Well, it was bound to happen – hell, Sven’s been writing columns that skirt around the idea for ages. Here’s the lowdown: 3D printing is maturing quickly, and 3D scanning isn’t far behind, meaning that material objects can be stored and transmitted as digital data. Digital data can be shared in many different ways, and – as the recording industry has learned the hard way – illicit filesharing is, for all intents and purposes, an unclosable Pandora’s box. So what’s to stop people trading, sharing and printing off copies of copyright-controlled objects – shoes, clothing, homeware, car parts, whatever?

The answer – nothing. Nothing at all. Welcome to The Product Bay:

RepRap and other 3D printers are the future. There’s no question about it. With the proud tradition from The Pirate Bay, we want to take all of this to the next level. TPB will be TPB, but for real life objects. For now, visit Thingiverse who already understands this.

We want you to download those new jeans.

We want you to share those new shoes.

It’s possible, let’s make it happen.

Granted, The Product Bay is just a one-page site with a provocative message, and I rather suspect it has been launched with the purpose of starting a conversation more than any real hope of kicking off the world’s first tracker site for digital files of real-world objects… but it’s also a harbinger of things to come, and the big-brand companies that aren’t scared by the idea should probably start planning for the worst. It’s not like there’s been no warning, after all. [via Fabbaloo]