A small but possibly impactful change in Etsy’s policies may affect the 3D print industry.
Etsy is the well-known website for selling handcrafted items. Originally used for products literally made by hand, over time the introduction of inexpensive 3D printers has become widespread among Etsy vendors. Many vendors operate one or many desktop 3D printers to manufacture quantities of their products for sale on the platform.
A report in Tom’s Hardware reveals a tiny change in the terms of use for the platform.
Etsy’s goal is to provide small-time makers with a viable platform to market their creative products. They want to avoid having them overwhelmed by large-scale mass manufacturers, so they have a considerably detailed terms of use document.
In the document, the approved products are defined as: Made by a Seller, Designed by a Seller, Handpicked by a Seller, or Sourced by a Seller. Each of these is defined in significant detail.
The category of interest here is “Made by a Seller”, since 3D printing items would certainly classify as being “made by the seller”. However, it seems that Etsy added some wording to this. The relevant clause now says:
“Items produced using computerised tools: Physical items that a seller produced in their personal shop or home, using computerised tools such as a laser printer, 3D printer, CNC or Cricut machine. These items must be produced based on a seller’s original design and are often personalised or customised to a buyer’s specification.”
The key change is that the products must now be “based on a seller’s original design”.
Hold on, isn’t that what the vendors are doing already? Actually, no. While many Etsy vendors do indeed sell their own printed designs, there have been hoards of vendors that simply use someone else’s design and print them.
Where do these designs come from? While some are certainly stolen from designers off other websites, many are public domain designs found on any of the many online 3D model repositories, like Thingiverse, MakerWorld, Printables, etc.
Those designs are NOT made by the seller, and, by the new terms of service, would not be allowed to be presented on Etsy.
This is ultimately a good thing for Etsy, as it would reinforce the notion that the platform provides original designs, and would reduce design theft.
However, it could be a terrible change for many vendors that have used a “print open source designs” strategy. That approach is pretty easy to do: configure a set of 3D printers, pick some popular free designs and print them. That approach is truly not the intention of Etsy, and instead is much more like a small-scale 3D print service.
For those vendors, it seems their days on Etsy are counting down rapidly, unless they can somehow become viable 3D designers in short order. The market for articulated rainbow snake 3D prints just took a hit.
There’s another implication to the industry that may not be as apparent: 3D print services. There are a couple of companies that may take a hit due to this policy change.
One is Slant 3D, which set up an API that allows Etsy vendors to automatically direct orders to that print service from Etsy. That eliminated the need for the vendor to operate their own desktop 3D printers, and provided massive print capacity to handle sudden bursts of orders.
We don’t know what portion of Slant 3D’s Etsy traffic is sourced from affected vendors. If it is substantial, then Slant 3D could see a slowdown in business from that platform.
Another 3D print company that may see some effect is 3DQue. They produce software for managing small (or large) 3D print farms. If an Etsy vendor operates many 3D printers, they could subscribe to 3DQue’s AutoFarm3D service. That service provides an easy way to manage collections of devices by dispatching and monitoring jobs.
It’s possible some of 3DQue’s Etsy customers using print farms and AutoFarm3D might be shut down as a result of the policy change.
Again, we don’t know how many operations would fall into this category, but there are certainly some.
Via Tom’s Hardware and Etsy
