Just Do It... not be jerks, that is

I’ve said at some great length that I’m not a fan of the Creative Commons, at least as far as its role in the art community is concerned. In short, it’s workings are more befitting to a patent enabling software programmers and developers to interface with users/modders without the hassle of red tape. This was called Copyleft. It was later formalized by Richard Stallman when he created the GNU. This was later modified again into the Creative Commons, the primary difference being the “noncommercial” and “no derivatives” clauses as available options. 

My point is, for as much as I dislike the CC, I still acknowledge its place, I respect people’s right to use it (responsibly), and I certainly do not ignore it. 

The following story of people who blatantly ignored the CC license is somewhat old news, with the offending party’s eBay store having not only all of its listings removed, but feedback as well. Just3DPrint is three college kids who offer 3D printing services on commission. If you’re new to 3D printing, don’t worry, you don’t need to understand more than the basics to see exactly how complex this problem’s root system is. As you know, DeviantART offers you a choice of standard copyright or a handful of CC license variations when you post any of your work here. Due to the open source nature of 3D printing on both the hardware and software fronts, sites like Thingiverse and Pinshape, which host user-created CAD models, the standard copyright is not available, only CC or GNU. This may seem onerous, but we have to remember what it means to copyright a work. Copyright reserves the rights to make copies to the rightsholder (hence “all rights reserved”) but putting your file on an online repository with download options specifically meant for people to make a physical copy of your sculpture needs something a little less “reserved” than copyright. There are numerous other reasons why 3D file repositories are set up this way, but that’s the most prominent aspect to the hosting arrangement. 

There is kind of an odd, nebulous gray area to this hosting arrangement involving third-party printing services. 3DHubs is a social network wherein owners of 3D printers, be they big quasi-corporate printer farms or yahoos in their living rooms, can offer their services for a fee. So, what then does that mean for uploaders of 3D files who select the “noncommercial” clause for their CAD file? Sure, DeviantART has an on-demand print service for artwork, but there’s two important things to remember. First, it’s entirely optional regardless of what license you select. Second, you get a cut of the sale. With 3DHubs, you may not even know your file is being printed. Thingiverse uploaders can have “Print” buttons to streamline the process, but a user can still download the file to their own drive and then upload it to 3DHubs directly. With thousands of transactions daily, 3DHubs can’t watchdog every single upload to make sure a noncommercial clause is being violated. The saving grace is that 3D printing is still a fairly niche hobby, so the total amount of “monetary damages” if we’re to use an extreme example is negligible. It’s still a little odd that a transaction started on Thingiverse using their “print this” button doesn’t in some way come back to the original maker. 

I’ll step out of the journal entry to give some advice to any 3D artists or sculptors who may like the idea of people having their own version of your creation. Although 3DHubs does not compensate the creator of the original model directly, Thingiverse has recently implemented a tips jar feature allowing users to send money directly to makers. Meanwhile, Pinshape, which I would consider the superior service from a commerce standpoint, lets creators set their own price for downloads. 

I suppose the saving grace for this flaw, besides the overall small market that 3D printing is today, is that no matter the license you select, due credit must always be given. Granted, this “free publicity” doesn’t put money from a sale directly in the hands of a rightsholder, but it helps deter price gouging by letting people use any printing service they choose. The service does not own the product, so it’s in their best interest to stay competitive. 

Just3DPrint, however, not only offered prints of items carrying a noncommercial clause, but did not even acknowledge, credit, or link the original creators of the models. Thousands of models on Thingiverse were being offered through Just3DPrint’s eBay store, with none of them having attribution details. A well-known Thingiverse user by the name of Loubie helped shed light on this story when she found one of her sculptures available on eBay sans a shout-out (They later said they would correct the listings to give proper credit if politely asked). There was also a noncommercial clause to her CC license, so she did what any rightsholder would do and asked them to remove the listing. 

She was utterly snubbed and told to go fly a kite. 

Loubie reached out to the community by posting some of the correspondence and encouraging other users to check the eBay store to see if any of their models were misappropriated. The comment section of this post exploded when J3DP themselves tried to run damage control and profess their innocence. However badly you may be guessing they failed, the reality is worse.

Their reply was a 3,000+ word diatribe covering a wide variety of subjects under the IP and patent umbrella, nearly all of which was so categorically false that there was no shortage of replies pointing out basics like what a trade secret really is and how the Berne Convention works. 

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1350837/#comment-801359

If you don’t want to go through the whole manifesto, here’s a vertical slice: the original reply from J3DP to Loubie upon her asking they take down their listing of one of her sculptures per its noncommercial license, emphasis mine. 

"When you uploaded your items onto Thingiverse for mass distribution, you lost all rights to them whatsoever. They entered what is known in the legal world as "public domain".The single exception to public domain rules are "original works of art".No court in the USA has yet ruled a CAD model an original work or art.Therefore, you have no right to exclude others from utilizing the CAD models you have uploaded.Furthermore, if in the future we do get a precedent in the USA for establishing CAD models as "original works of art", we would still likely be just fine as we are not re-selling your CAD models, but rather "transformative" adaptions of them in the form of 3D printed objects.
SFEP.S. When you created these CAD files, did you really want to limit the amount of people who could enjoy them to the 0.01% of the USA with a 3D Printer? 100% of America can purchase the items from us at a reasonable cost and enjoy them-creating made in the USA jobs in the process as well. Furthermore, if you hate the idea of people profiteering from your work, you may want to take it up with Makerbot/Stratasys who only hosts Thingiverse for AD revenue, to sell more 3D printers."

The Creative Commons is not the public domain (even the CC-Zero license is merely a formality). The Creative Commons does not replace Copyright. The matter of whether or not CAD files are protected is complex, but only in terms of nomenclature. What J3DP are insisting is that instructions for something are not copyrightable, which is like saying a screenplay is public domain until the movie of it gets made (at which point only the film would be copyrighted and anyone else could still adapt the screenplay). Computer Aided Drafting is not art the same way a painting or an illustration is due to the distinction between form and function, but it is nonetheless sweat of the brow, a product of human endeavor. If you invest the time and energy into creating something, copyright and patents guarantee you protection from what legal experts call freeloading assholes. 

Stratasys themselves have a wonderfully informative post about this: http://consulting.stratasys.com/2016/02/cad-copyright-and-creative-commons-the-infringement-saga-continues/ 

Further comments from the three stooges refer to the license agreement as “a fiction” created by Thingiverse as part of their scheme to profit from its users. We are now officially in foil hat territory. The Creative Commons was not made up by hosting services for nefarious purposes. I would love to see the evidence saying otherwise, but I have a feeling they’d just bring up reptoids or Freemasons or some other garbage boogeyman organization. 

Is it even worth pointing out that Thingiverse does not have advertisements on their site? 

I’m working on a much larger dissection of the J3DP manifesto I hope to have up on my WordPress site in a few weeks. Albeit it’s old news, it’s still so monstrously hilarious in its ignorance and stupidity that until these man-babies own up to their bullshit, I don’t think enough attention can be called to it. Their eBay store may be shut down, but their main site is still up and they are still offering their services. 

Update: This Article https://technical.ly/philly/2016/02/26/just-3d-print-makerbot/ sheds a little more light on their "advisors" 

Dear Grail Diary, Still Looking...

It should not surprise me that someone would make a replica of the grail diary from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. By the law of averages, someone would have to take up the task of meticulously recreating something that is only flashed on screen a few times in the course of the film. Actually, it turns out recreating it is not all that tedious; the LucasArts graphical adventure game of Last Crusade, released in 1989, came with a manual/hint book that may not have fooled any prop collectors, but did (in theory) foil a few software pirates. Given that, it's also no surprise that more than one person has recreated the diary. 

What does surprise me is simply how much of a cottage industry making these things has become, whether it's on DeviantART, Etsy, or eBay, not to mention the myriad of tutorial sites out there. I suppose it would only make sense since, despite all the merchandising of Indiana Jones over the years, an officially licensed version is strangely absent. The "Journal of Impossible Things" from a single episode of the revived Doctor Who series is available, but not the life's work of Dr. Henry Jones, Sr.. Something equally baffling to me, was seeing that someone on eBay named amazingthings678 not only recreate the grail diary, but take the challenge a step further by miniaturizing it. 

I see this and I think at first, "Oh, cute, he found a little notebook and put a hairband around it so it sort of looks like--" then you see the inside: 

In the words of the University of Chicago admissions department, "Why so awesome?"

Like a Villain

Here's an example of what a colossal asshole I can be. At least, that's probably what it looks like to this person whom we'll call Lando for no particular reason. 

I've been selling things on eBay lately in order to finance some hardware upgrades I'd like for a web production. The sales have all gone very well, to the point that I can be a bit more shrewd in my asking prices. In general, I try to be that salesman who would much rather make a sale than hold out for a price I may well be waiting the rest of my life for (Bird in the hand/two in the bush, you get the idea). I also have a background working in customer service for a cell carrier. What this means is that while I do genuinely love helping people, I also know when people are frankly just being entitled little shits who want a cookie for getting to class on time. 

Someday, boys and girls, I'll tell you all the full story of the car salesman who begged and begged me to set aside a Playstation 2 for him, even though there was no way for our store to set up, maintain, or honor any sort of waiting list, his firm and repeated belief that being "desperate" and saying so will generate big, blue, Sony-branded boxes out of the ether itself. I won't bother telling you the bribe he offered me or how many times he told me he was desperate before making me an offer. To be fair, though, it was a substantially better offer than the one I got from this eBayer. 

I get a message asking me about the item, prefaced by a little anecdote about how it's for his kids for Christmas, and followed by an offer to end the sale early for him. I expected someone would make an offer as my timing was admittedly not real conducive to eBay's tradewinds. Christmas is ten days away, and there's at least 4 days left on the auction, so of course you'd want it in a timely fashion. 

A few quick facts about this auction before moving forward: The item has a starting price and a Buy-It-Now option for more. Shipping is not included and it has (at the time of this writing) two watchers. Not exactly lighting up the charts, but it's exactly the minimum number of people needed to start a last-minute bidding war, a race to see who can place a bid closest to the end time in order to block everyone else without breaking the bank. Lando basically didn't want to bother with this tango, yet felt the Buy-It-Now price was a little out of his price range. This is totally fair, and like I said, I'm not above meeting someone halfway on a price to make a sale. 

The offer was for the starting price. 

Strike one: Not even close to halfway. In fact, it's not any distance from the start. I don't really get mad. It's an honest question, one to test the waters, size up the seller. Hell, the strike only sticks if the issue is pushed. Maybe he thinks he's doing me a favor. Who knows, maybe he meant to put something else down instead of the starting price. I err on the side of caution, answer his question, but ignore the offer. It seems the politest way to decline without making an issue of how really shortsighted the offer is. I mean, it's an auction, and you can see the other watchers (and not every watcher makes their presence known). 

Next message thanks me for the answer, but asks what I think of the offer. 

Strike two: pushing the issue. I mean, at least be sporting about this. Sure, there weren't any bids yet and I wouldn't really have been penalized for ending the auction early, but if you're going to try and play a stratagem, try and think of one that gives you an ADVANTAGE in the competition. This is not making me an offer. I get impatient, but I'm still giving the benefit of the doubt they mean well. I reply, explaining that this auction has two watchers and it wouldn't be fair to them if I ended it early, especially if it's only for the starting price, and that the Buy-It-Now option is the only way it's ending early. 

"I am one of the watchers." 

Strike three: Now, you're insulting me. At first, I'd started to write back, "But not both of them." followed by an explanation of how one is a very different number than two. However, I took a deep breath and responded with frank civility, "Nonetheless, it is unfair to any other prospective buyer to close the sale early as is with the offer being only the opening bid. You'll have to do better than that." Like I said, if you're going to try and make a backroom deal, don't bargain with an empty hand. This is entitlement, pure and simple. Moreover, it's condescending. Lando is working under the premise that 1) I'm desperate to make a sale (I'm not), and 2) he thinks so little of everyone else who may be interested that he doesn't put any effort into distinguishing himself. This is like a student getting up during a test and asking the teacher if he can see the answer sheet, expecting to receive it entirely on the power that he's the only one who had the gall to ask in the first place. If you want an exception made, you've got to prove yourself exceptional. I have no patience for people who don't get this. I'm not above charity or compassion, but in the words of a wise man, "God only helps those who help themselves." Call me a cold bastard if you like, but when I make exceptions for people, it's because I think they're worth it. 

So, what do I do? I go into the auction's page and raise the starting and buyout prices by five dollars. I get a message from Lando inside of ten minutes. 

"You raised the price?"

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. 

And Then He Played the Race Card

The so-called buyer I spoke of earlier crossed a line with me, and I refuse to acknowledge him as a person anymore. Even if he may not be a con artist, if this is how he conducts his business, he deserves failure. After I posted my "419" entry detailing some of the inconsistencies surrounding Mr. Jiya and his operation, I got a message on eBay from him as to why he's delaying the money he owes me for the sale. 

Bear in mind, this is after hearing nothing from him for 2 days after the sale, then getting a reply on Twitter that he'll give me a date in 24hrs. I asked him, if he was only 10 short, why could he only give me 30? What happened to the rest? Never mind that eBay isn't set up for partial payments (this would have had to be done off-site, which is another thing con artists do), but he's not even offering half. It turns out he made another purchase after realizing he was short, paid that person in full and on time, and was now offering me the change as collateral while he spent a week scrounging up what he owed me in the first place. Then there's the last part of the message, as well as this Tweet:

I replied back that I wasn't aware incompetent bullshit peddlers were a race. Also, speaking of "hiding info" remember that Tweet from before about DHL:

After he asked why I called him a con artist (which is at least a week after the complaint about DHL he'd made), he said this:

Emmanuel, I do not judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Your "character" has ignored me, lied to me, made excuses and excuses on top of excuses, paid someone else my money because of your inability to keep track of ten dollars, offered me the difference as collateral while taking a week to scrounge up what you owed me in the first place, and then had the damn nerve to accuse me of being racist when I call you out on your bullshit. I want one good reason why I should acknowledge your humanity in light of any of this. I've sent you this edict on your Facebook page. You' have given me no answer. 

As for everyone else, this will be the last ever mention of this incident, even as reports and cases are being considered (I accidentally filed the wrong kind of report for this matter, so I have to wait for that one to close before I open the right one). I may well have jumped the gun in calling his operation a con, I freely admit that. However, the only thing I am at all sorry for is giving anyone the impression I put people down or write them off solely based on where they’re from, who their ancestors were, who they love, or how they look. At the end of the day, I value words, I value trust, I value talent, and I especially value the respect earned from standing by those things. 

eBay deBacle (Prologue)

Saturday was awful. It had already been a rough couple of days, so I upgraded my pastry that morning. I added Kahlua to my coffee that night, but that's not exactly an upgrade. The issues with a so-called buyer on eBay had escalated to a breaking point. I wrote of most of it on Tumblr, but I hadn't kept up on it here on Blogger, so this will be a somewhat condensed update. Then, that will be the end of it. I have a case pending, but for all intents and purposes, it's all done and I have to relist an item. 

419, And It Stands for a "Person"

Recap: Sold something on eBay. Buyer used "buy it now" option. 2 days, no payment, and two ignored messages asking if everything's all right. Buyer's eBay profile on the mobile site gives a New York street address:



Then, I go to the main site, and see this:





Notice the "unpaid" feedback? Notice that Nigeria is not New York?

I find his Twitter, and come across this Tweet:





I thought he was referring to my sale, but the dates are wrong. Still, there's that New York address. The most recent business attached to it is a cargo company called Allworld International. I find their Facebook page, the last update is August 2012:





Hmmm, if they're a freight company that regularly goes to Nigeria, why would someone need DHL to do a pickup to the same place? Google Maps Street View may have the answer in this image dated September 2012, one month later:





That hardly looks like a bustling business. Also, if Bing is reliable, Allworld was only there for about a year, replacing a brokerage. Their phone number gets me a machine, but that can mean anything. Like I said, if it's a shipping firm, why would they need DHL to take something to where they already go?


Emmanuel, my sale was not for international shipping. Your actions speak louder than your words, your inactions even louder. Of course, feel free to explain to me why I should believe a single thing you say. 

PayPal Update (Surprisingly Good News)

I probably owe PayPal something of an apology. In my defense, they were as baffled by what's gone on with my account as I've been. The skinny on the situation, it turns out, is that all the way back in February I maxed out the number of times I entered my password (I forgot. You ever forget? It happened to me.) and was locked out of the system. At least, I was supposed to be locked out, and by locked out I mean I was supposed to be taken to a screen to verify some additional information if I ever logged in again. Instead, I got a vague error screen that looped no matter what I did. On top of that, I actually could log in to my PayPal account through the mobile app. My access was limited, but only limited, and quite possibly exposing a major security leak. 
Remember in Office Space how Milton was laid off years prior to the events of the film, but no one bothered to tell him, yet he still received a paycheck through a software glitch? That's more or less what happened to me. Speaking of paychecks, I got a very pleasant surprise out of all this. As I mentioned, I was in the middle of a transaction on eBay. I put in an offer on a lot of paperback books, not expecting for the offer to be accepted (at least not within a few minutes), and got locked into paying what I owed. Obviously, I was more than willing to pay for the books, that wasn't the problem. I had enough to pay for the books. Again, not the problem. The problem was that the mechanism by which I would have paid for the books had a wrench in the works. I attempted a transfer from my bank to my PayPal account, only for it to basically sit in limbo for way longer than these things should take. In fact, at the time of this writing, it's still processing. 
Here's the pleasant surprise: I looked at my PayPal account and saw a positive balance. My bank transfer was still in limbo, but I had a balance that was not there before, for exactly what I owed the bookseller. At first, I thought, "Great, now it's lying about my balance." Then, when I checked my e-mail (where I've been talking with the support staff), I learned that the guy who was handling my case issued me a courtesy credit. Essentially, it was to make up for all the fees I'd been paying by only being able to use my debit card to transfer money, but it just happened to be enough to cover my literary IOU. 
As of now, I can access my PayPal account, update information, and many other things I couldn't do before. On top of that, I had an eBay purchase completely covered by a tech support guy, and I appreciate that wholeheartedly. I appreciate it because he didn't have to do that. I've worked customer service jobs and I know for a fact no one likes issuing credits. Companies rake their employees over the coals for issuing credits to customers, however small and justified they may be. No one wants to open that can of worms. No one wants to give that potential mile-betraying inch. 
This was not a small favor. It was a small amount, but it was not a small favor. 
So, not only props to PayPal support, but specifically their Twitter support. As I said, the phone support was a complete dead end. Twitter got me results. 

PayPal, eBay, and Haggling (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Issue is effectively two-thirds resolved as of July 23. There's still the small matter of them not acknowledging my bank as real, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

I've been having trouble with PayPal for some time now. In short, I cannot see my account. I get an error message every time I log in, no matter what way I log in, that my action cannot be completed. It's not a password error, and it's not any sort of lockout from entering the wrong password too many times. 

This has kept me from updating my contact information (including my physical address and e-mail address), seeing my transaction history, and making payments without incurring fees. As it stands, the only ways I can use PayPal are

* Via the mobile app on my Android phone

* if I know the recipient's e-mail address (so no eBay purchases) 

* and if I use my debit card, incurring a fee for sending money 

Here's the real kicker about that debit card. The last time I was able to use PayPal, I was updating my bank information, as I'd recently joined a new one. They told me my account information was invalid, that the bank itself didn't exist. They told me to wait until it finished processing (because that's apparently a thing that happens in a time when someone's entire financial history can be summed up in a text file of less than 50KB) and that the error message was merely a sort of default warning if a bank is not a major entity like Bank of America or Wells Fargo (in my case, a local credit union). However, albeit they can't verify, presumably after all these months I've been getting this error message, they have no problem processing my debit card which is attached to that "fictional" account, and certainly have no problem charging me a fee every time I use it. It's very hard not to be cynical about these things, especially given that PayPal is no stranger to a less-than-stellar reputation in the eyes of its customers. 

Their customer service, as you might guess, has been virtually helpless when it comes to my issue, ultimately resulting in them telling me to simply try again later and that everything to do with my account looks absolutely fine on their end. My most recent call to them ended with me saying that I was tired of hearing these excuses, because that's what they are by now, and that getting me the promise of an e-mail from an account specialist. I have not heard from this person. This could well be because it's the weekend, but if that's the case, why have I been able to talk with the support personnel on their Twitter account? I initially tweeted my grievances about the complete ineptitude I'd encountered without any expectation of a response. I was screaming at a brick wall, but the brick wall answered. A few Direct Messages later, and I got this e-mail:

This is only the first step in their troubleshooting process. After three different browsers, all with caches and cookies cleared, I got the exact same "Action Could Not Be Completed" error message. 

The worst part about all this is that I made a purchase on eBay and I'm now effectively making this guy wait longer than necessary, which wouldn't even be such a bad thing (I mean, the time limit is 7 days) except I made an offer for below asking price, which is tantamount to slapping someone in the face and demanding they give you a piggyback ride. It makes a bad customer out of me, not because I don't want to pay this person in a timely manner, but because I can't. If I lived near this bookseller, I'd happily stroll on over and throw down my cash for those old paperbacks.