Coyote Tracks

Physibles and piracy →

Ray Walters, Extreme Tech:

With the digital media arena all but conquered by piracy, the infamous site The Pirate Bay (TPB) has begun looking to the next frontier to be explored and exploited. According to a post on its blog, TPB has declared that physical objects named “physibles” are the next area to be traded and shared across global digital smuggling routes.

While the bombastic TPB tone induces less fear than eye-rolling, the idea of “physibles” is really interesting. Extreme Tech is convinced, as they say in another article, that “in a few short years, every household will have a device that’s capable of printing any solid object, and even basic mechanical objects.” I’m skeptical (no doubt those printers are in everyone’s garages next to their flying cars), but they’re definitely going to have an effect beyond the geek-centric “maker culture” in another decade or so.

And, of course, there will be piracy. The question is how much of a big deal that’s going to be, financially speaking. Piracy can definitely have more of an effect on an industry than some would like to believe, but at the same time it’s in a given industry’s best interest to severely overstate that effect in an effort to curry legislative action. For all the kvetching about piracy in the software industry’s 40-or-so year history, it’s hard to find publishers who have been conclusively put out of business due to pirates.¹ The same appears to be true of all digital media, and the chances are that this is going to be true even when the digital media is a set of 3D printing instructions.