I am a TA in the art building and I was excited to learn that at the beginning of this semester we acquired a 3d printer. This seemed so futuristic and I was excited to learn how to use it and create things. The first program that we installed allowed us to access a database of already created objects that people were sharing. People knew that others would copy these objects. I was surprised however to see a lot of media material such as a Yoda miniature or a Pokemon. There are also such things as 3d scanners. Someone could hypothetically copy any action figure and start to reproduce the design as their own.
thats insane 3d printers are awesome and will probably toss copyright laws around even more