Not bloody likely

Think what is in a pair of trainers - rubber, nylon fiber, foam, cotton, leather, metal, all bonded with glue and stitching. All presented in a variety of textures, colours, glosses and the rest.

It is unlikely to the point of absurdity to think anyone would print out shoes in this way for any foreseeable amount of time. More likely 3D printers of the future will be more sophisticated (e.g. able to inkjet colours onto plastic, higher resolution) and more affordable but essentially just a progression of what exists today. i.e. you could print out an ornament or perhaps even some kinds of toys, or some plastic flange for your washing machine. But not a pair of shoes.

Of course perhaps it will be trendy in 20 years for people to walk around wearing rock hard plastic clogs, in which case, yes I suppose they could be printed out at home.

...and you thought only hacks got the good drugs

TPB is pretty delusional.

I wonder what will happen when you can download pirated illegal plans of printable rocket launchers. Those will be fun times

Charles Stross got there first

'Rule 34', for anyone who's not read it. Think illegal 'fabbers' (fabrication printers) and the 'feedstock' that goes into them.

I can well imagine illegal downloads of the next Nike trainer designs turning up on the Pirate Bay or whatever. Print these 12 items and a swoosh or two, find yourself some glue, shoelaces and an hour or two to put it together, get them down the car boot sale and sell for £20. Maybe buy/add conventional insoles for comfort. For anyone suggesting that no-one would bother, there is enough people on here who spend time tinkering with everything from robotics to hackintosh, so why not this?

Sure, I wouldn't, but then I can't be arsed pirating media either. At the "not for personal use" end of the scale, I suspect an organised thug with a little sweatshop (outsourced to somewhere?) and a history of counterfeit profiteering might think differently.