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Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), Gun Control, and Patent Law
retroworks writes "J.D. Tuccille of the conservative think tank Reason Foundation discusses last week's news about the first working 3D-printed gun. According to the original article, the partly plastic '.22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper' fired 200 rounds without any sign of wear and tear. Tuccille takes the discovery in the direction of politically topical gun control. '...the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.' But in my mind, this example of additive-manufacturing technology raises even more questions about patent law enforcement. Will 3D printing be to the Anti-gray-market-alliance what online porn became to neighborhood blue laws?"
This fight is already happening. What do ya think the whole war over software patents boils down to? Is it a patentable machine or a copyrightable expression in code? Well soon it will be everything is downloadable and where is the line? That is the heart of this argument in a nutshell.
Democrat delenda est
As guns are far more strictly controlled over here, and as such you can't obtain the parts that you can't home make, this doesn't really apply to the UK or other countries that don't have everybody armed to the teeth.
...but its only a matter of time really. I actually like gun control laws, but I can't see any way they can be enforced, long term, in light of this kind of technology - without banning the technology outright, which would be like banning home computers in the 1970s. Obviously, the people who have a stake in selling people stuff they may be able to manufacture themselves in the near future are going to love this. Moral panics are always useful for promoting a ruthless, rent seeking economic agenda, as the debate over digital rights has shown.
I actually like gun control laws, but I can't see any way they can be enforced
Why would you LIKE a law that is not enforceable, or wildly ignored?
The effect of such a law is to reduce respect for all laws. When so many laws make so little sense why not simply ignore laws altogether? If you're a criminal all the time why not act like it?
At this post most western countries are at the only real laws remaining are people's own moral compasses, and tax collection laws which are strictly enforced.
Meanwhile governments use the fact that all are criminals to selectively harass those who are against whoever is in power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For a few hundred dollars I can make a CNC mill and craft a gun out of a block of metal. Frankly, I can do much the same with a metal file. Same goes for patent infringement. Add in a 3D scanner and I can duplicate just about anything. There is nothing intrinsically special about 3D printers VS other methods of manufacturing. Its just an evolution of mass production.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Reason is libertarian.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You misspelled "libertarian". There is a significant difference.
Dog is my co-pilot.
For a few hundred dollars I can make a CNC mill and craft a gun out of a block of metal. Frankly, I can do much the same with a metal file. Same goes for patent infringement. Add in a 3D scanner and I can duplicate just about anything. There is nothing intrinsically special about 3D printers VS other methods of manufacturing. Its just an evolution of mass production.
Actually, there's something very different between what you're suggesting and 3D printing -- what you say you could do requires time, effort, and skill. 3D printing a gun could become no more difficult than cleaning a gun.
> of course if you add something meaningful or modify the original enough for it to be a new invention, it ceases to be an issue.
Nope. You can patent your addition but you will still need to license the underlying patent to sell your improvement.
Democrat delenda est
I don't think I could make a lower reciever out of paper mache, or wood, or a CNC mill. All of those take expertice in either firearms or machinery operation that I don't have. Granted, I could learn in a month or two I'm sure I'd be able to do it. But I can, right now, with no training or investigation, push print on a 3d printer. There is a difference.
And the point shouldn't be OMG we need gun control. The point is, gun control is borderline impossible today, but in 10 or 20 years it's going to jump completely into the completely and utterly impossible side of things. We need to prepare for that as a society, not enact another law that makes it illegal to print a gun.
Your average citizen cannot purchase an assault rifle. You can purchase a semi-automatic rifle that *looks* like an assault rifle. This is, basically, a hunting rifle with a different stock and a flash suppressor, neither of which increases it's lethality, but is sure does look scary.
The extra-large capacity magazines are garbage, and jam more often than not. The military doesn't use them.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I don't get the article.
I don't get the article either. Making a gun using 3-D printing would have no more patent implication than making anything else using 3-D printing. The article is just attached to the gun article to make a bigger bang.
But, they didn't print a gun using 3-D printing. They made all of the parts of the gun except the parts that actually fire bullets. According to some idiotic regulation they found somewhere, apparently the part that the bullet shoots out of isn't defined as the "gun," but nevertheless, in no reasonable use of the word did they actually print a gun.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Gun control is to the second amendment what censorship is to the first. These are authoritarian push-backs against the Bill of Rights giving people "too much" freedom. The Internet has shown what happens to such restrictive efforts once an enabling technology is introduced to the masses.
You can make a lower in steel on a mill right now. You could make one from wood, heck even cheap plywood.
This is not a highly stressed part, nor one that needs to be machined to very high tolerances.
It will be news when they can 3d print a barrel.
No.
No it doesn't.
If your method incrorporates the previously patented method, then you are subject to that patent. If you truely added something new, you can patent your innovation. But that doesn't mean you can *build* it. You might have to get the permission of the original patent holder before you can do that.
Of course, he can't add your patented innovation into what he's building without your permission. That's where a lot of cross-licensing agreements come from.
Now maybe his invention inpired you to do something completely different, in which case these restrictions wouldn't apply, but adding to or transforming a previous invention still leaves you subject to its patent.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
It doesn't require skills in operating a lathe, mill, grinder or other machine or hand tools. Anyone that can download a 3D file can then just press print and they will have an object.
I remember reading the same kind of stuff about CNC milling machines, desktop publishing, desktop music production, desktop video production, about 50 bazillion iterations from COBOL to the latest CMS of art history majors claiming that now, those icky computer nerds will no longer be necessary to kept around to write business software...
Its important, it will have an effect, but its not a miracle Star Trek transporter. Hmm maybe thats not so bad of an analogy after all, the best engineer in the fleet was constantly Fing around with the transporter yet it broke ALL THE TIME. Maybe it will be like the transporter after all... It should "just work" every time you push the button, but its never that simple in reality.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well, only if you print it loaded
Wrong, the ATF didn't send any weapons to Mexico. What they did was try to track a few of the hundreds of thousands of guns purchased every year by individuals with suspicious purchasing patterns. They couldn't track all of them, and some of them in fact ended up being smuggled to mexico or were otherwise used in crimes. That is the "scandal." There would be no scandal if they hadn't bothered trying to track the guns in the first place. It's hard to imagine what an individual who is not a dealer might be doing purchasing hundreds of guns per year, yet that is perfectly legal (just as the NRA likes it) until/unless you later commit a crime with them. Now that the interdiction has become a political football, the flow of guns to Mexico continues as before with, at best, low-level individual purchasers being caught.
Short of a radioactive material and toxins, something sitting around does no harm. It is only when something is used that it can do harm. This revolution in manufacturing shows how untenable the approach of "banning" something is. We have to dispense with the idea that prevention of possession is a crime or even possible, and focus solely on damaging uses. In this way we have all the rights and all the responsibility to exercise freedom.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Printing a plastic widget which holds the metal bits of a gun together is slightly different from printing a gun. Not that it would be hugely impressive to print an entire gun anyway given the thing would probably be destroyed or rendered unusable within a few shots. Doesn't help much either if you can't print the ammunition.
Umm, no.
The ATF told firearms dealers who reported suspicious purchases to go ahead and sell the guns anyway, so they could "trace them".
Then they didn't bother to trace them.
Note that telling a firearms dealer to go ahead and sell a gun to a criminal is illegal.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I think you and the parent are using different definitions for "Assault Rifles"
Some have defined them as shortbarreled rifles with a pistol grip and a butt stock. Others don't consider the same weapon an assault weapon unless it also has multiple modes of fire, usually including burst and fully automatic.
The first definition is a little silly because anyone can shorten the barrel of a .22 and swap out the regular stock for one that has a pistol grip. The functionality of the weapon that really makes it more dangerous is the extra firing modes. And while it is possible to legally purchase weapons with burst and full auto firing modes in the USA it requires some very expensive and time consuming licensing requirements, I've heard anywhere from 4k to 10k per year to maintain such a license.
Not that it's a strict limitation but the weapon used in CO was a $1,200 gun. Sadly enough that does put it out of the reach of a large section of the population simply from a cost perspective. And the good thing is that the guy was too much of an idiot to realize that a few much cheaper junk quality shotguns would have allowed him to do more damage in that situation.
I for one am glad that the means of production are returning to the masses. This will either gat the 3D printing outlawed or it will make capitalism obsolete. And I sincerely hope for the latter.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.