Closing questions about knock-off printers

Question

Should we really close this question: 3d printer part clones from china - legality..?

Are legal questions on topic? We have a legal section in the Game plan - What is on-topic? and a legal tag.

Answer 1

My perspective is this is more of a "is it illegal to buy illegal things" is not exactly bound to 3d printing. Though I still read those related to the operation of printers, IE the legality around printing dangerous things such as firearms and their parts is unique to the 3d printing and fabrication spaces.

Honestly I feel that any legal questions should not be handled here unless it's extremely specialized to 3d printing. Copyrights counterfeits and IP are ubiquitous in almost all things sold, so this is not a good candidate. For me, I wouldn't touch a question like this, as if someone gives bad advice, they could potentially be liable, or put stack overflow in a bad situation. (I assume the TOS covers some liability cases). That all seems to be more better suited the Law Stack exchange. The existence of the stack exchange is the deciding part for me, a community better suited to ask questions related to trade laws.

No I do not think it should be allowed.

Note the question is better now that they added Locations, but still doesn't feel right.

Answer 2

I've taken onboard StarWind0's points and added them to the on-topic page. See this meta answer to On-topic has been updated - finally!. Regarding the question itself it ended up needing the fourth vote and got re-opened. I'll add an IANAL type answer at some point.

I agree that it would be more suited to Law, and its generic nature could actually be asked anywhere (and that should be pointed out in any posted answer to the question and/or as a comment to the question) - however, we could allow just this one example, and any similar questions thereafter can be closed as duplicates against that one, as we have done in the past (have one generic cover-all question/answer that similar questions can be pointed to)...

I read an authoritative answer somewhere about if a question is valid on two different sites then where should it be asked, but I can't find it any longer. However, whilst this question was not cross-posted the aspect of overlap covered in the answers to Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?

Occasionally, people are interested in different perspectives on the same fundamental question. There are many Stack Exchange sites with overlapping topic spaces and it can be useful to get a "second opinion". Even then, however, it's best to tailor your question to each site. Ideally link to the question on the other site and explain what you hope to learn from asking another community.

and probably more au-point, How should we deal with questions that fit on more than one Stack Exchange site?

If the question belongs on two or more sites, then whichever on-topic site got the question first should probably get priority and keep it. That's where the author is probably more comfortable, or decided was the place to ask.