A very interesting project many in western countries don't take quite seriously is TRON. The chinese companyadresses the complex topic of intellectual properties in music industries and others. This industry has faced many difficulties over the past decades due to digitisation. Solutions as Spotify and iTunes only solved this problem for music publishers by offering customers low costs and convenience.
After reading about the idea and technology of TRON we were quite intrigued about the application of the blockchain and immediately thought of the apparent challenges with 3D models in 3D printing.
Members from the 3D Printing community were the first to recognize legal issues for intellectual property from 3D printers. The public and legislators have realised this problem as well in the past years. However, this issue poses a tremendously difficult challenge which will take a long time to develop a legal framework for. So far, the only legal solutions are from the 3D Maker Community and supplement already existing legislation for the internet and for digital or virtual products.
Community approach
Since designers wanted to protect their own models, license platforms such as the “Creative Common license” provided a legal framework as solution to some degree. Through these licenses, designers have been able to protect their models from changes or sales while leaving them accessible for the public and general wealth fare. However, these guidelines can be easily broken by users as there is not actual controlling mechanism in place. This is were we see blockchain technology come in to provide possible solutions.
The key 3D printing steps regarding intellectual property are:
1.) Scanning an object
2.) Converting the scan to a 3D file
3.) Upload a file
4.) Download a file
5.) Printing the object
Which of these areas can be addressed by blockchain technology?
Now we want to ask you the steemit and crypto community as our experts to apply your knowledge on this practical example. Which of the 5 steps do you think are addressable and solvable with the blockchain, how and why?