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A decade ago people were truly amazed to find out that they could download entire movies using BitTorrent. At the time there were no official video download stores and YouTube wasn’t around either.In the coming years another revolution is destined to unfold, that of 3D printing. While the 3D printer opens up a lot of possibilities to the public it also poses a major threat to dozens of industries.Downloading a car is a serious possibility, and leeching the latest cover for your smartphone will soon be reality. The manufacturers, however, are not going to provide these copies for free, and that’s where the trouble starts.To address the concerns of companies who plan to offer products as 3D designs, a new startup from California has developed a DRM-type system to make it harder to copy these files. Instead of allowing customers to download the designs, Authentise will be streamed to the 3D printer, allowing objects to be printed only once.The technology goes live at SendShapes next month and more services are expected to appear in the future.“We’re already talking to a number of people about using the technology to enable buying of designs online, with an iTunes-like functionality,” Authentise CEO Andre Wegner told Technology Review.While the technology may be effective, it wont be perfect. History has taught us that there will always be cracks, circumvention tools, and people who want to share unauthorized copies.
