In any case, what seems more provocative here, on the level of design, would be to appropriate this protective stance and reuse it in the design of future objects, but emphasizing the other end: to allow for the scanning of any object designed or manufactured, but to to insert, in the form of watermarks, small glitches that would only become visible upon reprinting.
We could call these object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects.
It’s super fun (slash-super-horrible) to consider the implications of DRM in the world of 3D printing, if only because it’s the first major form of replication that has come to life in a world that ASSUMES creations are licensed and not owned.
[via @kellan]