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Defense Distributed Sues State Department Over 3-D Gun Censorship
SonicSpike writes with word that Cody Wilson, whose projects to create (and disseminate the plans for) printable guns have fascinated some and horrified others, is not going to quietly comply with the U.S. State Deparment's demand that he remove such plans from the internet. Wilson, says Wired, is
picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before. Wilson's gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn't publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.
Still amazes me that bureaucrats think things can be "removed from the internet". Good for DD.
My understanding of the law, when it comes to gun manufacturing, is that an individual can make a gun themselves, but once they try to sell it (or in this case give it away, selling their "idea" if you will), then it is illegal without going ahead with all the legal paper work and such that other more traditional manufacturers have to deal with.
From what I can tell, they either want to criminalize the plans for the guns (which I think is not feasible) or they want to make 3D printers regulated (and costly) as high end printers that could potentially forge money. I can't see any "win" for them aside from publicity and very likely getting a lot of hate if they win.
A person has rights to privacy, disclosing said person's personal information, particularly with regard to a controversial topic is at the very least negligent and at worst directly contributing to any potential harm that may befall them.
There is quite a bit difference from public access to 3D printer files and public access to personal information of a specific person.
It doesn't matter if you think this is a good idea or a bad idea since as a society we have no choice but to accept it and figure out how to best integrate it into our society. 3D printers exist now and they will continue to get better. They can print things like weapons just as they can engines, food or any number of other things. What can be printed is going to continue to advance fairly rapidly. In the end how to 3D print something is just a file and there is no way to control files.
The music industry has tried to stop music sharing and the movie industry has tried to stop moving sharing and we all now how effective that way.
We can choose to bury our heads in the sand and not see that our technology has advanced to the point where it has destabilized certain aspects of our society or we can try to figure out a new stability point.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
But I can't distill alcohol without a license. I can't even own a still without such a license (California, but other states are the same). I can brew 200 gallons of beer and wine a year, but I can't make a pint of vodka.
But I can freely purchase plans to make my own still, I can order plumbing supplies to put it together. But the moment I have one that is ready to use, I've broken the law. And it will be confiscated and I will be subject to serious fines. (and incarceration in some jurisdictions, although usually not for a first offense)
Hopefully this parallel helps inform people that government regulation can take many forms. And that if one aspect is too difficult or is illegal to regulate, there are other ways to control a problem and enforce the law.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Encryption was defined as a weapon until '97. There were a number of interesting end runs around that, including a book with all of the PGP source code in it. Since you could print the definition for a 3D gun, banning 3D files for guns should run into the same legal restrictions that banning the publishing of encryption software did.
I'm all for DD supporting second amendment rights but come on... I still can barely believe that people are actually printing guns.
Sure.. with some super-expensive, totally out of reach equipment you can print a nice metal gun at many many times the price of making it the old fashioned way. But plastic guns? Really... let me type that again... PLASTIC F'ING GUNS!!
Law abiding citizen or criminal... I think a person shooting a plastic gun is mostly a threat to themself. One of these things is going to blow up in somebody's face!
Those who support individual rights can call 3d printed guns a great thing. Those who fear inanimate objects and bogeymen can call it a disaster. I'll just call it a boatload of Darwin Awards waiting to happen!
It's a principled stand that the government shouldn't censor speech (a la 1984). You can have this opinion completely orthogonally to whether or not you believe in full disclosure of everything. You can even hold this opinion and believe in boycotting those whose speech you disagree with.
In this case, the Supreme Court has upheld (see Heller ) the rights of citizens to own and keep small firearms (which, other than the material used to manufacture them are materially similar to Liberator) under the second amendment. We also have the right to speak without government censorship (barring certain exceptions, none of which seem particularly pertinent here). These two rights together seem to imply the right to speak freely about firearms, such as how to use, store, maintain, and manufacture them.
However, such information about firearms is caught under a broad interpretation of ITAR (specifically 22 CFR 121.1). The last time we really discussed this was the crypto wars in the '90s (see Bernstein ), where free speech won. On the other hand, I would expect the Supreme Court to prohibit publishing an easy how-to guide for making effective nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. I think we're closer to the former than the latter in this particular case.
Equivalent? No.
But the question (for which I don't pose an answer) is "do we accept there are valid limitations on free speech, and if so what defines that?"
Some entities are awfully quick to cite freedom of speech, and then just as quick to deny it from others.
So that "principled" stance is often self-serving bullshit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, just as a hypothetical ... would Defense Distributed support someone publishing the names, addresses, SSNs, names of children and the schools they attend for the members of Defense Distributed?
How is that in any way equivalent to DD trying publish its own data?
It's not. The only reason gstoddart is asking is because it's a gun group, and he's anti-gun, and can't imagine that someone who is pro-2nd amendment rights could also be pro-1st amendment. The right to self-defense is as much of a civil liberty as the right to free speech, I don't know why that's so hard to understand.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
So, just as a hypothetical ... would Defense Distributed support someone publishing the names, addresses, SSNs, names of children ...
Just because someone has a right to say something, doesn't mean you have to "support" what they say. Publishing names, addresses, and names of children is legal, as long as it is not done as part of a credible threat. Disclosing someone's SSN may or may not be illegal depending on what jurisdiction you are in, and what the judge had for breakfast.
Personally, I think disclosure of SSNs should not only be legal, but should be encouraged. Then we can get rid of the idiotic notion that "knowing" an SSN is somehow evidence that you are the person it belongs to.
At the time, it was OK to publish source code in a printed book... but stored online as a computer document and exported, it was an ITAR violation. So, one encryption company (think ViaCrypt) printed out the source code of PGP and made a book out of it, which was freely and legally exported. Then it was scanned in and OCR-ed for the source code.
This is one reason why that law eventually just got pulled, and export limited to the few countries on the blacklist.
Our commitment to gun ownership is WHY we're Americans (and not British subjects, or even Canadians) in the first place.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Information that could make civilians more dangerous to police or military should not be available to civilians at all, obviously.
On the contrary, it's precisely the opposite: civilians must have access to such information, to keep the police and military in check. As far as the US goes, this is discussed extensively in the Federalist Papers, in particular by James Madison #46 and Alexander Hamilton in #29. Both explicitly state the assumption that the citizenry at large will outgun any Federal standing army. To quote the latter, "...if circumstances should at any time oblige the Government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the People, while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights, and those of their fellow-citizens." The rationale for the Constitution, and therefore for the very existence of the Federal government of the United States, is predicated on this imbalance of power in favor of the citizenry.
And mind you, Madison and Hamilton were speaking for the pro-big (relatively speaking) government faction. Their argument, stripped of the flowery language, was: "Don't worry, it's safe to let the central government field an army. If the politicians try to misuse it, the citizens will just shoot them."
Furthermore, the very idea of any power or information being available to government agents but not to the citizenry is contrary to the core philosophy of the US system. Per the Declaration of Independence, governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." That is, whatever powers government has are delegated to it by the citizens. The government's powers are a subset of the powers of the citizenry, by definition, because for the government to have the power to do X, the citizens must first have the power to do X in order to be able to delegate it.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Really? Where exactly is hate speech illegal in the US today? The First Amendment would seem to preclude such a thing from being enforced much, as like it or not plenty of protected hate-speech exists today... just ask anyone who has heard members of the Westboro Baptist Church speak or protest.
And no... I'm not talking about "incitement" or "fighting words", they have their own carve outs and for very explicit reasons.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Without the Second, the First cannot remain for long.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's the exact same sentiment that caused us to become Americans.
It wasn't taxes or government representation that started the fighting during the American Revolution; it was access to firearms. The British government decided to send soldiers to confiscate the arms and powder at the Lexington powder magazine (the room where the town's citizens and militia stored their excess gunpowder for safety.) and the local militia stood up and said no.
By the end of the war, America's love for modern military rifles and modern sporting rifles had won the day. Our adoption of rifled barrels over the British Army's smoothbore muskets gave us the advantage of being able to fire more accurately and at greater distances.
Some 239 years later "gun control" has become an issue that simply didn't exist during those years. And just last week we saw a great example of why intentionally destroying gun culture is a dangerous thing. Unlike other shootings inspired by cartoons deemed insulting to terrorists, the one in Garland Texas was stopped within seconds by a man who was outnumbered and outgunned. Within 15 seconds of the first shots ringing out, both terrorists were shot dead in spite of wearing body armor, carrying semi-automatic AKM rifles, and facing down one man armed with a handgun. This didn't happen by accident, and that officer didn't get the handgun skills he showed that day at the police academy. He got those skills in competitions and through civilian marksmanship practice. The officers in France and Denmark were similarly outgunned, and didn't slow those terrorists one bit.
So you keep your gun-bans and warm fuzzy feelings about safety and we'll keep our actually being safe.
It really doesn't matter what the federalist papers propose or the founders discussed because the weapons the government allows you to own are no threat whatsoever to them. Modern heavy weaponry is not allowed to be owned and without it no citizenry could stand up against a government willing to use said heavy weaponry against their citizens. The 2nd amendment defense against government aggression died when the federal government was allowed to classify weapons and restrict access to the heaviest of those weapons.
I'm a big supporter of 2nd amendment rights but you are fooling yourself if you think your handgun and semi-automatic rifles are a deterrent to government aggression. The only thing that protects Americans from government aggression in the 21st century is our armed forces being unwilling to take action against the citizenry. That's it, if the military as a whole decided to side with an autocratic regime that seized power in the US there would be no civilian resistance because anyone that tried would be dead. Small arms are not an effective weapon against armored heavy weaponry. This is just a fact.
There should be no need to defend the 2nd amendment using this silly defense against government. The 2nd amendment exists and it's not going to go away no matter how much the anti-gun lobby wants it to.