, noone expected it to end in a literal casket of 9,000 cigarettes. Between that and the seemingly freudian obsession with phallus-ifiying every possible model, i'm pretty sure "getting carried away" is the default state of the community lmao
@@callsignapollo_getting carried away is literally why this industry exists. Nobody ever stopped to think “this is good enough”
Gotta stand up for myself, my friend. My Tom's Hardware report didn't say "DMCA takedown". I quoted the glitched out Benchy guy's Reddit post (who said the owners were sending lawyers) and I quoted Prusa who said they were working with NTI and looking for a way to keep the Benchy remixes up as transformative works. At the time of reporting, Prusa's team was saying the complaint came from NTI, and I had no reason to question Prusa Research.
Thanks for the added context. :)
Upvoting for the sake of argument.
My god, Tom's Hardware is still around?
@@justsomeguy8385alive & kicking
Hmm, I feel like this should be the pinned comment, instead of the link to his t-shirt on Etsy.
"sell me the fucking boat" - zack freedman, 2025 (allegedly)
Allegedly 2025, not the quote.
A boat is just a hole you throw plastic into
@andrewmorris483 we arent questioning that he said that, he certainly did, we are questioning how long this video took to edit
Allegedly
Now all I can think about is “tell me about the fucking golf shoes!” 😅
To be honest, making a benchmark tool "non derivative" kinda makes sense. You don't want someone (more likely a company) designing an easier-to-print benchy, and sneaking it into their 3d printer's free files, thus making their machine performs better than it should. So yea, I can accept the explanation that the benchy needs to be consistent to be valuable as a benchmark tool.
Perhaps the license should be tweaked such that derivatives are allowed but cannot be published using only the "Benchy" name. Instead if it's like "Benchy parody" etc, it can be allowed because it will be obvious that it's different from the Benchy used for benchmarking. Afterall I love seeing how creative people can get with remixing Benchy.
But that also means the license giver can create benchy in a way that it works best on their own product, artificially inflating their own performance numbers at the expense of others.
Maybe follow Prusa's lead and have 'Original Benchy' as the inviolable benchmark?
@@KaitouKaiju you raise a very good point.
Disclaimer: I don't know much about the benchy other than printing them but I know alot more about benchmarking as one of the products in my portfolio in my previous company is a benchmark in my industry.
Other than consistency, what makes a good benchmark is that it's impartial.
A benchy that is developed by a 3d printer company is going to be much less desirable than a benchy that is developed by a company that doesn't make 3d printers.
@@KaitouKaiju They can already do that. It changes nothing. In fact, this very thing is true of the original benchy, except they weren't selling printers.
Modified Benchy should be named "Not a Benchy" as a condition to modify it (in the license terms)
Its 2075, Zack Freedman dies. His epitaph reads: "Here lies the only man in history ever to have bought a boat and not eventually lived to regret it in some way. #3DBenchy"
This man is gonna leave such a void when he dies. The mirage's firmware. Hextraction. Gridfinity. and now the legal owner of the rights to the most popular 3D print.
It's pretty easy to buy a boat and not regret it. Just get one small enough you can haul it out of the water at the end of the day :P
"DON'T buy a boat!" - RPG challenge runner Tantacles
Zack will never die. He will just print new parts when they wear out.
@@keiyakins orukayak ftw
Thank you for your excellent dive into the ocean of copyright. Appreciate the effort and speed at which you slung out this masterpiece. I was active in the EU SWPAT fight in the late 90's. GG WP Zack
NTI, Zack can be trusted with the benchy.
Trust us. Hes willing to say his patreon names no matter how stupid, he follows through
What does NTI mean? A Google didn't seem to turn up anything relevant.
@@Nevir202 It's the company that currently owns the benchy
@@Nevir202 watch the first 30 seconds of the video again or read the video description...........
@@Nevir202 Guess you didn't watch the video
@@Nevir202NTI is the group that bought Creative Tools, the company that made the original benchy. Sorry that everyone was mean to you, you can try searching “NTI Group” and that should return the results you’re looking for.
One thing Zack: "public domain" is... tricky.
If you want it to be Public Domain you actually have to use something like the MIT license, because for example Germany's public domain framework is very particular.
Personally I would do CC BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution and Share-alike). Which is "do what you want, just give credit to the original authors, and release that version under this license".
No, use CC0, that's literally the CC license made to be an alternative to Public Domain that works in more jurisdictions
@@ZhilBearCC0 would be "something like the MIT licence", in that it's a specific licence that, at least for CC0, explicitly imparts all of the rights you would normally have to a public domain work. 8 think their mention of CC-BY-SA was more their personal preference for a default open licence than an equivalent to public domain (share alike is more robust in that derivative works and third party copies must also be accessible, CC0 means that downstream copies and derivatives can be released under restrictive licences, apart from the obvious this also means the original disappears from the public in the quite possible event that the original copy goes offline and only restrictively licenced ones are still available)
@@bosstowndynamics5488 Yup, I know all this, I actually publish my own licenses, but thanks for explaining it I guess?
Not a fan of copyleft licenses personally, I like the more free licenses like MIT over ones like GPL, but I get it.
SCP fans know the issue with PD
@@chuckles1808 I had the same thought, they have an entire guide as to what is and is not "compatible" with the license the community uses. Use it however you want, remix all you like, sell for profit, as long as you 1) give credit, 2) allow others to use and remix _your_ contributions, and 3) all source material you used must _also_ have been under the same or a similar license at the time you used it. In a sentence, _exactly what's happening right now with Benchy._
(benchy as an scp when)
Every time I heard "DCMA" in that creator's 'News Brief', my brain blue-screened.
It shows how much research he did into the manner😂
that dude has no clue what a DMCA notice really is and showed himself to be a bullshit artist in the process, hilarious but also kinda sad
What, you not heard of a DCMA downtake rquest?
you never heard of the Digital Copyright for Millennials Act?
The DCMA applies copyright policy constantly, unlike the ACMA which flips polarity every time there's a change of president.
I wonder how many of your followers are not people who own 3D printers. As one of them, you are darn informative, entertaining and very funny.
Thank you, good luck being the only person to ever pay for a benchy, lol.
This was a fantastic deep dive! I'm so happy with my paertron subscription!
I was not expecting to be convinced about the "benchy cannot be copyrighted" argument, but you make a persuasive point. As a designer of functional objects, it's an interesting realization to come to. Getting a design patent on every model seems implausible.
Thing is, until 20th century Copyright worked the same way! 200 years ago, copyright lasted only a few decades and required registration. I really want to see who got bribed to change those laws.
@@arthurmoore9488 I do know who did the bribing. Thanks, Walt Disney!
Honestly I think the logic is flawed. Just because something is functional does not mean it isnt creative nor does it mean it isnt copyrightable
@@willofthemakerYeah, agreed, the model file is clearly a creative work that's been fixed in a "tangible" medium (copyright law recognises digital files as "tangible" as the term refers to a medium that can be used to exchange ideas rather than necessarily a physical artifact). The fact that it could *also* be protected by a design patent doesn't invalidate that (see also Disney extending the Mickey Mouse monopoly by incorporating him in his original form into a load of new trademarks, even though he was unambiguously under copyright he's now a trademark)
@@willofthemaker But as Zach points out, functional components are not copyrightable, and damn near the whole benchy is functional.
"Danish conglomerate", you said, as you showed us their Swedish website full of Swedish text. This move angers the Swedes and Danes alike.
I also nitpicked this. Apparently NTI is Danish but CT was Swedish, so the redirects from their old (Swedish) sites all go to the Swedish branch of NTI's site.
Praxis.
USA
USA
USA!!!
Equal opportunity offender
@@tylercook7739I like that TH-cam gives me a “translate to English” for this reply
Under Norwegian law, if some breach of contract has occurred for a long time, (more than months), and no party to the contract has protested, the contract has been modified.
Reality supercedes contracts. Ex: supplier is always three weeks behind contracted schedule for production, if the contractor is paying the agreed amount for years, then there's no way to claim breach of contract at a future time. Same goes for a job contact, the paper signed might have some salary and obligations specified, but after 5 years of raises and promotion to middle management, you can't get "reset to contract" as the contract has been modified by reality.
A very nifty concept, that makes it easier to do business as everything doesn't have to be written explicitly.
So if you get away enough for long enough, you are good?
Steal for 4 years, you are the bad guy. Steal for 10 years, you are a law abiding citizen?
@porcorosso4330 if the person who you are stealing from knows it, and allows it, yes.
The problem with that is who's enforcing it?
@BrunodeSouzaLino that's why contract law is the bread and butter of most lawyers, as its normally the parties to a contract that's enforcing it
Big corporations here like Disney would hate such a law. Although I can see it being used often here in the US if we had such a law.
One thing of note. As a contract, Creative Commons has a built-in penalty for not complying with requirements (ie. breaching the contract): you automatically lose the license. So there's no need to sue for breaching the contract.
And if you don't have a license, then the general copyright law kicks in. Situation becomes the same as if you reposted a STL file without permission.
Yes, but as you noted, this relies on copyright law kicking in and Zack's entire argument is that the Benchy cannot qualify for copyright protection.
@@Matt_Matthews This argument seems absurd. Just because every element of the benchy can be explained as a technical device, doesn't mean there is no creative merit to it, because if another person were to assemble all these same elements independently, they would most likely not create a cute version of a tugboat! So the overall composition of it into its shape is a creative decision.
Furthermore if there is no copyright protection on it, then what was he going to purchase off NTI? Branding rights?
@ it's the premise of his video, not mine. That said, if he is asserting that Benchy can't be copyrighted but NTI asserts they have a copyright, the only way to resolve the disagreement is in court. I suppose his offer to by the rights to Benchy is a way to say, "forget the ambiguity, I'll pay you for your claim to the copyright and then release it out of copyright to sidestep the question."
FWIW, I found the argument with the example of the chair (which I understand comes from actual legal precedent) to be compelling, but I'm not an attorney.
I think Zach misunderstands what the US Copyright Office means by copyrightable with its chair analogy. While the benchy's design might be covered under patents, the STL file itself would still be covered by copyright. Distributing or modifying the STL file against the license would be a contract violation like Zach says, but the actual STL file is still subject to copyright claims. However, there are no copyright claims made, so arguing about copyright is neither here nor there for this issue. If you want a real answer, ask an IP lawyer, which I'm surprised Zach didn't do.
@@TurnerXei Zach asked an IP lawyer he says at the end of the video, but i mean that seems like a pretty far out there view. Also your interpretation has issues as well. What about the STL per se is copyrightable? Is every vertex hand placed, is that's what under copyright? There is a fundamental question whether the item is creative or functional; my point of view is that it's got creative aspects about it that are likely copyright-protected.
Machine generated data, data that is output of an algorithm, are not per se copyrightable. It needs to inherit copyrightability from some creative rather than technical action by a person.
14:24 While it is true the Benchy's design is full of things necessary for its function, it seems difficult to argue that its presentation as a boat itself and the exact disposition of these elements are necessary for its function. Also keep in mind the Oracle versus Google trial, where Oracle tried to sue Google over copying the Java API, in non-programmer terms, google copied exactly what was needed to make Android work and none of the implementation. Unfortunately, although Oracle ultimately lost the case, this only happened because Google passed four conditions according to the Supreme Court. One of the conditions was that Google only copied 0.4% of the code. If you are making a Benchy with an added crest, you are copying most of the Benchy. Even if the creators themselves believe that every part of the design was necessary, it doesn't really mean it's what's going to be accepted by the court. I am not a lawyer, but I don't think a trial based around the "not copyrightable" claim would have a predictable outcome.
Guessing spazzy Zak did not read up on Czech law nor consult a Czech lawyer Their laws are very restrictive
Scratch my brain talky man
16:45 the "hawser" is the rope that moors the ship. the "hawspipe" would be the pipe that houses the hawser.
I don't have a dog in this hunt, personally, but I think you did a fine job with this. Thanks for the effort. I print a lot of benchies, but only for the original purpose. I hope you get to buy Benchy's copyright for not too much money. You will certainly be providing a service to the community.
It is creative from the copyright side because there are hundreds of ways to arrange the useful properties… but their choices in the modeling was “creative”. You can’t copyright a phonebooks data but it’s arrangement, layout, choice of fonts, photos, etc all are copyrightable. Lawful Masses does a lot of videos on copyright and it’s crazy how that all works
This
I've been waiting for a video on this. I've been seeing conflicting info, and I already heard that the "copyright owners" didn't know what was going on. I'm ready for a knowledge drop.
However, Henriette Tamasauskas, NTI’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), told 3D Printing Industry that “NTI has not taken any action to enforce the 3DBenchy license or taken any steps to have derivatives removed.” Instead, Prusa Research CMO Rudolf Krčmář confirmed that Printables has enforced the takedowns in response to a “third-party report.”
prusa just loves shooting themselves in the foot that much
Regardless of whether CC license violations are copyright violations or breach of contract, 3D model hosting sites should make an effort to enforce the terms under which a designer chose to share their work. The 3D printing community and the consumer printer industry depends on the community sharing designs. Without that, 3D printers would be worthless appliances for the majority of printer owners, since the majority of people don't design their own models. And if the terms get violated left and right, people will eventually just stop contributing to the community.
Some copyright holders like to have some say in how closely a license needs to be followed. Sometimes they want it to be worded strictly to "cover my ass," but off the record they don't care so much. So in my opinion, it's usually good form to get some feedback from the copyright holder before taking enforcement steps.
Yeah, another way to spin this story is "Printables respects Creative Commons".
@@SnakebitSTI No body ever blamed printables wdym
@@swe872 Zach (quite unfairly imo) 27:41, 28:27 literally said "They were angry at Printables for deleting their models" even though he just stated that Prusa didn't have any choice.
Oh no, why would Josef Prusa incorporate in his home country?! Probably because incorporating in a different country from which you operate opens you up to a bunch of extra fees, more legal and accounting workload, increased chance of audits, possible double taxation, etc. The Czech Republic is already one of the more business friendly countries in the EU where many foreign companies choose to go when they want to operate in the EU. It's kind of strange to frame it like this was a weird eccentricity and not the default, most sensible thing for them to do just because it's inconvenient in this one very specific edge case.
That was weirdly aggressive by Zack, but I think the point made here is that the most important thing of Printables is actually its users, so Prusa should have done the research into these things and figure out that maybe hosting the site in their country would not be the best idea. He's probably just extra memeing the bit for lols, though. That said, I agree with all of your points, and it's probably not as easy as just "hey host it somewhere else with REAL laws", which was kinda the message that was portrayed in the video, and sounded a bit rude in my opinion.
you gotta keep in mind Zack is an American, so he doesn't know EVERYTHING about the EU
@ "so Prusa should have done the research into these things and figure out that maybe hosting the site in their country would not be the best idea"
I'm not sure about that either. We like the Benchy so it sucks that technically all these remixes are illegal. But I don't think being able to host license-violating content should be a major factor in deciding where to host your site or incorporate your company.
Also the premise itself feels shady. Like we appreciate CC when it means we get free stuff, but ignore it when it becomes inconvenient.
you now that was a joke, right?
yeah it was kind of a cheap take..
Personally, I don't think the non-creative argument works because while all the features are functional the arrangement of those functions are fundamentally creative designs. Not to mention the infinite ways those individual features could have been portrayed. It's like game design. You can't copyright a game mechanic, like dice; but you can copyright expressions of those mechanics, like the symbols on that dice and their arrangement. The Benchy is not just a list of features. It is an arrangement of those features. That is design.
I had to cut this part down, but I was told that arranging the tests in a boat-like configuration also has the practical benefit of reducing print time. I was surprised how many arguments there were for AND against a Benchy copyright.
precisely. His reasoning doesn't hold any water imho.
@@ZackFreedmanEven then it's still a creative work, even textbooks are subject to copyright and there's technical fact based reasons for every bit of content in them (in theory at least)
The idea that the benchy is not copyrightable seems like an argument that could potentially win if you threw enough money at a law firm to argue it. But that's different from saying that it's an interpretation that seems likely to hold up in court.
@@ZackFreedman Copyright is automatic in the US. This comment is copyrighted, owned by me. TH-cam has a license to put it on the site. They can't give others the right. The CREATORS of the bits and bytes that describe the Benchy owned the copyright, unless it was sold as an asset of the corporate merger.
BTW, all those Buzzfeed lists and videos of Reddit comments are pure infringement. I'm waiting for someone to sue...
Any time I watch your video, I am amazed at how well can complicated, technical content be written.
As somebody who has owned a 3D printer since 2011 and has, incredibly shockingly, somehow never ended up printing a benchy, this video was a great and refreshingly accurate summary of the situation. Thanks for clearing through the cruft and giving us the straight answers!
This is the right amount of spice Zack. You can absolutely have the original file as a benchmark without restricting it's modifications which make it no no longer benchmarkable. Now it's benchremarkable.
The Benchy is very much a creative work, and not purely tecknical. That is why we love it. Also CC license should be respected, if not, people will stop posting models under it. Which is already happening. We now see the lincense "digital file" in both Printerables and Makerworld.
I don't think there's another youtuber who is so consistently funny, clever, concise, informative, and information dense. You do excellent work! I thank you for your hard work.
14:00
You're telling me that a tiny adorable boat is not a work of art?
The proportions are peak cute, there is art in practicality.
I don't get the part about "functionality" that is separating something from art. If it's nice to look at, it has a function and a purpose.
I do think it's unfortunate that this all happened because the original creators had no idea how popular the benchy would be. Their logic is entirely sound, if it's intended to be a benchmark, you should want it to be the same model every time. However they probably should have changed the license when it did become popular.
The fact that the 3DBenchy looks like a boat is enough creative input for it to be a creative work. A human being used creativity to create the form of a boat. Its other characteristics do not take away from that.
Thank you. I felt like this video missed the mark in a big way.
An object can be both a creative work and be patentable. It is automatically a creative work by virtue of its creation, and the fact that elements of its design might be patentable doesn’t take away from that.
I agree, and, furthermore, even if the shape was 100% functional, the STL file would still be subject to copyright.
Agreed. This is a classic "forest for the trees" argument and feels like a D&D player engaging in rules-lawyering in to achieve an absurd outcome. Or even, if you would excuse the awful associations, a "sovereign citizen" who takes fragments of laws and legal opinions and without real understanding of them builds a case that gets them laughed out the court. If I wrote a short song that was intended to help a singer practice or warm up, even if every part of it was composed of individual musical elements that each have a specific, functional purpose, that does not mean the song isn't copyrightable.
Also, even entirely technical documents and designs can be copyrighted, there's tons and tons of entirely non fiction media that's under copyright. "Creative work" for the purposes of copyright is *way* broader than the common language understanding
I think the fact that they made a pdf stating that it was a technical object intended to be used a certain way makes it clear that it was not intended to be a creative work. Had they made a cute boat, then went “hey look, it can be useful too”, then there might be an argument for copyright. But it was intended from the beginning to be functional, not a work of art, and they did not file patent paperwork on it.
I took cyber ethics and law as part of my IT course and I had to do a whole chapter on copyright and patent law in the US. Thank you for explaining the difference and why it applies here. It's hard to explain to people and this video does a really good job.
As a former law librarian I was all prepared to grumble about your basic misunderstanding of IP law.... but I must instead praise your succinct summary. Including the overview of the contract law elements, which hadn't even occurred to me. Well, I guess that thank-you goes to your lawyer, but still. Good job!
Instead, I guess I'll have to point out that a "hawsepipe" is a very functional name - it's a pipe that a hawser passes through. :)
But he has a (massive!) basic misunderstanding. He confuses copyrightability of the Benchy design with the copyright of the STL file. Even if the design can not be copyrighted (questionable), the STL file is absolutely protected by copyright, and that is what the license applies to.
@@marian519 That is a fine distinction! It seemed like he ALMOST got there at one point in the video but then took a tangent.
@@GeeksmithingHi, you must be new here. Welcome to the channel! XD
@@claws61821 haha certainly not! 🤣
I have some experience with copyright from work. If a court had to answer the question, I think they would consider it a creative work because of the design choices themselves. A copyright evaluation considers each creative component of the work, not just the work in totality. Factors that make it a stress test (like what angles certain elements are at) are not creative components, but they can own anything that could remotely be considered creative choice (the fact it looks like a boat instead of a basic geometric shape, has port holes, a deck, etc).
I believe benchy does have protected elements, but the protection is thin enough that if you made a knock off that fails the squint test you'd be OK.
IMHO the strongest protection (albeit it would be expensive to argue in court) for most derivatives would be fair use - since the original 3DBenchy was made as a benchmarking tool, and the vast majority of derivatives are memes that are intended for silly toys, they're very clearly transformative works with a different purpose that aren't competing with the original design, bonus points for the fact that the derivatives by and large don't turn a profit
Absolutely! Copyright is not blocking anyone from creating a completely different boat design with a similar list of measurable features. That won’t be the 3DBenchy - it will be another model… the more “similar” to the Benchy, more likely it could be taken to court - IF there was an interest to protect the original Copyright. Zack made it far from the reality in this video.
@@GeekDetour I wouldn't say that Zack was a *long* way from the mark - because of how strongly specified Benchy is a designer could probably create a fresh model that's very similar to Benchy that doesn't violate copyright. The 2 errors he takes are ignoring the implications of *how* derivatives are made (people don't make brand new Benchy models that deviate from the original, they take the original STL and modify it, using the original exact model means indirectly incorporating all of the minute non technical aspects like where each part of the model happens to be, aesthetic choices that aren't codified in the docs, etc), and the fact that contract law is only relevant if Benchy is protected by IP law of some description - if Benchy isn't copyrightable and range explicitly registered under a patent then you don't need a licence to use it and therefore you don't need any kind of contract to grant the right to use it in the first place.
:3)))
shoutout to you and anybody else with the balls to Identify a problem, do the research and put their money where their mouth is providing a solution. Salute to you sir.
16:47 A hawser is a fat rope sufficiently strong to keep the boat from leaving the dock unattended.
Yes, sailors have weird names for everything. That's because people started sailing before there was language. At the time it was all just grunting and pointing, which was confusing, so they made up special grunts for pointing to different things.
Another example: "forecastle", pronounced "focsol" by mariners.
@@DarkRavenhaft Or mainsail -> mains'l.
Even in the Age of Sail it's not like most would have been able to read and plenty in English fleets were press ganged so might not have even understood the language well. I'm guessing that's part of the reason why words like gunwale, forecastle, and boatswain all got kinda slurred into two syllables. While we're being educational though pH can't go negative. There's just only so much hydronium and hydroxide concentration water can have. There are a number of strong acids that have a negative pKa and would therefore love to create a higher hydronium concentration.
I don't even 3d print. I just saw this 'controversy' posted by people who didn't really seem to know the particulars and find shit like this really interesting.
Thanks for doing all this research and putting in so much effort. I know so many of your viewers will find it helpful from a practical standpoint, but I just enjoy the minutia.
He clearly did not understand the core of copyright law, as in what is actually copyrighted.
@@FrodeBergetonNilsenthe attorney he talked to (19:41) disagrees ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@hecko-yes Right. Trump just talked to prime minister of Denmark, so everything Trump says, is now correct. Pretty much sums it up. You need to understand what an artistic expression is, comprehend it, then come back. The things he points to in his vid, is utterly and completely irrelevant for copyright. But you know this right? Right?
@@FrodeBergetonNilsen he specificially discussed this topic with him and didn't just talk to him about something else, you know what i meant
either way czech republic so whatever
In my 7 years of 3d printing, I have never even downloaded a benchy, let alone printed one.
Same, I thought it was a waste to print instead of literally anything else I want to print.
@@LoriAnneBrown I thought I was the only one!
Fear not, I've printed yours for you. I'm going to keep it though.
@ waste of plastic.
i think i downloaded my first benchy like 2 years ago. l’ve also been 3D printing since 2017. But i think i have printed thousands of calibration cubes 😂
The hole at the back of a boat is legitimately termed the "bunghole"
Next video: Zack gets a Czech lawyer to explain Czech's copy write law.
It is creative from the copyright side because there are hundreds of ways to arrange the useful properties… but their choices in the modeling was “creative”. You can’t copyright a phonebooks data but it’s arrangement, layout, choice of fonts, photos, etc all are copyrightable. Lawful Masses does a lot of videos on copyright and it’s crazy how that all works. Interesting argument about how they argue it’s all functional and I’d love to get a copyright lawyers take on it. But ultimately the question everybody has to ask is… is it worth paying statutory treble damages and legal fees?
My understanding is that "public domain" and "condition of attribution" are mutually exclusive licensing terms. They might be almost the same (especially if the attribution is the only condition of the license), but in most jurisdictions that would be enough to preclude correct usage of the term public domain.
Not all jurisdicitons recognise public domain, so the responsible thing to do is to release it both to public domain AND provide a license that's functionally equivalent. It's also worth noting that public domain is for creative works, and he specifically notes that the license applies to COPYRIGHT (if it exists at all). It's a bit odd that he didn't provide a public domain-equivalent license, but also to be fair it doesn't hurt anyone to have to credit the person that made such a great model.
@@snitguckfung You make a good point. My point was simply that calling something that requires attribution "public domain" is explicitly NOT public domain in any legal sense I know of and is likely to perpetuate a longstanding, potentially problematic confusion.
I have no problem with any potential attribution requirements, just with conflating them with public domain in any meaningful sense.
@ That's true, and I agree that the attribution requirement is not public doman. I just wanted to mention that technically the "public domain" and "attribution required" parts were two separate things, from what I understood.
I admit though that it is pretty poorly worded, and I don't understand why he'd require attribution on copyright, when he had an entire section dedicated to why copyright most likely just doesn't apply here...
@snitguckfung If I remember his wording correctly, it was along the lines of "I promise to release it into the public domain... as long as people give attribution to the original authors."
As to why a license requiring attribution, my guess would be to encourage people to cite their sources.
@@benjaminmiddaugh2729 The wording, exactly as I hear it, is: "If I gain ownership of the 3DBenchy, I promise to transfer the file to the public domain as expeditiously as possible, AND provide a blanket license for anyone to use any copyrights (which may or may not exist), on the condition that they thank the original authors."
Notice how his mention of a license and copyright are in the same phrase, separate from the public domain promise. Again, the wording is vague, and I think both interpretations make sense, but I'm working under the assumption that everything after the "and" is meant to be one unit separate from the public domain part, especially because his intonation really emphasises the "and", serving as a delimiter, and everything after is basically said all in one breath, which I wouldn't expect if the "on the condition..." part applies to both before and after the "and". If that makes sense, lol.
Thanks!
Disclaimer: I am German, so I like to follow rules.
I don't think this is related to any kind of law, ruling or whatever. This is simply a matter of following an original designer's written wish (as in license). If we don't follow those open source/hardware/whatever licenses ourselves, we can not complain about others doing the same. How are we going to stop companies from producing and selling our NC objects? It will render any CC contract useless.
Counterpoint - the original designers specified no derivatives for a specific reason and have been very clear on that reason - to keep the standardization of Benchy as a benchmark. The vast majority of derivatives are obvious changes that are clearly made as toys or even just 3D memes - there's no risk of them being mistaken for a true Benchy and muddling up benchmark results, and even more than that they would most likely fall under fair use since they're transformative (both in terms of design and, more importantly, purpose) and not for profit.
@@bosstowndynamics5488An interesting point to ponder - does the benchy's role as a benchmark make a 'fair use' argument easier or harder?
@rafaelmarkos4489 I would say it makes it easier, since none of the derivatives that I'm aware of claim to be benchmarks and they all defeat at least one of the critical features designed for benchmarking purposes from the original design
I don't know how this video hasn't taken off. I was in awe about how informative this was. Holy cow....
The 13:00-ish argument would suggest program code can't be copyrighted. Sorry. Purely utilitarian "tangible" expressive content is absolutely subject to copyright.
Program code can be copyrighted, but you can't copyright the function. If you write hello world one way and I'll write a hello world in another way. My hello world does not infringe on yours even though they accomplish the same task.
@@KaitouKaiju correct, in this case that means building a new "benchy-like" from the ground up, rather than deriving from the original model.
@ sadly, what is and is not a derivative work is the most byzantine and subjective part of copyright law. Transformative fair use is much easier, including in this case, but only applies in the US.
@@jsalsman fair dealing exists in all commonwealth jurisdictions as well as a few others, though as in all things the US variant is remarkably more liberal in it's application.
Nor are these the only exceptions to copyright, such as the Berne convention for preservation of artistic merit, though this one is unlikely to cover derivatives, just backing up the .stl
The Benchy is not a hinge. It is an artistic object that embeded indirect functionality. It is extremely clever, highly unique, not of common use. The fact that every design feature serves a purpose of measurement and quality assessment only strengthens the case of it's deliberate uniqueness and creative process.
Maybe there should be two Benchys - the existing one as is with it's current license to protect the consistency of the benchmark, and another (even if it's geometrically identical) under a derivative-friendly licence, that way the derivatives will attribute the "this is for fun" version rather than the "this is a functional tool" version
I'm not a lawyer, but "creative" is meant to be a very low bar. Yes, patents are for function but the legal trick here is that there are all manner of possible ways to implement a particular function and the choice of which method to use is a creative act. The features used for benchmarking are functional but the way in which they are expressed in the benchy are a creative choice and intentional. The photo you brought up failed copyright protection not because it wasn't creative but because it was the product of a non-human... copyright is explicitly human produced creativity. Other examples include phonebook and maps, where the strict facts contained aren't copyrightable but the purely functional fakes contain enough creativity in how they are added that they produce a copyright. There was a case not long ago of someone trying and failing to use copyright to take down a leaked stream where they had turned their camera on by accident, they lost their claim because the court ruled that they failed to demonstrate any intentional or transformative choice in the material streamed, which is asserted as the lowest bar for creativity.
That's the issue with IP law that people forget, things involve multiple laws. The design of the benchy could be protected under copyright (for the creativity of it), patent (for the various functional aspects), and trademark (for the distinctive design of the thing). Pick the right law for a particular infringement. Since it's not registered as a patent or trademark there's no enforceable there, copyright is the only automatic registration of the three, so there's that.
The interesting problem you've overlooked is that it's possible the benchy wasn't developed *as* an stl... if it's developed in something else and then exported to that format, it might well be classified as a derivative work for extra complications. Procedurally generated material like the ape NFTs fall afoul of both this issue and the fact they aren't created by a human.
Releasing to public domain... yeah, that's a whole problem of its own. Public domain is a barely defined concept that may not even exist in some countries. MIT is better but I strongly recommend looking into what public domain actually does.
Creative commons isn't inherently copyleft, it is only copylefted by the "share alike" attribute if used. Which does then require derivative works to be equally open.
This is the key distinction between open source licenses like MIT and the "true" copyleft of the GPL.
You can say the good ol’ benchy is still afloat! 😂
You beat me to it
All this and you missed that breaking or violating a contract isn't "illegal" or a crime. It just opens you up to legal action from the other party in the contract which is 100% NOT the same thing as illegal.
But he doesn't. Lawsuits are civil, not criminal. Rewatch starting at the section titled Contract Law to the end. It is all civil.
There are criminal implications to copyright law.
He didn't miss it. Why do you think he was throwing around words like "tortious"?
@@bend.manevitz8261All laws are *eventually* backed up by criminal law but you have to work really, *really* hard to get a criminal penalty for a copyright infringement including pissing off a lot of law enforcement and judiciary staff
I came to the same conclusion that there was no DMCA notice and that Prusa is taking the works down without the owner asking. However, your analysis of copyright and patent law needs help.
For you youngins “the Transmogrifier” was used to turn Urkel into his smooth alter ego, Stefan Urquelle.
9:19 - Great transatlantic accent but... newsreels would have been black-and-white, not sepia tone. That's as close to an insult as I can come up with, Zack.
aside from being a good material tester, it's also a good way to see how a different colours look like on different parts of the benchy. I eventually ended up making a gridfinity holder for these boats and use it as a colour palette. When someone asks me to print something showing a printed model gives a better example than a small coloured square. Also a good display for extra options I can add like adaptive layers or fuzzy skin (my beloved)
copyright is a cancer dear god.
This is why you should always use opensource and copyleft content.
No. Copyright is extremely important. Otherwise you make a video or write a book and you wouldn't have any protection on your work. Everything has it's place. If you want to release something in Public Domain, that's great. Sometimes you don't. You wouldn't be watching TH-cam videos from any professional TH-camr if Copyright didn't exist.
@GeekDetour I disagree.
The monopoly the government gives you on your work, just get in the way advancement,be artistically, technological or pharmaceutical.
Also the common man doesn't even has means to stop his work from being shared,as is really expensive.
Copyright just protect the ones with money enough to enforce it,this is the reason companies lobby so much to extend it.
Not sure what'll happen, but the idea of Zach owning the 3D benchy model just sounds cool to me :p
30:11 That's the issue though isn't it? Like the core of the issue is that CC licensing isn't respected in any way shape or form and at the end of the day as a community we're going to have to rectify this. If the community had respected the license for the Benchy than we would have picked some other object to meme to hell and back and we would have never run into this issue in the first place. It's not hard to adhere to a CC license, and honestly if people can't do it then maybe sites like Printables should do it for them.
As mentioned in the video, this would be a very different story if formal copyright claims had been filed. Asking content hosts to extralegally enforce copyright law has serious implications.
@@SnakebitSTI My comment has nothing to do with copyright. Creative Commons are a copyleft, or a replacement/stand in for the framework of copyright which in it's strictest legal definition doesn't allow for derivatives without individual licensing. Copylefts seek to right this and will only effectively work if they are community enforced. Again these licenses are NOT difficult to follow and it would behoove the community in the long run to actually at least try to adhere to them before some government body forces the community to adhere to more strict licensing arrangements; something we have seen in multiple communities that grew around media sharing(with each community telling itself that it was for sure the safe one).
@@CDRaff "Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law." Taken from the Creative Commons website's description of their licenses.
CC licenses are copyright licenses, which are written to be enforceable under copyright law.
@@SnakebitSTIIt's not extralegal enforcement by Printables though, if they were headquartered in the US then Printables would have a constitutional right to voluntarily remove Benchy if they chose to (the first amendment includes a provision that no person can be forced to express speech they don't want to, which includes companies not being forced to host content against their will). I'm sure equivalent rights exist in the EU as well (and notably Printables isn't attempting any measures to try and penalise people for hosting Benchy derivatives elsewhere - they've purely chosen not to host them themselves under threat of legal action)
Personally I'm not convinced that most of these models violate the licence anyway - if Benchy falls under copyright law (and I think on balance of the evidence it almost certainly does, loads of technical materials do when discussing a specific example composite design, and it's been well tested that you can create a copyrightable work out of parts that are each in and of themselves not copyrightable) then it's also subject to fair use, and while I'm not a lawyer I think there's a *very* strong case that the meme derivatives are fair use, in no small part because they're *obviously* not trying to portray themselves as a way to run the original Benchy benchmark. Fair use supersedes licence restrictions because you don't need the licence at all to use the work
Zach, I have a hard time focusing on and finishing videos, no matter how visually or conceptually or however else interesting, but this video definitely caught my eye and I was able to watch it in full in one sitting, which is a big accomplishment for me. I hope the best for you acquiring the rights, have a blessed day
So Zack wants to buy the 3dbenchy - "for the community" - and everybody will pull a pikachu-face when he reveals his nefarious plan: Monetizing the thing. Everytime some poor printer spews out a boat-shaped hunk of plastic, Zack's boat-shaped hunk of steel, a.k.a. yacht, sails a bit closer to reality.
Well played, sir, well played.
Shhh stop exposing Zack's evil villain schemes
I fully expect him to keep it for a single day, make a video bragging about how he owns it, do a little dance, and then release it.
The big hole in that plan: The files are already available under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license, so there are already a lot of people with copies who are also licensed to share those copies.
If he does that, the Boaty benchmark will just be tweaked to become the defacto standard benchmark or something else will be created instead.
Don't care what the subject of your program is on any given day, they're just plain enjoyable! Thank you for all the work you put into your channel.
Honored to make it in a Zack Freedman video. Too bad you cut the part when I said “or did they” then explained what actually happened 😝
Having watched your video I thought the same thing
Maybe just start with the facts instead of trying to be cute
@@radish6691 you’re right. Benchy is serious business. No time to be cute.
@ygk3d Apparently it’s no time to be truthful either because in the description of your “truth about the benchy boycott” video you wrote “The rights have been sold to a large corporation and they're cracking down on license enforcement, removing all remixes from file sharing platforms like Printables and Thingiverse.”
@ good catch. That should say “it appears”. Updated to correct that. The video contains the full story.
This dude's energy is contagious 🤘
Oddly I've never printed one... but I did print a "souped up" tugboat version 😅
I’m going to do the classic internet thing, where a tiny itty bitty nitpick is what I comment on.
Sailors have weird names for everything, but they also shorten everything. The word “bowline” is pronounced “boh-lin” (close to how they say Bolin the legend of korra).
In the same way, “Gunwale” is shortened to be pronounced “gunnel.”
5:34 You nearly killed me by forcing my bran flakes into my windpipe.
12:05 considering how often false DMCA claims happen (particularly with a lot of Nintendo shit) I think it's fair to say the consequences are essentially nil and corporations would rather just take down whatever than actually verifying it
granted TH-cam is the worst and most blatant offender in this regard, especially considering they have plenty of cash to actually just y'know, have their legal department verify everything
The problem with defending against a DMCA claim is that you have to have enough money to be able to defend it in court (and a big company is going to be able to throw more money at lawyers than you) and in the case of TH-cam, a takedown claim doesn't count as actual DMCA claim (and therefore have repercussions for abuse) until several rounds of claims and counter claims are gone through, which is why DMCA trolls are so prevalent on YT.
The process is something like: Copyright "owner" issues a takedown claim (causing the video to be taken down). Creator issues a counter claim. Owner has about 30 days to accept or reject the counter claim. If the counter claim is accepted (or the Owner doesn't respond in time) the video gets reinstated, but the creator still gets screwed by the algorithm because the video has lost all momentum) with effectively no penalty to the Owner. If the counter claim is rejected, then the Owner has to file a proper DMCA takedown against the creator
Actually I was curious about the situation, but haven't had a 3D printer for about 6 months. I haven't watched this channel since moving and getting rid of my 3D printer, but I trust you and wanted to hear your perspective.
I had questioned the DCMA line when I had first heard about the benchy problem, and was so confused why they said it was copyright infringement vs contract breaking. Thank you for not continuing the over sensationalizing the issue and breaking down the misinformed into the crux of the situation while ultimately ending with a call to action! I've got my popcorn out just waiting to see how this plays out!
I absolutely flipping love your comedy style my dude! thank you for your amazing (high effort, well edited, brilliantly scripted) videos that genuinely make me laugh out loud!
D.C.M.A. 🔥
🔥🔥🔥
the newest party drug to hit the legal scene
D.M.C.A, the people who made those figures for TF2
Dichloromethane+Acetone, the hottest new solvent mix
DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act
But i spose the Defense Contract Management Agency could be pretty lit too as far as government agencies goes 🤷
I'd recommend CC0 over just public domain, solely because some countries don't allow you to just release things. Its effectively the same.
I hate speed print flexing because what they’re entirely useless. Like claiming you wrote an entire 2000 page novel by holding the Q key. The Speed Boat races should have requirements. Like not looking horrible, being water tight after 30 minutes at 1 meter submersion, a list of tolerances that must be met, an exact weight per filament type, a tinsel strength test between the roof and hull, and a crush test from the bow to stern. Basically, whatever strength an absolutely perfect print can achieve for a specific filament, it should at least make half that. Otherwise, what’s the point of speed printing if none of it is usable?
"recognizable as a benchy" is the only requirement. Going fast is hard enough, and by putting requirements like that it really limits pushing the max speed (which is the whole point anyway, the boat is just the agreed upon distance of the race)
@@marsrover001Sure, but lots of races have additional requirements. You can't just run around the hurdles in a hurdle race for instance, even though you'd broadly be recognised as running, you have to actually clear the hurdles. Having some basic standard as to what "recognisable as a Benchy" means would be pretty reasonable
Then they would use the extreme overclocking as an example of why they shouldn't because no extreme overclocking rules demand you should build a functional PC, just one that can run the benchmark and display it for verification.
Zach, even though this is not your normal content it was still informative and entertaining. Thank you for taking the time and effort to try to set the record straight.
Thanks for the video Zack, it has been quite frustrating seeing that most people are just trying to fan the fires!
you commented 5 minutes after a 30 minute video is posted. How do you even know the conclusion of the vid lmao
Carefully
This was way more informative about copyright and license law than anything else I've watched on the subject
What printer did you use to print the light blue benchy @1:28? It almost looks like there is no texture on it, did it come off the printer that shiny?
Thanks for taking the time to break this down so well, all the other coverage was awful clickbait and clearly didnt bother to get the full story!
The 3D Benchy is most likely subject to copyright. While its purpose is technical, the artistic choice to use a tugboat design (and not, say, basic geometrical figures), would be protected by copyright and not patent. The decisions on how to arrange these technical elements into a cohesive, boat-shaped, design are a form of creative expression.
The 3D Benchy is akin to a technical manual or textbook, both of which are copyright protected. It’s not the technical aspects themselves that are protected, it’s the way they are expressed.
Given that the tests the Benchy performs aren’t novel, that is, they were in widespread use by the time it was creates, I would argue they are not eligible for patenting.
Thanks so much for cleaning this up.
20:49 why are you assuming anyone who has a benchy file acquired it by downloading it from a host with disclosure wording? ... Do you think that is the only way people acquire files is by using a coprotized website?
I have not broken any deal. I did not agree to a deal and there was no deal as you described during my acquisition so no, you are incorrect. I did not.
One of the clause of the licence is you can't change the licence when redistributing
@TheMurderousStan cool, but that still doesn't apply to me... 🤷🏼♂️
This video is very zesty on the content and speech side, so I don't care about less flashy visuals. Your metaphorical measma of muttered messages massages my main man management core magnificently, this is why I am always here when you have something to say.
Thank you for setting the record straight, some things just can't be cut short, or they become wrong.
Zack, Instead of the public domain, may I recommend one of the other Creative Commons licenses, the issue being that the concept of the public domain does not exist in all countries and would not hold force in those countries and they would likely default to the old license.
You might reach out to your law friend that you passed this video by originally to get their opinion as to what license to transfer it to.
That or using the MIT or one of the GPL licenses.
I love this blend of wacky Zach and serious Zach. More detailed insightful videos like this please!
Love how the page at 0:28 is in Swedish when it's a danish conpany lmao
bruh, the languages are like, the same
@@Noble06DSwhat heresy are you speaking
@@Deadangel321 a dane can literally hold a conversation with a swede in their respective languages
@@Noble06DSFrom experience, no they can not.
@ have you considered that you suck
Thank you for this coverage, I watched the whole kerfuffle and a lot of it seemed to be outrage bait and trying to get content out asap, so respect for waiting and actually providing fact checked information. I do want to call out Lawful Masses, he discussed it and while he didn't get into the contract law aspect (from memory) he did note that it did not seem to be a DCMA issue, his conclusion was the company reducing their legal risk.
Funny how millions of people modifying a model's geometry remains illegal regardless of how little the originators care to challenge it, but enough people using a trademarked name to describe products not made by the trademark owner causes the name to become genericised and unenforceable.
Trademark, copyright, and patent are all different
wow, this makes so much sense, and was very entertaining. It's amazing to me that other people write articles and whine about how upset they are over a circumstance without a touch of research. this is why i love your channel.
What's the speed run time for "new printer in box to printed benchy"?
I've always argued that benchy speed run shouldn't count. Anyone can spend 2:00 making a pile of poorly formed plastic.
pH can in fact be negative. It just means something is so acidic it kind of, in a way, “breaks” the scale we use to quantify acidity.
This was one of the best videos I've watched from you recently, I would be quite happy to see more of these "whole story" videos from you.
Let the benchy derivatives be free! They don't impact the original Benchy, no one's trying to sell them, and they aren't hurting anybody. If they breach a contract, _amend that contract._
No. They could release a derivate, different from the original, require you to state that is a remix and credit the original. But they should protect the bench itself. Why is this so hard to understand?
@@FrodeBergetonNilsen so you mean just a standard attribution license, i don't think anyone is arguing against the benchy having one of those
@@OctahedranI think anyone arguing anything about the benchy and it's licence terms needs their entitlement checked. If the author has selected a licence, they have selected a licence.
@@Octahedran Still hard to understand? People are arguing that CC licenses are invalid and you might break them if you want to. People ARE arguing that this is NOT licensed work, because they are anarchist. Even in this very vid.
There is a lot of creativity going on with the Benchy, and the copyright holder could decide to honor that creativity. If they feel like it. But given how rude this crowd is, I probably wouldn't myself. The disrespect and abuse is just ridiculous. When this crowd is called out for it, it whines and cries. It is toxic.
@ Apparently, Explain to me in very clear words what you mean.
Is all your saying that you think people should be able to modify the Benchy but the Benchy itself is subject to the the laws it currently is?
That Letterkenny "DarkWeb" reference always gets me! ❤
The Creatives Commons license derives the maker's legal authority to license the use of their creation from copyright. Creative Commons can't be applied to uncopywritable works.
Yep simply out, there's nothing you can offer in a contract / license If you don't own anything. Same way you can't hand out permissions to walk a path that isn't on your property.
Even if the Benchy was not copyrightable (it is IMO), any CAD drawing or STL file is copyrightable. I think Zack misunderstood this part.
@@marian519 No, it isn't. Drawings generated by machine cannot be copyrighted, which is why companies often put things which can (like a logo or something in the design) just in case so they can prove the thing is theirs. The benchy is no different, as it has a big "CT3D.xyz" text under it.
@@marian519I am SURE about it.
Incredible overview of a complex situation. Really appreciate the work that went into it!
I think you make a great argument for Benchy not qualifying for a copyright