I'm not convinced either about 3D printing having a Napster moment. But Napster does provide another good example of how scale totally changes things. The music industry didn't really have a serious problem with personal mixtapes or copying a friend's album. (Not saying they necessarily liked it but it wasn't a public issue.) Napster, on the other hand, that let you trade songs with 100,000 of your closest friends...
> The music industry didn't really have a serious problem with personal mixtapes or copying a friend's album.
I don't know about the RIAA and mixtapes, but the MPAA tried to get VCRs banned. As Jack Valenti (MPAA) explained to a congressional panel, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Just wait until Disney finds out that you can make Mickey Mouse shaped pieces of plastic on an Ultimaker.
Yeah, I'm aware of the Sony case. And there was also often copy protection on commercial VHS tapes. AFAIK, nothing similar happened with music pre-P2P sharing although RIAA never actually condoned it.
I expect part of the reason is that the genie was already so far out of the bottle with cassette tape (and even reel-to-reel) that even they probably felt that it was pointless at that point to fight. However, a number of countries did impose a fee on blank media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
