3D printers are ubiquitous in the maker community already. They have also already become a staple of small industry too. The various attempts at regulation will go nowhere. There’s no support from anyone who understands the tech.

This is compounded by the fact that a number of elements are unwanted in the community. The guys trying to push gun designs etc are like the guys who turn up to a kids party wearing body armour and carrying an assult rifle. They might have the right to do it, but they can’t then complain that the other parents want nothing to do with them. The community seems to self police remarkably well.

The big issue with 3D print designs isn’t the big companies protecting parts. They don’t seem to bother. The issue is that parts are not standardized. A particular part in, say, a dishwasher, will change slightly, from model to model. It also takes a reasonable skill baseline to reverse engineer a broken part to a 3D printable design. The results are also often also a hacky bodge job. I’ve done it before, and my goal is to fix the issue and move on. This creates a lack of models available, in the first place, paid or free.

On top of this, most paid model makers are small time artists selling their own design. With piracy, it’s the difference between stealing a TV from Walmart, and stealing it from a guy down the street, trying to save money to take his kids on holiday.

There are a few exceptions. Games Workshop are a big one. They are very hot on defending their copyright on model designs. Their business model relies on selling a few, high profit items, rather than a lot of cheap ones. 3D printers can undercut that significantly.

On the whole, however, the 3D printing community is extremely functional. This makes piracy quite a niche thing. There’s a lot of free designs already, and those that are charging, aren’t being unreasonable. It might change with time, but for now it’s working well.