What is professional printing?

Since 3D printing technology is double-sided, what specific measures can be taken to prevent its harmful effects?

• Merits of 3D printing is quite obvious. Some of the potential risks &dark sides i can come up with are as follows: 1)Misuse and mischief. The misuse and mischief are not potential risks as far as I’m concerned; instead, they are the crises we face NOW. Although the 3D printing seems far away from our daily life, who knows what kind of people are and will be conspiring to use this technology out of what attempt. Weapons and firearms are only the tip of an iceberg. Much more risks are underway because extremist groups can take advantage of the endless possibilities that the 3D industry offers and make whatever they want then use it against innocents. 2)Counterfeiting. Since the 3D printing market is in its relatively early days there are no clear policies and supervision, clear disadvantage is that the 3-D printing markets is still breached and expose, easy to buy 3D printer designs and print them at home violating copyrights and brand name products as it has been discussed in background guide. 3)Challenges to ethics. This point happens especially in bio-printing fields. Similar what the clone technology brings, while it can help lots of incurable bio-printing disease, 3D printing can also challenge ethics.  4) Cause unemployment With the development of 3D printing technology, more and more productions will be produced by 3D printer and manufacturing factories will need fewer and fewer workmen. This will raise the rate of unemployment and cause social upheaval. 5) The loss of traditional culture Many handicrafts represent a culture and the wisdom of ancestors. But 3D technology will make people ignore them and that means a great loss to people all around the world. 6)Challenges to ethics. This point happens especially in bio-printing fields. Similar what the clone technology brings, while it can help lots of incurable bio-printing disease, 3D printing can also challenge ethics.  Technology changes so fast that regulation(legislation or industry standard) can hardly keep up with it.

• Answer:

  The technology is new. I don't think the problems are new. Can't a gun already be made in a machine shop? And at least in the U.S., guns are not difficult to buy for most people. So the "tip of the iceberg" is a problem we already have. What other dangers are you concerned about? What is the iceberg? Are you talking about counterfeiting or copyright infringement? Copyright infringement is already easy with photocopiers and especially with digital copies of books, music, and anything else copyrightable. I don't see how 3-D printing makes it any easier. Counterfeiting is not an issue, for technological reasons. Unlike copyright infringement, where the content is what is copied, for counterfeiting, the physical object must be duplicated. Physical objects show their origins. A banknote scanned into a computer and then printed on a color printer will still be distinguishable from a real banknote. The paper will be different. Some of the details cannot be captured by the scanner, or cannot be printed on the inkjet, because the technologies are so different. Similarly, what is produced by a 3-D printer will be made of plastic, resin, metal, or whatever material the device can handle. It won't be the canvas and leather of an expensive purse, for example. I can't imagine how 3-D printing will bring novel ethical questions. Can you give a couple of examples? Unemployed workers? Probably. But this is not a new problem. Refrigerators in the home put the iceman out of business. Automation in the car factories put autoworkers out of their jobs. Word processing software eliminated the need for typists. And incidentally, refrigerators created a need for refrigerator repairmen and launched the frozen food industry. Automation in the car factories allowed increased and less expensive production, increasing demand for car salesmen and mechanics. Word processing software created jobs for software developers and other experts, and eventually led the way to the self-publishing boom of recent years. Handcrafts have their own appeal. They have been being supplanted by mass production for two or three centuries now. But they haven't disappeared yet, and I see no reason why a new tool for custom production would eliminate them.