wodahSShadow wrote:we won't have 3D printers that work with any material for a while
We already have one's that work with plastics, metals, wood, ceramic and even bio-material.
Some are available to the general public, some to people with deep pockets and some are only in testing, but they do exist.
wodahSShadow wrote:Those two people you know put their work out in the open expecting a sum of money for every copy made, fools.
Freelance professional travel photographers currently have two basic ways available to them to sell their product to their buyers. (magazines, newspapers, book writers, news services)
a. Contact / visit each business directly, which is very time consuming and costly as there are a lot of business you need to contact because they generally don't make much on each individual sale
b. Upload their product to professional photo sale sites so that multiple businesses can see you have available and then the business contact you. As the seller has to pay for the service they generally aren't a member of all the different sites. And this is what allows dishonest people to copy images on one site and and sell them as their own on another.
Are you saying that if a folk musician sells a CD at a concert that it is ok if the buyer then makes copies of the CD and sells them on-line?
wodahSShadow wrote:see KickStarter and Patreon for examples.
Maybe your friends should get into the blockbuster industry
You are aware that most people who do the first don't actually reach their target or fail to get enough sponsors. There is after all only a finite amount of charity to be spread around.
I would be surprised if most individual (or groups of) independent artists have access to the deep pockets it takes to create something like Blockbuster.
wodahSShadow wrote:If I create a copy of that table who owns it?
Did you learn the craft and then go through the effort needed to build yourself a table that looks like the one the other carpenter made?
If so then it is not a copy but an original work that looks like the other one and therefor you own it. Whether or not the other carpenter tries to sue you for coping his design is a different matter, but the original work is still yours.
Based on the above I believe your next argument is going to be, what is the difference between this scenario and the one where someone takes photos of the carpenters table and uses 3D printers to make copies, and my answer is "Unreasonable gain from another person's efforts".