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After Court Order, 3D-Printed Gun Pioneer Now Sells Pay-What-You-Want CAD Files (arstechnica.com)
CaptainDork writes: In a surprising announcement, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced Tuesday that while he would continue to comply with a federal court order forbidding him from internationally publishing CAD files of firearms, he would also begin selling copies of his 3D-printed gun files for a "suggested price" of $10 each. The files, crucially, will be transmitted to customers "on a DD-branded flash drive" in the United States and won't be available as downloads.
The next step, if any, will be for the Feds and/or states to address the legality of shipping firearms without a license.
A firearm schematic is no more a firearm than the photo on my driving license is a person.
I know that doesn't make any sense, but neither did, "Cody is violating firearm export ..."
The government used a law on the export of militarily valuable information to prevent these files from being posted on the internet. While there are bits of data with significant value for national security this is not one of those bits. They didn't call the schematics a "firearm" but they certainly tried to create some kind of equivalence between a representation of the thing and the thing itself.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.