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Proposed Regulation Could Keep 3D-printed Gun Blueprints Offline For Good
SonicSpike sends a report on a proposed update to the International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) regulations which could shut down the sharing of files for 3D printed gun parts over the internet. "Hidden within the proposal, which restricts what gear, technology, and info can and cannot be exported out of the U.S., is a ban on posting schematics for 3D printed gun parts online." This follows a lawsuit from Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed back in May fighting the federal government's command to remove blueprints for the "Liberator" 3D-printed gun from their website. A senior official at the U.S. State Department said, "By putting up a digital file, that constitutes an export of the data. If it's an executable digital file, any foreign interests can get a hold of it."
This has nothing to do with guns or dicks. It's about control, the control of information that everyone already has. It's useless regulation that will end up costing billions of dollars.
This is not the first time they did this. In fact it has quite an interesting history in cryptography that was classified as a munition for just this reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
You must be new here.
Ever heard of PGP? The versions that used the large encryption keys (>1024 bits at the time, iirc, or maybe even smaller keys), used to be banned for export under certain US military laws. The rest of the world had to do with a weaker version of PGP. Not that the full version wasn't available to us anyway...