There are some creators on Patreon with a few hundred supporters – paying $8-$10 every month – and there are people all over myminifactory and the like selling hundreds of copies of their files every month, so there is demand. The market is just getting going here, but resin printers are flying off the shelves as the barrier to entry gets lower (and, as more people jump in, there’s more community support).
I’ve never yet seen any of the files I’ve paid for released for free across the ‘net. And, it goes without saying, I wouldn’t dream of sharing any of the files I’ve bought either – not because “I paid for them and you didn’t” but because we either support our community creators, or they stop creating awesome content. I think this is pretty well understood by *most* people.
There’s also the “protection” of accessibility – where do people get their models? There isn’t a peer-to-peer sharing model, like there was for mp3s and music in the early days of napster (and like there are with torrent movies and the like). If someone wants 3d models to print, they generally hit thingiverse (and/or yeggi, stlfinder etc). So unless your models are shared on sites like these, they’re unlikely to be found.
Which means if you *do * find any of your models “out in the wild” it shouldn’t be difficult to get them taken down; it’s not like trying to get a torrent removed.
I’ve only anecdotal evidence to go from, and you may not want to take the risk. But there are plenty of people confidently creating and releasing digital files that *aren’t* being shared widely, because most of us respect the creator’s time and effort. We’re in a pretty niche marketplace with tabletop gaming. It seems massive, because of the explosion of kickstarted games, but it’s a pretty tiny niche. 3d printing within that niche is even smaller still. People in a niche, within a niche, who risk losing a supply of things to print because they’re daft enough to share files…. I don’t know how big that problem is!
