Printable gunsInternet publication of 3D printing files about guns: Facts and what’s at stake
When it comes to guns, nearly everyone has strong views. When it comes to Internet publication of 3D printed guns, those strong views can push courts and regulators into making hasty, dangerous legal precedents that will hurt the public’s ability to discuss legal, important, and even urgent topics ranging from mass surveillance to treatment of tear gas attacks. Careless responses to 3D-printed guns, even those that will do little to limit their availability, will have long-lasting effects on a host of activities entirely unrelated to guns.
When it comes to guns, nearly everyone has strong views. When it comes to Internet publication of 3D printed guns, those strong views can push courts and regulators into making hasty, dangerous legal precedents that will hurt the public’s ability to discuss legal, important, and even urgent topics ranging from mass surveillance to treatment of tear gas attacks. Careless responses to 3D-printed guns, even those that will do little to limit their availability, will have long-lasting effects on a host of activities entirely unrelated to guns.
In its responses to 3D printed guns, the U.S. Department of State and state Attorneys General have sought to brush aside the legal protections that ensure your right to dissent and to publish technological information and software for privacy and other purposes. That’s why we’re working to make sure that 3D printing cases don’t set precedents that chip away at your freedoms to speak and learn online.
Here’s how we got to this moment. In 2012, the first order to de-publish the well-known, non-classified 3D design files for guns came about when the federal government decided that it could use existing export regulations to censor technical information whenever it deemed that censorship was “advisable.” The regulations, which are not normally aimed at speech, had no objective legal standards, no judicial oversight, and no binding deadlines. This decision was applied to a company called Defense Distributed and its founder, Cody Wilson.
Last month, after years of litigation, the federal government decided that, contrary to its view in 2012, the export restrictions should not apply to the publication of 3D printer files for guns on the Internet. In response, state governments have persuaded a federal court to order the takedown of that information from the Internet without any First Amendment analysis. They have also asked the federal government to reinstate the system that gave it total discretion over Internet publication of technical information about 3D printed guns, which it enforced against Defense Distributed but not against other publishers.
