I’ve come to find out DEFCAD has ripped my Projectile Dysfunction 15mm design and is selling it on their site. What can I do about it?
Good luck. I have written them some nasty emails . You will get nowhere . Are they at least giving you credit by user name? every design they have was taken from some where else for free.
If they are using your files, you have a copyright on them which automatically comes into existence when you created the files and published them. They are in the U.S., so you can sue them in the U.S.
Under U.S. law, it is important to register your copyright with the Copyright Office (Library of Congress). If you do this in a timely manner, which means less than three months after publication, you can sue in federal court for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per file for willfully redistributing the files. Suing in regular federal court is difficult and expensive and takes a long time and you would likely need an attorney to navigate the process. There is an alternative, however:
You can also sue via the Copyright Claims Board at ccb.gov which has a simplified speedy process and which can get you up to $15,000 per file (with a limit of $30,000 per suit). Note, I do not know whether you need to have timely registered your copyright with the CO/LOC to do this. (You DO need to register it, though, even if untimely. I don’t know how an untimely registration affects the damages you can get with the CCB.)
Registration with the CO/LOC is simple but does require paying a fee. Last time I went through that it was $40 per registration.
You can talk to or even hire an attorney to help you navigate the CCB if you really want to, but AFAIK it is straightforward enough that most people can navigate the process on their own.
Edit: I noticed below you mentioned you published under a CC license. You still retain copyright, CC licenses just tell people how they are allowed to use the files, and is explicitly not public-domain. However, that may or may not complicate things with the CCB and/or regular federal court. You might want to talk to an attorney familiar with copyright law and Creative Commons licenses to figure out how much you can sue for.
Another edit: note, I haven’t tried registering STLs, STEPs, or other CAD type files ever. I assume they can be protected the same as software programs, but I don’t know this for certain. My work was mostly with commercial packaging (to be able to block counterfeiters).
Disclaimer: these off-the-cuff remarks are not legal advice. For legal advice upon which you can rely, please contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. These remarks were made using 100% recycled electrons.
Fantastic info and tips, thank you kindly. According to them, they can still monetize it even this the license it was published under. I’m on the fence on how I want to proceed. I design things for the people and the community and it rubs me the wrong way that these guys take advantage of it and sell IP they never touched. I need to figure out what license to actually publish my files under to prevent this in the future whilst allowing the community to build upon it open source.
DEFCAD told you they could monetize your file that you licensed under CreativeCommons-Attribution-NonCommercial-4.0 Intl?
Disclaimer: IANAL.
Your artwork is being used to incentivize users to pay DEFCAD’s subscription fee in order to access the file. That’s clear violation of 1.i in the text of your license which defines NonCommercial as “not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation”. Using your design to entice users into paying a subscription for access is absolutely using it for monetary compensation. That’s like arguing that GamePass advertising that they have Halo is noncommercial use of the Halo IP.
They’re either seriously mistaken or willfully malicious. Getting into a legal pissing match with them is signing up for a lot, but you can also submit a DMCA at Cloudflare – their CDN – if they’re electing to give you the runaround.
That’s dishonorable
imaging selling a free design, that you didn’t make smh. hopefully they take it down now soon!
Fuck Fedcad
Since you published under CC-BY-NC and they’ve even acknowledged it, you have grounds to submit a DMCA takedown request. Your license clearly forbids the files being put behind a paywall. They have contact information on their site.
Good luck.
Email sent! Thanks everyone
Wow!! Looks like they stole the baby nameless too. I’m pretty sure some of those people used to mod FOSSCAD. Pretty shitty to be taking other peoples work and turning it for a profit when it is FREE for the people.
They create an account for people and make it seem like you’re supporting them and posting your stuff there. They likely won’t take it down. Fuck defcad.
You can TRY to email them at support@defcad.com thats about it.
They sell everything that’s free
yes
Interesting, they have one of mine listed, and someone did way better screenshots than I did for it. AI generated maybe? It has more views there than it does on Odysee.
This rats dont use AI for this. They have a good CAD Render, i believe one from SolidWorks extension.
They were more than happy to get me to sign up so they could transfer ownership of the model and “I also set up your partner account for sponsorship, so you’ll earn money for any downloads your project receives. Let me know if you have any other questions!”
So yeah, looks like they’re scraping and reposting to get people to sign up and post there or some shit.
I should also note, even after they transfer you your own design, there’s no way to edit or delete the posting.
They use blender I believe. The render they made of the bpar-15 is literally just the .blend file I included with some black and red textures on it.
And it looks like someone is claiming my name there…
They’re rat bastards man. At least they ripped my profile pic and gave me credit for the design but they phrase everything like I’m working with them and nobody has reached out to me at all.
I sent them an email, but not getting my hopes up.
