Making it possible to distribute anything that you want to keep hidden

Nov 5, 2013 14:20 GMT  ·  By

3D printing is still very much in the early days. That's a good thing in many ways, since it means enthusiasts are still mostly free to do as they please without too much interference from large corporations, governments, and so on.

One particular area where 3D printers still have it good, though it's unclear for how long, is copyright infringement. 3D printing is too small to be a problem, so most companies ignore it.

This means that you can find a model of Mickey Mouse or your favorite superhero for free and print it out without too much of an issue, even though, technically, the model and your physical copy of it are infringing. But that won't last for long. Thankfully, some people are already working on fixing that.

After some issues with infringing models being rejected on stores like Thingiverse and the all-out ban on 3D-printed gun components, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, a technologist for Goldsmith College’s Interaction Research Studio at the University of London, has devised a method for "encrypting" 3D models.

"When patent trolls and law enforcement agencies find these files on sharing sites they will only see abstract contortions, but within the trusting community these files will still represent the objects they are looking for, purposely in need of repair," Plummer-Fernandez explains.

"It could also be used to symbolically decommission files and throw away the keys, or to make something inoperative yet still recognisable so that other users would have to request a key to put it into use," he adds.

Using the Disarming Corruptor tool, 3D models are distorted until they no longer resemble their original design. This way, they can be distributed freely without arousing suspicion. After the file is downloaded, people can use the tool to revert the model to the original look and then print that out.

The tool alters SDL models in a unique way. Only someone with access to the key used to distort the model can revert it. Granted, this isn't state-of-the-art. There only 101 possible keys for now, so breaking the encryption offers no challenge.