Interesting article here about the traps in using CC licenses for non-software and where the assumed protection is not there.
I think the specific details with regard to 3D printing designs are a clear corollary to what we should expect in the laser cutting file design arena.
That’s a great article. My takeaway from reading it quickly, is that laser-cut designs that are not “artistic” in nature may not fall under copyright automatically. Thus the CC licenses do not apply to them. Here is a quote from the article:
However, the functional parts of an open source hardware project and more utilitarian 3D printed objects are beyond the scope of copyright protection … That means that blanket assumptions about copyright protection, and licenses that are built on a foundation of copyright protection, do not apply as cleanly to born open objects.
“Born open” objects are things that are not copyrighted by default when they are created.
The article is definitely worth a read! Thanks for posting it.