Copyright control of families

[Prodev75]

Interesting...
Is a mere disclaimer enough?

It should be. In my mind content that is downloaded should be only as a guideline for your project.

[GuyR]

Still, generic things get reimplemented and set free (operating systems, productivity), but custom solutions for smaller markets (Revit) remain private.

Interesting thoughts Fedor. There would be many in the Construction Industry who would argue DWG is at the point it should be considered a generic solution. Therefore one would expect Autodesk to release DWG as an open standard or at least support the OpenDWG efforts

The reality is the extent that copyright is protected has more to do with shareholder returns v's ensuring widespread adoption of the technology. Look at the tit for tat going on between Autodesk and Solidworks over Solidworks ability to edit DWG's. Why now? Because OpenDWG and Solidworks allows companies to be Autodesk free. Yet this is good for competition and the end user.

In many ways keeping families open to inspection is like Open source, It encourages innovation and learning which ultimately is good for all Revit users.

What I would like to see is the ability to make a family read-only. So to change the geometry in a family you have to save it with a new name. It would still allow new types but at least some control over geometry could be enforced. A createdby tag in a family would be good as well. This would get cleared when you save a family to a new name.

[PeterJ]

I would like to have copyright protection over families to prevent them being reverse engineered, not so much to prevent them being circulated. I appreciate that there is damn all that I can do to stop any family that I put out there being freely circulated if I choose to let it go a couple of steps beyond my direct control but I think that if manufacturers see that their family cannot be messed about with to change it to match the main competitor or, perhaps worse, the generic product they are more likely to be willing to model their products and put them out there.

Cheap content widely available but only only parametric to a certain predefined quantized type catalogue will surely make content delivery more attractive to key suppliers.

[aaronrumple]

expensive to implement
difficult to verify and maintain (it's fundamentally impossible to create a useable unbreakable system of controlled content sharing)
takes away more value than it adds (inconvenience, impediment of fair use, danger of losing keys vs. automatic extralegal protection of copyright) and
encourages an atmosphere of mutual distrust

.....uh - sounds like AutoCAD.

[FK]

...one would expect Autodesk to release DWG as an open standard or at least support the OpenDWG efforts

Right. And one would expect Microsoft to support Linux.

Generic things become free because somebody can make them free, not because corporations choose so.

What I would like to see is the ability to make a family read-only. So to change the geometry in a family you have to save it with a new name. It would still allow new types but at least some control over geometry could be enforced. A createdby tag in a family would be good as well. This would get cleared when you save a family to a new name.

This looks relatively simple - no fooling yourself about "security", just an honest tag. If the file is altered, it's easy to verify that it's not a genuine copy by comparing with the published version, which would provide legal indemnity. No need for digital signatures.

[FK]

...if manufacturers see that their family cannot be messed about with to change it to match the main competitor or, perhaps worse, the generic product they are more likely to be willing to model their products and put them out there.

You know better, but I think it's not so problematic. The competitive advantage of the manufacturer is having the content on the site, or on CD with the catalog. Now, if a competitor rips them off and publishes the result, they can sue big time. Same for a generic ripoff.

If a private designer bends their content for their own purposes - big deal. The designer still has to do the bending and carry the legal risk. The manufacturer conveys limited advantage to the designer, while still creating a better name for itself.

[GuyR]

I would like to have copyright protection over families to prevent them being reverse engineered, not so much to prevent them being circulated

Right. And one would expect Microsoft to support Linux.

It's ironical the medium we are using to carry out this discussion was founded on the principles of openness and standards namely TCPIP and HTML. I have no doubt had MS and other been in control of the internet we wouldn't be having this conversation with such ease. In fact given their work on bastardising the HTML/ DOM model by implementing MS tags they've done a pretty good job already

I once read one of the main reasons the internet expanded and developed so rapidly was you could view the source of a HTML document and learn from it.

So someone might learn something from your hard work developing a family. But you'll learn just as much from someone elses. For me this is why families should remain open. I do however think there needs to be someway a comparision can be done against a reference version. That is why I suggested the read-only switch.

Guy

Guy

[gregcashen]

My biggest problem, oddly enough, has nothing to do with intellectual property concerns at all. I am more concerned about being able to uniquely identify a family. I think the issue of updating a family only for it to be replaced during the automatic download by the base file is a real one. I know we should be managing our families ourselves and backing up etc, but the problem is, currently, even with a backup there is no way to tell which family is the one that you updated last. I would like to be able to add meta-data to a family in order to give it a description and then to have that description shown to me in a family manager.

[GuyR]

I would like to be able to add meta-data to a family in order to give it a description and then to have that description shown to me in a family manager.

Agree Greg. There is a definite need for this. It's on the wishlist already isn't it?

Guy

[gregcashen]

It is.

1234567890